'Gayu Guru, Gerai Nyamai!' ? The forgotten voice

Posted by Sim Kwang Yang on June 09, 2004 at 16:02:23:

As I write, here in Kuala Lumpur, on the eve of the harvest festival in Sarawak and Sabah, I am flooded by a consuming sense of painful nostalgia.

I close my eyes and imagine the frenzies that ferment well-hidden beneath the national narrative as told in our so-called national media.

Hoards of young men and women would be boarding MAS and AirAsia flights on their homeward bound journey back to their kampongs in the Land of the Hornbill and the Land Below the Wind. Like the legendary salmons, they will unerringly find their way home, no matter how far they have scattered.

For the rest of the long year, they have toiled in the factories of Johore Bahru, Klang Valley and Penang, contributing their coarse labour to the bludgeoning industries in harsh jobs often shunned by other, more pampered and more complacent, Malaysian youths.

Here, they are treated by their employers and the local communities with roughly the same level of regard reserved for Myanmar, Indonesian and Bangladeshi workers. They are useful and affordable, not always satisfactory, and always alien.

The sense of alienation is probably mutual.

For these legal economic refugees from East Malaysia, the low level of industrial development and lack of jobs back home have driven them westward, to the land they refer to as "Malaya". For many first time arrivals, the cluttered geography, the furious pace of life, the strange and intimidating faces make them feel like entering a different country.

Biggest day in the year

Back home in Sabah and Sarawak, the term "Orang Malaya" is often uttered with an undertone of contempt and distrust. Here, in the peninsular side of the nation, they have to live and work for and with Orang Malaya. They are strangers in their own country.

Except for the few who have joined the middle class here, most of these young men and women who have toiled all years in low paying jobs would want to go back to their homeland for the harvest festival. It is simply the biggest day in the year for them.

That the harvest tops their annual calendar events is itself symbolic of the unique identity of the natives of Sabah and Sarawak.

All of the 70 ethnic communities in Sabah and Sarawak - defined by the outside world as "indigenous people" - live by their land. The Penans who still roam through the jungle by hunting and gathering are the only exception.

They have survived in the jungle for centuries on their own through different governments by what economists and state planners would classify as "subsistence farming". By the standards of modern economic theories, the term "subsistence agriculture" carries with it a certain derogatory sneer.

In truth however, the "tribal people" of Sabah and Sarawak engage in "self-sufficient farming." As long as they have their land, they will never perish. Their precious and bountiful land will always yield rice, their staple diet, and all else is furnished by the jungle, through hunting, gathering, and fishing.

With their forest and their land, they have not needed the outside world much in past countless generations.

In their worldview, farming is never the kind of economic activity envisaged by Adam Smith, Menard Keynes, and Milton Friedman. Farming is a whole way of life, from which you do not retire.

An old Iban man in his 70s once told me: "We Iban must grow rice." He still grows and harvests his rice, and every now and then, presents me with a few kilo of his surplus as a gift. I have yet to meet a fat person in those traditional farming communities!

The farmers of Sarawak and Sabah are natural bio-geneticists. Like all farmers throughout Asia, they have learned to mix numerous strains of rice through the centuries, to give the best quality and yield. I dare declare that the reddish Iban rice is a far superior stock to your expensive Thai fragrant rice. (The economists would probably want to advise them about intellectual property rights.)

Long before the laws of the new nation-state was born, the indigenous communities in Sarawak and Sabah already had their own complex systems of communal customary rules called adat, dealing with all aspects of their socio-economic activities. Land matters feature prominently in these customary laws.

Fascinating Iban myths

In the case of the Ibans, land rights as defined by their adat are based on the custody and usage of the land, rather than the proprietary ownership of land. There is an assumption that nobody can really own the mountains. Anybody can lay claim to a piece of land after he has cleared away the primary jungle for planting purposes. This whole system of claiming native customary land rights was terminated in 1957.

A whole legion of folk lore and myths were born from their natural universe. I have found Iban myths particularly fascinating. They have a myth of creation, and legends of heroes and titans which bear some resemblance to the ancient Greek myths.

Since the Ibans have no written language, their myths and legends are handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. The telling and retelling of stories, sometimes through the lyrical form of the Sampi recitals that go on for hours at a time, make the Ibans great orators.

