By Dave Lumenta
For borderzone Iban communities living deep in West Kalimantan‘s forested interior, the Indonesian State is as alien the latter would conversely think in turn about them.
For Kalimantan, Indonesia‘s largest landmass that shares an international border with Eastern Malaysia of over 2,000 kilometers long, border zone communities have been arguably overlooked by most anthropological studies until very recently. While there are growing numbers of studies focusing on the social-economic dynamics at play on border zone economic activities, a very delicate issue regarding border zone identities remains largely neglected. This had encouraged us to start looking into some identity-related issues within a border zone community, deep in West Kalimantan‘s hinterland.
Challenges for studying the Iban in Indonesia
The Batang Kanyau Iban, occupying the upper reaches of the Embaloh river (or better known to them as the Batang Kanyau) in the Kapuas Hulu District represents a typical borderzone community, sharing all the characteristics of a once-unified community displaced by a postcolonial political boundary. However, any research which seeks to focus on the dynamics at play within shifting identities of borderzone Iban communities cannot disengage itself from the task to reconstruct the historical local as well regional socio-political setting in which Iban culture has played itself in. Opposed to the wealth of studies available on the Sarawak Iban, many which have been written since the 19th century Brooke rule, very little has been written on the Iban minorities on the Indonesian side of the border. This leaves any researcher on the Indonesian side with only a handful of sources to start with. Regrettably, aside from essays by Victor T. King on related Mualang and neighbouring Maloh communities, Michael Dove on the related Kantuq and Reed Wadley who studied the Emperan Iban near Lanjak, the only sources left to reconstruct the history of the Iban in Indonesia, particularly the Batang Kanyau, are the untranslated Dutch colonial administrative reports, and of course, the wealth of narrations kept in store within unrecorded local oral histories. The journey we undertook earlier this year started by trying to familiarize ourselves with the local setting and selecting research participants (formerly known as ‘informants‘) who would be our prime storytellers of the Iban oral history.
Traveling through Sarawak
The trip to the village of Benua Sadap on the Batang Kanyau itself is an interesting experience. On our recent trip, we had chosen to take a more comfortable though risky route, starting the first 11 hour bus trek from Pontianak to Kuching, followed by a comfortable air-conditioned bus the next day to the small border town of Lubok Antu. The Lubok Antu area has long been known as an illegal entry point into Sarawak for illegal Indonesian (including Iban) workers as well as the processing site for smuggled Indonesian timber. Plantation trucks would then transport people from Lubok Antu‘s bazaar to the border for RM 3,00 where Indonesian cars would then fetch people and transport them to the infamous Indonesian frontier village of Nanga Badau. Madang, the drop-off point at the Batang Kanyau river, can be reached from Nanga Badau within 4 hours for free when one hitchhikes on the never-ending stream of timber trucks commuting the Jalan Lintas Utara Badau-Putussibau.
Journeying through Sarawak brings one the advantage of experiencing the different sociocultural as well political settings the Iban are exposed to on both sides of the border. It is evident that the Iban in Sarawak have been more allowed, though not entirely free from political motives set by the line of Sarawak‘s rulers, the freedom of cultural expression - where Iban language is being officially taught in public government schools, where Iban-dominated political parties were allowed to be formed enabling them to negotiate certain conditions for Sarawak‘s unification within the Malaysian Federation, where the Iban are allowed to retain their naming system on official birth certificates and identity cards, where longhouse life has not been frowned uponand lastly, where the Iban can freely move in cities without the hassles of being humiliated for wearing tattoos. In contrast, these are all features not shared by the Iban living within Indonesian territory.
‘Get drunk, then listen!‘
Upon arrival at the rumah panjai (longhouse) in Benua Sadap, all our plans to conduct ‘decent‘ conversations and interviews had to give way to endless tuak drinking sessions. While this might be a researcher‘s nightmare, it is an effective ice-breaking method to fit-in and familiarize with the Iban way of life. However, this would be initiated by a routine question of ‘Are you Malay? Can you drink ?‘ Answering that we had no religious arguments to refuse, the first day was spent to fulfill invitations from several bilek (or individual longhouse family quarters) who were obviously ‘competing‘ to show hospitality to outside guests. As a relatively classless society, at least not having a rigid nominal social hierarchy, competition in every life aspect provides means to increase one‘s social standing within the community. However, as it soon turned out, every bilek session turned into half-drunk gossip sessions about each family‘s neighbours—and as storytelling has always been such an important aspect of constructing one‘s identity within Iban society, suddenly a wealth of insights on underlying issues on Iban life came to light.
