- Hi, I'm Les Stroud, host and creator of the series "Beyond Survival."

Within the scope of filming this series, I had the good fortune to be able to travel the globe and connect with cultures that still live a very close to the earth lifestyle, or engage in practices meant to keep their connection to the earth strong.

I actually circled the globe eight times in 10 months, so I was never not jet lagged.

But, it was worth it to be able to bring you these experiences caught on film in many cases for the very first time ever.

Ceremonies such as digging graves with the Hewa in a once forbidden ceremony called the Cumoutin.

Travel with me to see the healing practices meant to keep the soul close to the energy of the earth itself.

Trance dances with the Sand Bushman in the Kalahari desert, devil dances with the Veeda in Sri Lanka, or travel the mountain tops of Peru with the high Incan priests.

Travel to Africa with me, for my scarification ceremony with a divine healer from the Zulu Nation.

Watch me in Indonesia be tattooed by a nail and a stick, by a Mentawai shaman.

My series "Survivor Man" may have taught me how to survive physically in many ecosystems around the world.

But, through this series, I was able to get beyond on the physical survival, and deal with the survival of the heart, mind, and soul, through connecting to nature itself.

In nearly every situation I needed to meet the elders first, often bringing a gift, and always bringing my humility, before I could be accepted to live among them, to hunt with them, fish with them, sleep in their huts, and get to know them on the physical realm.

Enabling me to then take part in their earth ceremonies, to learn of the ways of connecting to nature.

In many cases, you are about to see footage that has never been captured before this, and may never be captured again.

For in far too many examples, I've heard of places where I went where the people are no longer in the jungle, in the desert, out in the wilderness.

They're now in homes, towns, and existing within the modern world, assimilated into it all, often against their will.

There was not a moment through the filming of the series "Beyond Survival" that was not profound for me.

And, I'm hopeful that in witnessing these cultures firsthand as I did within the scope of this series, you too will feel the profound nature of what it means to connect to the earth.

This is "Beyond Survival."

(gentle music) This is the skeleton of a Hewa man, a father.

I'm here with his son, and today we're performing the Cumoutin ceremony, and brought the bones of the ground.

Touching bodies, decomposing, causes a lot of disease.

So, I'm not sure what'll happen when we get down further.

I'm Les Straud.

I'm in New Guinea to seek out the true masters of survival.

Some of the last indigenous people from around the world before they're gone, before the past is lost, before their world vanishes, I can learn their ways.

(upbeat dramatic music) New Guinea is an island located 150 kilometers from the Northern tip of Australia, in an area known as Oceania, located in the South Pacific Ocean.

More than 700 ethnic groups call the island home, and of the world's 6,000 languages, over 1000 of them can be found in New Guinea.

I'm here to learn from the Hewa tribe, thought to be ruthless cannibals, the Hewa were known for adorning their huts with the skulls of dead family members.

The act of preserving these skulls is a Hewa ancestral honoring practice known as the Cumoutin.

I've been given special permission to be involved in one of these ceremonies.

It's never been photographed, it's never been filmed, and this will be the first time an outsider will even witness it.

Deep in the rainforest, the Hewa will push me beyond survival like never before.

Participating in the Cumoutin hinges on being accepted by this community.

I'll hope to further gain their trust by continuing on a mountain hunt, utilizing one mangy dog to flesh out game.

(dramatic music) It did rain throughout the night, making everything pretty slick, but not too bad.

It didn't pour, pour, pour.

So, it's to our advantage this morning.

- [Man] (speaking foreign language) - I can't be sure, but I think like a lot of indigenous cultures, when you come upon someone else's house, you've got to call from the bush first, just so they know it's not an enemy coming, soft of tradition.

(suspenseful music) And, that is what is left of my survival shelter, when I survived out here alone for a week.

Jungle reclaims it quickly.

There's no question that the toughest part about keeping up with the Hewa is their dizzying pace on these trails and walking in bare feet, scooting along like it's a little walk in the park.

But, for me, that's intense.

It's adventure racing to the extreme here.

There's not so much poisonous here, don't have to worry a lot about that, but there's a lot of malaria, diseases of the skin, jungle rot.

But mostly, it's this terrain, it's incredibly rugged, mountain terrain.

Knock a good man down.

(dramatic music) In hours of walking, we've seen nothing.

Dogs have been on nothing.

They haven't found a single trail.

Now, we're bush whacking.

(dog barking) Late in the day, the dog catches scent of small game, and we all go to work trying to flesh it out, or trap it in a corner.

The dog has actually already gone into the hole.

(inaudible) We're hoping to trap on an echidna, a small mammal that looks mostly like a spiny ant eater.

Okay, so we've got new action now.

It's not an echidna that the dogs chase down in the hole, it's a (indistinct) rat.

So, a Hewa guy's gonna actually get down there with the machete.

