Talk:Nias

early comment
"Nias Island lies on latitude 10 30' north and longitude 970 98' east" This can't be right. --Wetman 07:08, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Religion Neutrality and More Info
The description of the rise of Christianity is not at all neutral. Numbers of baptisms "improving" and "spiritual awakening" are pro-Christian evangelism.

The article also totally lacks info on the traditional religion, which of course is of greater interest to most readers today than which missionary society has gotten more converts than another.

How and why the island had not been previously been converted to Hinduism and then Islam should be discussed. I've read elsewhere the Dutch had a hard time colonizing the island as well and were not succesful until the late 19th Century -- develop this theme of local resistance.

What is the traditional political structure (one kingdom, different fiefdoms?), and is this preserved ceremonially today?

What is the traditional and contemporary status of women, vis-a-vis reputed original Malayan matriarchy, Christianization, relations with Muslim-majority Indonesia?

Detail the unique culture -- architecture, megalithism, etc.


 * Yes, yes. I totally agree that the article could be much improved in the directions you have specified. Can you provide online references? I'll read them and integrate information into the Nias article as time allows. And yes, its lame for me to say that I can't visit the library because I have no time, but truth is even if I do I strongly doubt that any library in Jakarta would have sufficient socio-cultural material on Nias. And I'd ask my grand-uncles etc., but even approaching them wrong would be rude.


 * Lame excuses, I know. But together we can cure some of that lameness by providing online reading material. I promise I will digest them as efficiently as possible. Unless someone else does so first. ---Lemi4 01:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Theres is a Nias heitage museum. People can go to thier website for information about the Nias people.
 * "Schröder E.E. Willem was a Dutch colonial administrator who served on Nias from 1904 to 1909." is good to look up on.
 * Dean 99.229.216.10 (talk) 03:23, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

References Section and Other 'Pretifying'
So recently I was introduced to the &lt;ref&gt; tag and to be honest, I'm quite enamored (more details concerning the tag's syntax, and footnotes in general here). It could conveniently round up external links and auto-magically create a reference section. I know, I'm a lamer for having just discovered it.

Anywho0.. a result of my -ing fun is that I discovered a broken link to an article supposedly citing the damage to the museum at Gunung Sitoli. I hate to remove the sentence since I know first hand that the statement is true, but then it just means that a citation is needed. Perhaps I should have put a 'citation needed' tag there and moved the dead URI here. Anyone feeling like doing so is welcome to it (not me, though, at least not today; I've been up all night just goofing around Wikipedia. Perhaps tomorrow :p)


 * I had added the original link to an article written by one of the Museum's employees, but the link (as you noted) is now defunct months later. The good news is that the Museum now has its own website so I added a link to it although I'm not sure I did it correctly (Plus the website is in Indonesian).  But I'm going to dig around and see if I can find another similar article that details more of the museums damage.64.81.100.40 23:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Aand.. I found this really cool pic of Nias Island from the Dutch version of this article. Now I don't speak Dutch but from the symbols at the pic's page I gather that the image is public domain, so it can be safely and legally used here. But like, how does one go about doing so? Sure I could re-upload the thing to Wikimedia but, like, would that be right? It just doesn't feel right to have redundant copies of the exact same image strewn all over Wikipedia...

That's it, hope to see this article grow s'more. cheers :) --Lemi4 15:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. It's public domain, so it would probably be even better to upload it to Commons; the Germans could safely remove it then. Edricson 20:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Lonely Planet or Wiki?
Article reads like a travel guide / tourist sales pitch. "The worldy Nias are global traders and welcome the historically familiar tourist etc." Historically the Nias are a fierce warriors culture feared as slave traders and headhunters actually. Just saying. Rgds, Karl --KARL RAN (talk) 04:15, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

This unattributed sentence is one of the more bizarre examples of bias I've witnessed on Wikipedia...
"However adherence to either Christian or Muslim religions is still largely symbolic; Nias continues into current day celebrating its own indigenous culture and traditions as the primary form of spiritual expression." How in the world would anyone know this, short of polling residents on the relative strength of two sets of religious feeling? And not "possibly symbolic," not simply "symbolic," but "largely symbolic." This particular kind of assertion -- which should offend any thinking reader -- is repeated over and over again in texts on religion in what I'll call the developing parts of the world, as if the author thinks conversion cannot possibly be genuine. Is it not just as plausible that an individual's adherence to celebrations of indigenous culture and traditions are "largely symbolic?" The sentence reeks of 19th century Eurocentrism ("these brown people are incapable of understanding the true faith") or it's some quasi-Marxist attack on Islam and Christianity, as if they could not possibly be what they purport to be (a revelation of truth), the response to which is conversion.

I fear that Wikipedia is getting into the religion business when I read such things. For so many reasons -- the foremost being that it is unattributed and apparently unsupportable -- the sentence should be removed.

All of these people, they're benighted or insincere, right? http://www.flickr.com/photos/10363396@N02/1431728445/lightbox/

Goateeki (talk) 23:13, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd agree that this sentence is not very well worded, however, while I can't say I know specifically for Nias, it is hardly an unreasonable statement. Infact, what is written here rings true to varying extents for much of Indonesia, including for much of the 135m people of Java. So why would it not be for Nias, an island remote from the main centres of population and influence of Indonesia?
 * The problem here is that the statement is unverified and that should be fixed. But that's a problem for much (most?) of wikipedia. --Merbabu (talk) 01:10, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM 'Het verslepen van de steen 'Darodaro' voor de gestorven Saoenigeho van Bawamataloea Nias TMnr 1000095b.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM 'Het verslepen van de steen 'Darodaro' voor de gestorven Saoenigeho van Bawamataloea Nias TMnr 1000095b.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on July 9, 2011. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2011-07-09. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks!  howcheng  {chat} 20:43, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Nias as former Nazi Germany territory
I have reference from a prominent Indonesian historian (Rosihan Anwar), who referred to a Dutch historian in the area, that Nias was once, at least nominally, a Nazi Germany territory. The story was that approximately three dozen Germans were about to be transported to India via Sibolga but the Dutch ship they boarded was shot down by a Japanese plane. The Germans made it onto the island, proclaiming Nazi Germany independence of the island. The Japanese allies of Germany let them have it; they even had a party on the island, commemorating Adolf Hitler's birthday. I believe these accounts to be true, as I have conversed with several friends of Nias origin whose parents told the story too. I don't know, however, how to put them in here, since it doesn't have a history section yet, and putting one just for the sake of this German tidbit is too much. Anantagita (talk) 13:23, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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