Borneo-Dayak CRAFTS
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Borneo's Dayak handicraft, the beauty of ancient tribal arts and handmade crafts

The Major Ethnic Groups

The brief description below integrates a number of these factors and distinguishes eight groups (Map 3).

The Malays occupy important territories along the coasts and in the lower plains of Borneo and all along the middle course of major rivers, where they are mainly farmers, fishermen, small-holding rubber-growers, traders, and civil servants. Most are Islamized local ethnic groups. Long-converted Malays are found in coastal or riverine towns, like Kuching or Sibu, in Sarawak (where the Malay population amounts to 20%), at the location of the former sultanates, like Berau or Sambas, and in some river basins, like the Kinabatangan in Sabah or the south western part of the island. In a number of smaller upstream settlements on major rivers, recent converts to Islam took up the Melayu way of life.

This process is known as masok melayu, to become Melayu, or turun melayu, to come down (that is, to come downriver, or down from the hills to the river hank, or even down on the water, in floating houses). Such Islamized populations tend to deny any local descent, instead boasting of a "real" Malay (Brunei, Sumatran, or Malayan), sometimes even direct Arab, descent, as becoming Melayu is considered a social upgrading. Besides the traditional Melayu blouse and sarong and the single-family pile-dwelling with a veranda, they locally adopted the floating pontoon-house.

The sultans' income, based on trade, opium and gambling, and locally on gold and diamond mining, was divided among their families, which formed the aristocracy and government. Much of it was spent to maintain a small army to defend their little, multi-ethnic, capitals' position against rivals, pirates, or hostile interior tribes, and just for prestige.

All these Melayu peoples share the Islamic faith and speak one or another of the many Malay dialects, some of which still bear the mark of an earlier local language. The l3ornean Malays are outstanding carvers of house friezes and roof finials, and excellent weavers, particularly in the songket weaving technique introduced from southern Sumatra. The Banjar of the southern coast, influenced by Java, still stage wayang puppet shows.

The Iban of Sarawak (over 350,000 or 10% of the state's population), display a remarkable cultural homogeneity. They came during the last few centuries from west Borneo, where some 7,000 still live along with some related groups, such as the Mualang and Kantu'. All speak languages related to Malay. The lban, living in communal longhouses, are traditionally slash-and-burn rice cultivators with a tendency to fell primary forest. They form egalitarian but highly competitive societies, where headhunting was the highest manly achievement. These enterprising, dynamic, and bellicose people are famous for their gawai festivals, their taste for jewelry, and their textile production.

The Barito Group, Borneo's largest, covers the southern half of the island. It includes the numerous Ngaju, the Ot Danum and related groups (located farther upstream and on the Melawi), the Siang and Murung of the upper Barito, the Luangan and Ma'anyan of the middle Barito, and the Benua', Bentian, and Tunjung of the middle Mahakam. All speak related languages and share elaborate death rituals, including body cremation and the use of a jar for the ashes or bones, customs which appeared in Borneo about 3,000 years ago. The Tebidah and Limbai of the Melawi, although speaking Melayu dialects, also practice these death rituals. The peoples of the Barito Group live in rather loosely organized villages and some of them never built longhouses. They are renowned for their sophisticated religious beliefs, their death festivals in which they slaughter buffaloes, their refined funeral art, wooden hampatung statues, bamboo carvings, and mats.

The Western Groups, called Land Dayak in western Sarawak (over 100,000 people), include the Bidayuh (Singgi, Jagoi and Sadong) and the Selako, while others live in the upstream Sanggau and Sekayam areas of the Kapuas. All probably came from southwest Borneo during the 18th century. They live in longhouses, with a loose social organization focused around a peculiar circular head-house restricted to men and used as a council hall where severed heads are on display. With the exception of the Malay-speaking Selako, they form a language group on their own, and have little art left besides basketry an(l bamboo carving, but used to carve anthropomorphic wooden statues and decorate human skulls.

The Northeastern Groups, located principally in Sabah, include the Dusun or Kadazan, the Plains Murut, and coastal peoples like the Tidong and Bulungan in East Kalimantan and the Bisayah around Brunei. All speak languages related to southern Philippine languages. The numerous Dusun-Kadazan, forming 32% of the population of Sabah, practice plains wet-rice cultivation and cattle raising, while some hill dwellers cultivate dry rice. The Bajau are famous for breeding horses. Most groups used to live in scattered longhouses. and the Dusun had head-houses. Some still practice jar burials and erect megaliths at funerals. These groups are renowned for their basketry, beadwork, and embroidered weavings.