Hopefully the dog will get the rat, catch it, kill it, bring it out.

And, if only half kills it, they'll kill it with machete.

We could be eating rat tonight.

The Hewa are built small and tough.

The holes they cut to access the burrow are narrow, just the right size for them to squeeze in and out.

Even my shoulders are too broad to make it through the opening.

They've been trying for hours to get down in there, to get this rat, and no luck.

It's a lot of work.

You gotta think about it, calories out calories in, we're talking about a rat that probably weighs a few ounces.

I don't think we're gonna pull this rat outta the ground today.

The dog is trapped, too eager to reach the rat in the deep recesses of the hole, with the mud caving in, the hunters have got to quickly release the dog before he's buried alive beneath the jungle floor.

(dog barking) You can barely hear his muffled barks from deep within the earth.

If we don't get him out, the wet mud will collapse, and he'll be buried alive.

He's gone right down, deep into the hole.

I actually lent them my flashlight, so he can see around.

He's trying to locate the dog down in there.

A good hunting dog is hard to find, especially in remote areas like this.

The Hewa work hard to free the dog, risking their own lives in the process should the hole cave in on them.

Finally, after an hour and a half of searching, the dog wiggles his way out, released from what was potentially a muddy grave.

- [Man] (speaking foreign language) - Come on.

Yeah, dog still wants to go after the rat.

Well, they've given up.

Well, you know, we're gonna use that word, that phrase given up pretty lightly, because they worked really hard at trying to get that rat.

And, here comes the rain again.

Jungle trekking is always wet, sweaty.

It involves much intense physical struggling, up and down steep muddy hills.

- [Man] (speaking foreign language) - No, no, no, no, no.

That is one big spider.

As they say, with (indistinct) with babies.

(men laughing) Is it bite?

Bite?

Oh, it bites.

Okay, and it bites.

I didn't know if it would bite or not.

You been bit?

Oh.

Ae, ae, ae.

That thing's size of my hand or bigger.

Many miles of climbing later, and we've reached another small jungle hut where we can spend the night in preparation for the next day's ceremony of the dead.

When you stay with indigenous peoples, you've gotta get used to being watched, to be stared at, 'cause they pretty much, you know, come and sit and just watch you the entire time.

And, if you can't get used to that, you can't come to a place like this.

It dies off after a little while, but in the beginning, it's pretty intense.

All they want to do is watch your every move.

(gentle upbeat music) You can see how swollen the river is down there.

I don't think, well, we're not gonna attempt to cross here, I'm not sure what we're gonna do at this point.

- (speaking in foreign language).

- The Hewa got a makeshift bridge, goes across (indistinct) further up.

We're gonna head up to there.

Of course, I have no idea of knowing how rickety that is, but apparently it's gonna be better than trying to cross through the torrent right now.

I'm on the island of New Guinea trekking in the jungle with a local tribe called the Hewa.

We're on our way to perform an ancient and controversial burial ritual known as the Cumoutin.

At this point, I'm really not sure whether or not they know where they're going.

That's tough going.

That's a stroke of luck, got a down tree.

And, just like in any situation, you get a tree like this lands down, it's great for everybody.

If it was in Canada or North America, poplar tree goes down, the beaver can move in and eat to their hearts content.

Here, fruit tree fallen down makes it easy pickings.

This goes with the beetle nut?

- Yes.

- And, we know how much I love beetle nut.

Boy, I love beetle nut.

I think for me, time with the Hewa, I'm seeing what seems to be almost the perfect blending of the modern world and this, what would otherwise would seem like a vanishing culture.

They still live very primitively.

They only take a few items that help them live the way they wanna live in the bush.

But, they're connected with projects through conservation, to track birds, to track the cassowary, to track echidnas, because this is what they're good at.

And, they're actually given small little GPSs, and even spot units, so they can make a note of where nests are, where the birds are, where the spottings are, and all that information goes back to some office somewhere in the states, and the two worlds work together.

And, the Hewa seem very happy about it.

So, in that sense, their culture's not vanishing.

It's adapting a little bit.

A lot of the beauty of it stays intact.

This is cool, I wasn't expecting this.

These are caves that they have used as homes in the past, makes for a nice, easy, natural shelter, that's for sure.

Fire here?

Yeah?

Fire stop means fire here.

Yeah, she's showing me the rock is all black because of the fire (indistinct) here.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, house?

- Yes, yes.

(speaking in foreign language) - It means this has been a home in the past.

They've lived and survived here, so these kids, this is gonna go back a long, long time.

This is well before anybody's ever been here from the outside world, that's for sure.

Have no way of knowing how old this particular shelter site is, but you can bet it goes a long ways back.

Onward we go.

Even the Hewa are sweating.

Ah, I don't feel so bad now.

The six inch wide path has washed away, and it's about, I dunno, 400 feet down.

Wow.

We're not crossing this.

