But the split in the beliefs in the longhouse become starker as one sits down with Mujahs family. His father is a tribal priest, the last one in this kampung, who chants the miring (spirit offering) the following day at the ruai. Mujahs brother is the Anglican catechist who leads the service at midnight. Mujah and the rest of his siblings already profess the Christian faith, and so do their children.
Gawai has been an ancient ritual that dates back centuries, when Ibans make offerings after each harvest season to appease the spirits of the paddies.
Mujahs mother, Lamon Anak Mavi, 71, remembers the good old days. They would carry the mother bunch of the padi (rice stalks) to the longhouse and offer them to the spirits. Now, in this kampung, you can hardly see any bunch of padi during the gawai, she says, with much regret. She and her husband are the last one in their family to practice their ancient system of beliefs. (Her six children [three boys and three daughters], her 13 grandchildren and five great grandchildren, shes losing out to Christianity. Though she regards Christianity not to have any effect on their relationship in the family and the community, shes worried that after she and her husband are gone, there will be no one else to continue the tradition.
The split in the beliefs does not worry Mujah, however. For the new generation of Ibans, the gawai is only a feast, he says, adding that 80 percent of the Ibans in his longhouse have been converted to the Anglican faith but this has not torn the longhouse apart. Somehow, they have remained intact, especially on issues that concern the land.
Food Offering. Women prepare food to offer to the spirits of the ancestors during the thanksgiving ritual. (davaotoday.com photo by Germelina A. Lacorte)
For Mujah, whose name is an Iban word for brave brother taking after an Iban brave warrior of long ago, is more worried about losing the land of his ancestors now than losing the old religion. On his way to the kampung, he points to the sights of logs and the tell-tale debris and structures left behind by logging companies which, in the past years, managed to encroach into their area.
In 1997, Mujah was arrested when he tried to block the entry of Star Future Sembran Bhd Companies into their ancestral land. They tried to take away our forest, threatening our elders, he says. They started logging right in our farming area. After his arrest, 25 others were arrested in his kampung. Against the odds, they managed to challenge the wave of illegal arrests and won. The logging company packed up and left.
Now, Mujah is spending more time in Kuching, Sarawak, working for a nongovernment group engaged in fighting land rights cases against companies trying to intrude on indigenous peoples customary lands. The Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (SADIA) has lodged over a hundred cases against logging and palm oil companies encroaching into tribal lands in Sarawak, he says.
Indigenous Peoples
