A COUPLE of days after the state-declared gawai festival in Sarawak, a Jagoi-Bidayuh kampung of Stass celebrates the gawai ritual. Bidayuh is just a name to describe a host of different tribes living in Bau and surrounding areas. According to the Sarawak Tourism Board, Bidayuhs comprise about 8.4 percent of the Sarawak people. Rubis explained that the gawai ritual in kampung Stass is one of the very few authentic rituals in the area although it is also set up to attract tourists. The UNDP project that she heads promotes tropical forests but included the documentation of the tribe’s religious ritual as part of its component to preserve and revive interest in Bidayuh’s shared history and culture.
Faced with Sarawaks changing landscape, which often spells their displacement from their customary lands, indigenous peoples are fast turning to rituals to brace themselves against the uncertain future.
The Malaysian government has been spending money on the rituals at the dam sites, which in recent years, have been sprouting all over Sarawak, observes Jayl Langub, senior researcher of the University of Malaysia Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS) in Sarawak.
Top officials spend on pigs and chickens slaughtered during the rituals and other ingredients to appease the spirits of the river, he says.
Aside from logging and palm oil plantations, numerous development projects, from the Batang-ai dam which forcibly moved over 3,000 people in 26 longhouses in 1985 to the recently revived Bakun dam project, which is set to displace more, are changing the lives of indigenous communities in Sarawak.
When people leave their own locales, they had to do rituals to unburden themselves of the prospect of the unknown future. When they leave they dont know what future theyre facing, he says. We do rituals because the ritual is something that ties them to the place.
But its not only the government but environment groups fighting to save the land and trying to avert the displacement of indigenous tribes in Sarawak are fast turning back to rituals to symbolize their struggle.
Sarawak-based online website Rengah Sarawak, for instance, reported the first gawai kelingkang ever done for more than half a century at the Sarawak longhouse in Rumah Busang as longhouse people wanted to summon the ancestral warrior spirits to support the battle between local longhouse communities and the Sarawak Oil Palm Berhad (SOP) which is setting up a palm oil plantation in the area, according to the Rengah report.
The longhouse is somewhere in Ulu Niah, 100 kilometers from Bintulu, the scene of a bitter struggle for land, where four people died in 1999, Rengah reported.
But while the government-sponsored rituals, according to Langub, are now done along with Christian prayers and with government officials around, the rituals done by the environment groups seek to revive the ancient tradition when the people still lived close to the forest, their primary source of life. (Germelina A. Lacorte/davaotoday.com)
We arrived when the gong contest was at its height inside the priestess hut set up for the purpose of the ritual. In a small room just a couple of steps from the loud gong contest, three duyong buris on a swing were chanting prayers, amid the shouts and noises of the crowd. Priestesses are not supposed to be old but now, the youngest priestess is already 50 years old, says Diweng Bakir, one of the few Bidayuhs still in touch with the fast vanishing culture.
What it takes to be a duyong buri is a gift from the gods, says Bakir. It manifests itself through the body at a certain age. But most of the new generation with this gift immediately converts to Christianity and seek treatment from the doctors. Thats how they abandon the ancient beliefs. Its easier that way, rather than taking on the burden of a tribal priestess at this age, he says. No one wants to follow on the tradition anymore. In the old times, priestesses could be as young as 12 years old. Now, the young are already abandoning the culture. To avoid becoming a priestess, they decide to convert to Christianity. When they get sick, they go to the doctor. They dont want to be tied to the land anymore. They go to the cities to study and work.
FOR Bakir, the shift to the new religion from the ancient indigenous practices coincides with the shift in the peoples world views and the massive destruction of the forest. Bakir says that in the good old days, there used to be an elaborate set of rituals before people could cut down any tree. So, this process of conversion is actually doing harm to the environment, he says. Theres nothing in the new religion that prevents you from cutting down trees, but if you practice the traditional beliefs, youre not allowed to do that. You have to do the rituals first.
Bakir was able to get the statistics in three villages of Bau where some traditionalists still practice the traditional beliefs. Year after year, they are becoming very few. As of 2004, in the village of Serasot, only 13 traditionalists still practice the old rituals out of the 280 families living in the area; in Stass, 45 families out of 310 families; in Grogo, 13 out of 50 families; and in Duyoh, 66 out of the 260 families.
According to government statistics he managed to compile, of the 2.26 million people in Sarawak in 2004, 29 percent are Ibans, less than 20 percent for all the tribes of Bidayuhs, Melanaus and other indigenous peoples lumped together, 22 percent Malays and 25 percent are Chinese.
The United Nation-funded project in Krokong is working to document the old tradition hoping that when all the tribal priests and priestesses are gone, there is still something that future generations can refer to just in case they want to pick up this tradition again, says Rubis.
When someone dies, a section of our archive, our library dies with him, says Willie Eddie Gaong, an Iban who works as station manager of Radio Television Malaysia. We lose one chapter of the book. Thats how things generally are in our house and in most Iban communities, he says. I still dont want to think about that in my father. But in my kampung, once hes gone, the heritage will go with him, says Mujah.
Its just like, half the day is gone, says Direp Nyoheng. 42, a Bidayuh who has been helping Rubis document the Bidayuh rituals. Now, we want to catch up with time to talk with the elders. We want to delay the dying of the culture. (Germelina A. Lacorte/davaotoday.com)
[tags]malaysia, sarawak, indigenous peoples, religion, rituals, development aggression[/tags]
Indigenous Peoples