(water gushing) That's not a bridge, that's a log in between two rocks.

So, you can deep pretty much one slip, one break of this thing, that's gonna be one nasty ride.

Oh well, here goes nothing.

(water rushing) Oh, yeah.

In some ways I'm not sure of what I'm getting myself into.

Unearthing the dead comes across first as sounding downright ghoulish, but that's not it.

There's an honoring about to take place, respect for a life well lived.

After countless hours of climbing, we make it to the secret Cumoutin ceremony.

The family is already here waiting for me to arrive.

This is not a funeral.

It's not even a wake.

It's a celebration of life.

About halfway up the mountain, and this is where these people live.

We're going to do a Cumoutin here.

The ceremony is secretive, they don't do it very much in the open because of church influences, but they do like to do it, and it means a lot to them.

We're gonna take the bones, and place them into this here, so that they have a place of honor.

(suspenseful music) The clothing that these Hewa are wearing is pretty much like wearing their Sunday best, their suit and tie.

This is, to them, dressing up, and a time for any time of great importance like this.

For these people, this is an extremely important ceremony.

Very special, spiritual.

This is a family member after all.

So, handling the bones takes on great importance.

Part of the reason why churches would also have tried to do away with this is because it's just plain sensible.

You know, touching bodies like, you know, decomposing, cause a lot of disease.

I'm not sure what will happen when we get down further.

This grave, it belongs to the father of the man with the shovel in his hand.

So, this is quite a matter of honor, go through with the procedure of the Cumoutin, and bring his bones out and put them in the platform.

Can well imagine that some of these kids here, have probably never, ever seen this ceremony before, so it's gonna be new to them.

A man whose father's here, I'm sure, has partaken in a few ceremonies, but for the young ones this will all be new.

So, I have no idea what they're thinking, but... Knowing I've come from so far away, the son of the deceased asked if I, myself, would also be part of the ceremony by helping to bring up the bones.

Dirt all falling in, so we've got a little bit of a long process to get down to where the actual bones are.

We take our turns at digging the grave.

They've only been able to perform this ceremony in secret because of the missionary ban.

So, this marks a great step towards the Hewa reclaiming their traditions.

It's an honor to be part of that.

- (speaking foreign language) - Perhaps the most important moment, we find the skull, and I help to bring it to the surface.

It's an image that brings emotions to the forefront.

This ceremony is all about spiritual release.

Nothing is taken lightly.

It's the most somber I've ever seen the Hewa people.

This simple tradition of honoring the dead by displaying their skulls, is why some tribes were mistakenly believed to be cannibals.

(indistinct).

Jaw bone.

The Hewa are careful while exhuming the body, because physical contact could result in catching soil-borne diseases, like anthrax or cholera.

(gentle dramatic music) There's a lot of white tarp underneath the body, and then just the cloth, clothing the body was wrapped in, all rotten of course.

Scorpions in here, grubs, ants, beetles, ants are biting, it's about everything you'd expect to find in a grave if you're gonna dig it up.

This is why the whole concept of getting diseases doing this is important to get your head around.

They're using leaves to touch everything, using the shovel, sticks, but they're not touching anything with their hands.

No doubt in the past, people have, and probably made themselves sick.

Finally, with the last of the bones, the transfer is complete, and the spirit is free now to travel to the heavens.

(gentle dramatic music) Care is taken to get every last bone, and in this case, they've gotta be pulled out of his father's clothing.

He's wearing a jacket, trousers.

You don't see this every day.

(dramatic music) Got a small fire going here, and burn some bananas.

Make an offering so that they have more successful growth, successful farming, hunting, and good health.

The final ritual in the Cumoutin process is lighting a fire and offering bananas.

Bananas are a staple of the Hewa garden, and will continue to grow long after nothing else will.

This makes bananas the best food available to send on to the spirit world.

This final offering releases the soul of the deceased, freeing him to go on to the afterlife.

The spiritual necessity of the Cumoutin, denied for so many years, is finally complete.

After making the long trek back to the village, they perform a Sing Sing to celebrate my being part of their secret and once forbidden Cumoutin ceremony.

(tribal music) (tribal chanting) That's the last fading notes of the Sing Sing.

Sing Sing may go all night long.

Sometimes those Sing Sings can last up to two days long.

But, that's my time now in Papua Guinea, in the jungle, with the Hewa.

Group of people that really, they're on I think, not the brink of extinction, not the edge of disaster, and not, you know, just ahead of their own world vanishing.

I think instead they are sitting on the brink of a world that is a perfect combination between the primitive and the new and the modern.

They can embrace the future and what's happening, but they're not assimilated into it, and it doesn't happen too fast.

No roads coming out here.

They can take on progress slowly, on their time and on their terms.

So, I think that Hewa represent hope.

In the face of so many vanishing worlds, they seem to be on the verge of creating the ideal.

(water splashing) (upbeat music)