The Kayan and Kenyah populate mainly the upper reaches of Sarawak and Fast Kalimantan rivers. The Kayan say they came by sea to the mouth of the Baram, later settling in the Apo Kayan plateau of East Kalimantan, from where they spread to the Mahakam, Kapuas, and upper Rajang in the 18th century. The Kenvah, possibly former forest nomads, gradually replaced the Kayan in the Apo Kavan and later followed roughly the same migration routes. The Kavan-Kenyah category partly encompasses a score of other minor groups. Both Kayan and Kenyah are strictly stratified into noble, commoner, and slave classes. They were warlike and conquering peoples. requiring enemies' heads for ritual purposes. Their enslaved captives, generally well treated, provided indispensable labor in the nobles' dry-rice fields. However, like elsewhere in Southeast Asia, many such traditional Bornean societies sacrificed slaves during major ritual feasts.

Whereas Kayan villages are made up of a single large longhouse, the Kenyah village often has several longhouses for over 5,000 people. Each longhouse has an aristocrat ruling under a village leader who, in turn, is under the authority of a regional chief. The longhouse reflects status. with a wider section of the gallery hearing decorative designs reserved to aristocrats. Other minor groups, including the Aoheng of the upper Mahakam and the Maloh and Taman of the Kapuas, adopted the Kayan longhouse and a Kayan-like social organization.

The Kayan and Kenyah are sophisticated blacksmiths whose mandau or parang ilang sword was and still is highly valued all over Borneo. They hold spectacular annual festivals, featuring attractive masks, and are also famous for their music and graceful dances with hornbill feathers. Their basketry is very much in demand as far as Bali, and their decorative wall painting and carved roof-finial designs have been copied in government buildings and monuments in many Borneo cities. The Maloh produce fine beadwork and excellent brass and silver jewelry. They used to peddle their goods safely into enemy territories, and much of Iban silver jewelry is of Maloh manufacture.

The nomadic Punan, Penan, Ukit or Bukat, and Beketan, found in all remote forested areas in the center of Borneo, with the notable exception of Sabah, are traditional hunters and gatherers living in small scattered bands and relying mainly on the starch they extract from the wild sago palms for food. Some of these unstable bands migrated as far as 500km for better or safer living conditions. They are master blowpipe hunters and trade their forest products for their settled neighbors' iron tools. Because of governments' policies, most of them are now settled in hamlets and grow cassava and paddy. Some Punan live in caves near the coasts of East Kalimantan where, for centuries, they have been collecting birds' nests for the sultans of Berau. Sarawak and East Kalimantan nomads are famous for their beautiful baskets and matwork.

The Bajau Laut or Sama Laut sea-nomads live in family boats along the coasts of Sabah, East Kalimantan, and North Sulawesi, and in the Sulu Islands. They sail in flotillas collecting sea products, such as sea-slugs. Trading in coastal towns, they are traditionally not land-bound, but are now settling on the shores. They are mainly known for their carved and painted boats.

The Central-Northern Groups inhabit the northern third of the island and include the Kelabit, Lun Daveh. Lun Bawang. and Hill Murut in the mountainous East. and the Kajang, Berawan, and Melanau in Sarawak. Whereas the Kelabit and Lun Daveh practice some wet-rice cultivation, the Berawan and Kajang are dry-rice and sago-palm cultivators, and the coastal Melanau combine sago and sea-fishing. These small groups, historically squeezed between the powerful Kayan Kenyah groups invading front upstream and the coastal Moslems expanding from downstream, have been heavily influenced some to the point of total assimilation. Thus, part of the peoples of the lower Baram area fell into the upland Kenyah category, whereas others became coastal Melayu. Similarly, part of the Kajang-Melanau group was Kayanized. and the other Islamized.

However, the upland groups still sbow pre-Kayan features. They adopted the Kayan social classes only vaguely and have maintained their own versatile economic practices, combining paddy cultivation with sago palm and tubers. Jar burials and associated monumental funeral art occur along an east-west arc from the Lun l)ayeh people to the Melanau (see .Map ,3). Clear megalithic activity, featuring upright stones and dolmens, is commonly found in the eastern part of the arc, whereas huge upright ironwood trunks capped with large stone slabs are a common feature in the West.

The Indigenous peoples: Major ethnic groups, Conclusion to the Dayak tribes.