This study examines the historical and anthropological relationship between the Toraja and Mamasa communities in the highlands of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Although both groups share significant similarities in kinship systems, ritual structures, and cosmological orientation, they are often treated as distinct cultural entities with separate historical origins.Using a qualitative synthesis of ethnographic and historical literature, this article argues that Toraja and Mamasa are better understood as differentiated expressions of a shared highland cultural system. Their divergence is not interpreted as evidence of separate cultural origins but as the outcome of ecological adaptation, historical contingency, and uneven incorporation into colonial and missionary systems.Recent anthropological perspectives on relational culture and ecological anthropology are also integrated to strengthen the theoretical contribution. The study concludes that cultural similarity and difference in highland Sulawesi should be understood as relational processes within a single ecological-cultural landscape.

Toraja, Mamasa, cultural ecology, identity formation, highland anthropology

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