DAYAK CULTURE

The rain forests of Kalimantan are thick and dark. The rain forest is home to thousands of different kinds of plants and animals that live in a complex ecology; plants and animal coexisting, as they have done for centuries, supplying each other’s life needs.

For just a short part of it’s very long history, the rainforest jungles of Kalimantan have been pushed back a little, as people have built, at first just huts and villages, and most recently, large complex cities. For a mere 100 years the city of Balikpapan has huddled on the edge of the great forest providing shelter to those who draw oil out of the earth. This oil is for burning in electricity-generating stations, for our motor-bikes and our kitchens. Oil, some people say, keeps our civilization going.

But in the heart land of Kalimantan, mainly scattered along the mahakam river valley, there is the remains of a very different civilization. This society does not value oil so highly. It is the civilization of the twenty or so Dayak tibes.

To the Dayak people, among whom the Bhenuaq, Tunjung, Bahau, Modang, and Kenyah are the main tribes, the world is made of more than the things that we can see with our eyes. Let me tell you just a little about their beliefs.

Word of Shadows

Besides our own human word, where there are things such us people and trees and rocks that we can all see, there is also another invisible world, according to traditional Dayak and All kind who is the spring of all life and death and whose name is Lah Tala.

Life after Death

To the Dayaks the head of a person is where the spirit of a person lives. When someone dies, then their spirit returns to the All-Mighty. The rest of the body is the home of the soul and the soul returns to Mount Meratus after someone dies. But the soul wants to be reunited with the spirit and this can only be achieved if the relatives organize an erau for the recently deceased relative. This erau, called Erau Buangf Kwang Kai, usually lasts for several weeks. The body is placed in a special position and the living relatives must keep watch night and day.

There is dancing and singing and the erau finishes with the killing of a buffalo. Fastened to an especially made wood-carved pillar, the buffalo is attacked with spears by a crowd of people. The moment the buffalo falls down to the ground is the moment of victory and the most important point. The spirit and soul are now reunited. Once this erau is finished, the responsibility of the living to the deceased is finished.

Gugu Tahun

Another example of an erau being held to pacify the Shadows because of a natural disaster and land or crops are ruined is held to pacify the angry Shadows. This is called Erau Gugu Tahun.

Nature-Depending on Each Other

The land of the Dayak tribes is a truly beautiful, largely unspoilt wilderness. The Dayak have made the river and the forest their home for centuries. The customs and beliefs of the Dayak peoples are very complex. The millions and millions of different life forms that live in the forest are very complex too. Every life form depends on some other from of life. We humans for example, depend on birds for meat. The birds, in turn, depend on insects, and so on, each depending on the other. We can learn from this. As people, we each depend on each other for life, love and happiness. And as a nation we must each depend on each other, Dayak depending on Balinese, Toraja depending on Batak, and so on, each of us depending on the other for the life, love and happiness of our Indonesia

WE HAVE TO PROUD ABOUT INDONESIA CULTURE . . . . . .