Flowing 700 miles on its way to the sea, the Sepik River drains 30,000 square miles of Papua New Guinea’s northwestern frontier and is home to some 240,000 people who speak more than 300 languages. The Ama people live along a small tributary of the Upper Sepik River in a very remote area, accessible only by plane or days of river travel in a dugout canoe. Except for a grass airstrip, Ama territory has none of the advances of modern life and is surrounded by swamps, jungle and small mountains. The climate is very tropical, with high temperatures and humidity and approximately 20 feet of rain a year.

The Ama people are semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers who rely on the natural resources from the rivers, swamps and jungles around them for almost everything they need to survive. They obtain their staple food, sac-sac, from sago palms by cutting them open, scraping out the center and pouring water through the pulp. Then they collect the milky white runoff, allow the starch to settle out, dry it and later reconstitute it into a thick sticky paste that they flavor with jungle meat or fish.

Due to the lack of nutritional value in sac-sac and their other food sources, the Ama people are often malnourished. The Ama also suffer from many devastating diseases and medical conditions such as malaria, pneumonia, dysentery, diarrhea, skin fungi, tropical ulcers, injuries from accidents and birth complications.

The Ama people are animists who live in fear and bondage to demons who masquerade as departed ancestors and nature spirits. Every aspect of their life experiences, beliefs and culture are dominated by fear of these spirits.

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