Uma houses are traditional vernacular houses found on the western part of the island of

Siberut Siberut is the largest and northernmost of the Mentawai Islands, located 150 kilometres west of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. It covers an area of 3,838.25 km2 including smaller offshore islands, and had a population of 35,091 at the 2010 Cens ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. The island is part of the

Mentawai islands Mentawai may refer to: * Mentawai Islands * Mentawai Strait * Mentawai people * Mentawai language The Mentawai language is an Austronesian language, spoken by the Mentawai people of the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra, Indonesia. Dialects Acco ...

off the west coast of

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

. The structures are influenced by the Acehnese style, built on a much larger scale. They were formerly used as ''uma''

longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from timber and often rep ...

s by the

Sakuddei The Sakuddei or Sabiroet people are an ethnic group, one of at least eleven, on the island of Siberut, Indonesia. Siberut is the northernmost of the Mentawai Islands which are located to the west off the coast of Sumatra. The Sakuddei live in so ...

tribe before they were forced to abandon their traditional way of life through government intervention in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then, some attempts have been made to re-establish them in their former areas of settlement. ''Uma'' longhouses are rectangular with a verandah at each end. They can be 300 m² in area. Built on piles, they traditionally have no windows. The insides are separated into different dwelling spaces by partitions with inter-connecting doors. Villages are built alongside river banks and are made of one or more communal ''Uma'' longhouses and single-storey family houses called ''lalep''. Villages housed up to 300 people and the larger villages were divided into sections along patrilineal clans of families with their own ''uma''. ''Rusuk'' were dwellings for widows and bachelors, similar to the family longhouse but without an altar. The ''uma'' is the centre of social, religious, and political life, where every village member of egalitarian Mentawai society contributes to meetings about matters affecting the community. Like many Indonesians, Mentawaians believe in a separable soul that leaves the body upon death becoming a ghost. To protect themselves from these spirits, fetish sticks are placed by the entrances of the log wall that surrounds and fortifies the village and forms a stockade for cattle.

References

* {{Indonesian architecture Rumah adat

See also

References