Sabine Kuegler (Author/Human Rights Activist)

on Friday, 17 December 2010.

Sabine Kuegler (born December 25, 1972 in Patan, Nepal) is a German author. She has written several books, two of which have been translated into English.

These two books are related to her uncommon childhood: from age 7 to age 17 she lived with her parents and two siblings in the jungle of West Papua, with the remote tribe of the Fayu.

Her parents were the first whites to live with the newly discovered tribe of about 400 people, who still hunted with bow and arrow, ate snakes, insects and worms, and practiced inter-tribal warfare and revenge killings.

The Kueglers were there to study the tribe's language and to evangelize, under assignment of the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Her mother, trained as a nurse, performed midwife duties with the tribe.

At age 17, Sabine Kuegler left and attended a Swiss boarding school. She has been married and divorced twice and has four children, two from each husband. Her parents have returned to Germany.

Her best-selling first book Dschungelkind (Jungle Child) (Droemer Knaur, München 2005, ISBN 3-426-27361-6) describes her experiences in the two different cultures and her occasional nostalgia for the simpler, slower life of the tribe.

An English translation (Jungle Child, ISBN 1-84408-261-X) appeared in the same year. Her second book, Ruf des Dschungels (Call of the Jungle) (Droemer Knaur, München 2006, ISBN 3-426-27393-4) describes a visit to the Fayu that she undertook in late 2005.

The German group Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker criticized her first book, claiming that it romanticized the life of the Fayu and pointing out that it failed to mention the human rights violations of the Indonesian government against Papua peoples, and their endangerment by clearing of the jungle and industrial projects.

In her second book and in public appearances, Sabine Kuegler has since emphasized these political issues and has aimed to be spokesperson for the threatened Fayu.