Just like the ancient Greeks who worshipped the gods of Homeric epics, the Ibans also worship the gods of their myths. To call them animists merely is a little unfair. They certainly have a sort of pantheistic idea, in which the jungle and the land are alive with spirits.

The performance of religious rites is particularly crucial on the occasion of the harvest festival, especially the thanks-giving ritual of miring, in which offerings are made to the earth god Pulang Gana.

Dramatic changes

The harvest festival that falls on the first day of June every year is called the Hari Gawai.

Actually the people of Sarawak - and probably Sabah also - celebrate harvests on different days. Right after independence through the formation of Malaysia in 1963, the new governments of these two states fixed June 1 as the Harvest Festival Day, in recognition of the prominence of those unique indigenous people found nowhere else in Malaysia.

Independence has brought dramatic changes to the indigenous people of Sabah and Sarawak. By and large, the physical development that has been undertaken by the federal and state governments has improved their lot. Many have joined the rank of the urban middle and professional class.

Nevertheless, 41 years after independence, these real Sons of the Soil in Sabah and Sarawak are finding themselves increasingly trapped in a living contradiction.

People discussing national politics tend to forget that the brand of Malay ethnic nationalism practised by Umno is only applicable to the peninsular states of Malaysia. In Sabah and Sarawak, the Malays form a small minority of the population there.

Failure of political parties

By the logic of ethnic nationalism, political power in Sabah and Sarawak should be in the hands of the non-Muslim natives. In the last four decades, through successive prime ministers, the effort of the federal government has been such as to ensure that this logic is subverted by various machinations.

In the last twenty years or so, there have been sporadic attempts to re-assert the logic of dominance by the majority race. PBS in Sabah represented the rise of ethnic nationalism among the Kadazandusun people. The PBDS in Sarawak was the vehicle of what they called "Dayakism", seeking to reassert the prominence of political power for the Dayak people.

Obviously, both movements have failed in their original objectives, despite their early success stories. Today, they have succumbed to prevailing political realities, and have rejoined the BN stable. Both have since been plagued by internal party strife.

Sadly, their failure is very much reflected on the ground. Many educated Dayak people I know refer to themselves as second class natives. Some see themselves as third class citizens, after the Malays and the Chinese. Although they form the majority of the racial numbers in Sabah and Sarawak, they have been relegated to the fringes of political power.

Their customary land rights have been eroded and steamrolled by new legislatures. The supply of good farm land is getting scarce. In many places, the encroachment of logging, plantation schemes and public development projects has sparked off prolonged and acrimonious conflicts. Land remains as the most volatile political issue in Sabah and Sarawak.

Modernisation has also brought to bear much pressure on the native traditional way of life. Farming in the traditional sense, is no longer seen as a viable alternative for those young people educated in Bahasa Malaysia, often in boarding schools away from the bosom of their villages.

A quiet but massive exodus has taken place in the last few decades in Sabah and Sarawak. Numerous young men and women have been swarming to the cities and towns, first in Sabah and Sarawak, and now in the peninsular growth centres in search of better paying jobs.

In many Iban longhouses that I have visited, I found only old people and young children. I got this eerie feeling that the whole community had been reduced to an exhausted past, and an uncertain future.

Naturally, without the younger generations to inherit their rich cultural legacies, traditions are dying. The ancient crafts of making boats, building longhouses, weaving, dancing, tattooing, and native art are now dying fast. Even the whole oral tradition of telling tales and myths is disappearing.

Welcome home, children

But some traditions do persist.

As I write, in numerous villages scattered throughout the vast landscape of Sabah and Sarawak, the joyous sound of rice wine brewing accompanies the sense of happy anticipation. The thought of loved ones coming home for the harvest celebration - from the distant land called "Malaya" - is cause for killing the fattened pig and pouring out the best brew.

That is partly why the pull of the land is so strong for those young men and women who have scattered to far-flung corners in search of the mighty Ringgit. When they go home to the sumptuous spread awaiting their arrival, they would once again be treated like princes and princesses of the soil.

Then the Ibans will happily greet each other, "Gayu Guru, Gerai Nyamai!" It does not matter that the Malaysian nation and the rest of the world have forgotten their voice, as long as they still have it.

"Agi idup, agi ngelaban!" (While you still live, you fight on.)