Selamat Ngintu Ari Gawai

A holiday for the Land of the Hornbill

Although the national soul will hardly stir a single hair, the Dayak community throughout the vast and difficult terrain of Sarawak are now caught in the grip of excited anticipation for their grandest festival.

Yes, they will be celebrating their Gawai Dayak on Monday, June 1. Already, the entire Land of the Hornbill is grinding to a halt for this public holiday.

As I write, I can almost hear the rice wine brewing happily in the earthen vats or plastic drums.

The best ‘tuak’ will be offered to the gods on the first day of the Gawai itself. Many taboos surround the long process of producing the ‘tuak’, which is almost always undertaken by the women folk.

Before handling the ‘tuak’ which is still under fermentation, the women must never touch or eat anything sour like ‘asam’ or lime, or else the ‘tuak’ will turn into vinegar. Women who happen to suffer from their monthly curse must not be near the ‘tuak’.

The containers in which the ‘tuak’ is kept must be properly covered and kept in a secure room. There are spirits around that are always ready to taste it before it is ready, and thus turning it sour.

Gawai is a religious ritual in accordance with the animist belief of the non-Malay indigenous people of Sarawak. For countless centuries, the Dayaks have lived on their land by shifting cultivation. The land they live on is not property or capital in the modern economic term. The land is their backbone, their soul, their mother.

Their jungle and the rivers are full of spirits. The god Pulang Gana – the son of the god father Patera – presides over the land on which they depend for their sustenance.

Throughout the entire process of growing their precious rice, from clearing of the jungle, to planting the first seed, to the final harvest, the Dayaks have to make various offerings to their gods in various Gawais of different names.

Anthony Richard’s ‘Iban Dictionary’ is the book I refer to on all things Iban. It is more like an encyclopedia then a mere lexicon. The last time I checked, he had given 61 different definitions for the word ‘gawai’!

The seeds of Dayak nationalism

Although the Dayak people collectively form the largest ethnic community in Sarawak, under British colonial rule, they were subaltern objects of administration, instead of being a collection of people with fascinating religious, cultural and linguistic traditions.

The colonial regime merely let the Dayaks celebrate their harvest festivals at different times in their own way.

Then in 1957, the idea of an official day for Gawai Dayak was kicked around in a radio forum organised by Ian Kingsley, a radio programme organiser.

As the idea of Sarawak independence became imminent around that time, the seed of Dayak nationalism was sown with the formation of the Sarawak National Party (Snap) on April 10, 1961.

When Sarawak did achieve impendence through the formation of Malaysia on Sept 16, 1963, Snap was a powerful member of the ruling coalition, and an Iban leader, Stephen Kalong Ningkan, became the first chief minister of Sarawak. The idea of allocating an official day to celebrate Gawai Dayak had come.

June 1 was gazetted on Sept 25, 1964 as a public holiday to celebrate Gawai Dayak. It was officially first celebrated on June 1, 1965.

Since then, it has become a symbol of hope, unity, and aspirations for the entire Dayak community. Today, it is still the most important holiday on the Dayak calendar, a day of joyful thanksgiving and family reunion, a day to plan farming activity for the coming year.

Massive rural-urban exodus

Unfortunately, the Dayaks have seen their political influence decline sharply in the decades after independence.

Snap had since been expelled from the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition and has been deregistered. Party Bangsa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) was formed in 1983 as a vehicle of Dayakism, but that too was deregistered in recent years due to infighting. Today, Dayak leadership is torn asunder among numerous political parties, and the community remain weak and backward politically.

In many rural remote isolated corners of Sarawak, the Dayaks’ way of life has not changed much. They still till their land and plant their staple diet, rice. Increasingly though, their claim to their land through their native customary rights is dislodged and corroded by loggers and plantation companies.

Most educated Dayak youths no longer view agriculture activities as a viable option in life. Land holdings are often too small for planting cash crop on an economy of scale. Credit is hard to come by. Cost of fertilisers and insecticides keep climbing, while the prices of commodities fluctuate wildly on the international market.

For many years past, numerous rural Dayak youths have joined a massive rural-urban exodus, to large towns in Sarawak, and across the sea to Singapore and West Malaysia, in search of gainful employment and cash income. Some have even gone overseas. In many longhouses, only the very old and the very young are left behind.

I have met many such Dayak men and women, in the Klang Valley, in Johor Baru, and in Penang. I hear the familiar Iban tongue often, in the shopping mall, in coffee shops, at bus stops, and in supermarkets. The cashiers in my neighbourhood Giant Supermarket at the Leisure Mall in Cheras are distinctively Ibans!

They have no choice. The politics of development so much touted by the Sarawak BN government has never generated the kind of economic activities that create jobs in Sarawak. The manufacturing sector in the state is still very much stuck in infancy. Wages are too low to keep Sarawakian youths at home.

These Sarawakian youths who are compelled to work outside their home state suffer all the heartaches of migrant workers, loneliness, alienation, homesickness, and displacement. Like all migrant workers, they are often exploited by unscrupulous employers trying to maximise profits at the expense of their workers.

Homeward bound for Dayaks

At about this time of the year, on the eve of Gawai Dayak, there will be these Dayak youths packing the planes to the brim on their way home to Sarawak. Their bulky luggage may hold gifts for loved ones back home in the longhouses.

Yes, this is the time of the year when the Dayaks are homeward bound, to their ancestral land, where their hearts lie.

Already, their hearts are full of happy anticipation, of the joy of family reunion, the miring rituals on the eve of the Gawai itself, the first taste of the new ‘tuak’, the newly harvested rice cooked in bamboo, the ‘manuk pansuh’ (chicken soup in bamboo) so lovingly stewed over wood fire, the dancing and the merry making into the small hours of the morning, and the endless days of festivities on the ‘ruai’, the common corridor.

I look forward to the day when Gawai Dayak on June 1 will also be made a national holiday, in recognition of the contribution of the native people of Sarawak and Sabah.

As they say in Sarawak, ‘Gayu Guru, Gerai Nyiamai!’

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