A distinguished Irish YouTuber and TikToker has been accused of exploiting indigenous people in southeast Asia for a social media stunt.
Dara Tah amassed a following with videos of him visiting supposedly dangerous places or apparently enduring extreme scenarios reminiscent of 12 hours of Chinese water torture.
For his latest video he attempted to approach what he called a ‘cannibal tribe’ in West Papua, an Indonesian province on the island of Recent Guinea.
He’s accompanied by other tourists and a neighborhood guide named Demi in a small boat carrying them along a river.
Inhabitants of a jungle on the shore may be seen approaching the waterfront shouting, while the guide may be heard hailing them in a neighborhood language.
‘I believe they’re pointing bows and arrows at us, bro’, one man on the boat is heard to say.
Tah, holding his hand towards the locals, says: ‘Seriously, that is terrifying…they’re huge bows.’
After the boat approaches the shore, Tah attempts to make an offering to an elder who’s wearing a leaf loincloth and holding a bow, following Demi’s guidance on etiquette.
The elder tastes the salt and appears to spit it out before withdrawing barely.
Tah then says: ‘He doesn’t appear like he likes that. Alright, guys, let’s move back, perhaps.’
Demi says: ‘Now we have to maneuver. We’re not welcome, it’s really dangerous.’
Despite being obviously unwelcome, Tah wrote within the video caption that he ‘will try again tomorrow’.
Some viewers expressed doubt as to the authenticity of the interaction, while others criticised the tone of the video and Tah’s claims.
‘Did you only intrude their land for content and call them scary?’ one commented.
‘They are usually not cannibal[s], they are only people living a peaceful life,’ one other added.
West Papua is home to some 300 tribes, a few of whom historically practiced ritual cannibalism, but scholars say the practice had largely disappeared in the world by the mid-Twentieth century.
It’s not clear which individuals Tah’s group apparently interacted with.
Dubious claims appear ceaselessly in Tah’s clips, reminiscent of a visit to Scotland’s Gruinard Island, dubbed ‘Anthrax Island’ after biological warfare testing using the deadly anthrax bacterium left it uninhabitable.
Describing it as ‘the world’s deadliest island’, Tah introduces the video claiming it’s ‘covered’ in anthrax and spends much of his visit in a hazmat suit.
Nevertheless it is widely known to have been decontaminated in 1990 and he ends his video proving the bacteria still poses no threat there.
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