On constructing transnational identities
Boasting is not uncommon within Iban storytelling. As such, a lot of personal heroic tales were being told. Pak Jimbau apai Ginti boasted about his significant role in uprooting the PARAKU [2] communist insurgency during the late 1960s, a role which resulted in his entitlement as the local Panglima Perang [3] Iban by the Koramil Military Command. Through this story, he emphasized about his important contribution to the Indonesian state through the logic that ‘being a staunch anti-communist is being a true citizen of the Republic‘. However, at the same time he emphasized on his close kinship connection to Datuk Amar Sri Tun Jugah, the late Sarawak Iban Paramount Chief and Chief Minister for Sarawak Affairs—who was known as a staunch enemy of Sukarno during the 1963–1966 Konfrontasi with Malaysia.
To construct one‘s identity of being an Iban and Indonesian at the same time also implies for one to associate himself equally between Malaysian Sarawak and Indonesia. Besides having extensive kinship relations with the Iban in Sarawak, this might be attributed to the fact that a wealth of Iban history is rooted in Sarawak‘s past, [4] and the fact that aligning oneself with Sarawak greatly places oneself more nearer towards a spatial as well cultural ‘center‘ as opposed to their unchanged peripheral status in Indonesia, even within scope of the province. As such, the Indonesian identity only seems to surface on legal and formal aspects—and is mostly activated by those who can benefit from such relations with the local government, military or businessmen. [5] Other ambiguities also did surface—such as the fact that around half of the longhouse men hold dual identity cards for both states, and also that some households did temporarily split-up for gaining economic benefits on both sides of the border where men would seek work (bejalai, bekuli) in Sarawak and women would stay at home in order for the household not losing its land rights.
Back to the tuak sessions. The question still ringing in my ear, ‘Are you Malay?‘ Ibu Tambung ak Nyempal told me that this would be a question to know whether a person is of Islamic faith. ‘We cannot offer tuak as well as pork to most of our Indonesian guests‘, She told me of how in the past local Camats (Sub-District head), military KORAMIL commanders or conservation officials, all of them being predominantly muslims, often refused offers to visit or sleep in the longhouse. As she told: ‘Perhaps they find the longhouse to be unclean, as many dogs are walking and defecating around the ruai. Maybe they won‘t eat from our plates often used to serve pork.‘ It is evident that from the Iban point of view, anything ‘Indonesian‘ tends to present itself as ‘Islamic‘. Being largely nominal Catholics, and knowing that even Sarawak is part of an Islamic state, they still largely implicitly assume that Sarawak is more ‘Christian‘ than Indonesia. Over there, Christian Ibans and Chinese are able to hold important government seats, including posts as Chief Ministers like Tun Jugah did. These proud stories of Iban being able to hold significant posts despite their Christian belief also sheds light on how important religious identities have helped to construct Indonesia as ‘the Other‘ from the Iban perspective. Some even raised a version about Tun Jugah‘s ‘heroic‘ refusal to adopt Islam in exchange for his appointment as Chief Minister for Sarawak Affairs by the Federal Malaysian government.
Indonesia has also presented itself as exploitative and ‘colonialistic‘. A number of Iban villages, including Benua Sadap, have been renamed in the early 1980s with Sumatran Batak names[6] (Desa Toba, Pulau Manak and Rantau Prapat), owing it to the early 1980s Embaloh Hulu Camat. According to Pak Ucing apai Jantum, the Camat at that time, named Simbolon, had finished his assignment, and then called the villagers (Pak Ucing and people who live in the Iban Villages) telling that in order to remember him, he has decided to rename their villages according to his birthplace.
Fifteen years later, the Iban finally protested the naming and in 1999 the names were hanged back to their original Iban names. As Pak Ucing put it, ‘Renaming our villages might as well be his means to claim our lands, and we‘re afraid that his (camat‘s) sons or grandchildren might return someday and claim the land as theirs!‘
Another peculiar matter is the time zone. Officially, West Kalimantan follows the Western Indonesia Standard Time (WIB, GMT+7). However, this time framing is totally irrelevant as most Iban prefer to follow Sarawak time which is one hour ahead. As Nyandang ak Linggong put it, ‘Sarawak time is more in line with movements of the sun—which is especially important when we go hunting and fishing.‘
To shift matters more extremely, the Batang Kanyau Iban is the first community I ever visited that celebrates New Year‘s Eve exactly on 23:30 PM, conforming to Indonesian Western Time (WIB, GMT+7) and Malaysia (GMT+8). And as 25 year old Jantum cheered, ‘Happy New Year !! Long live Sarawak and Indonesia !!‘
How more ambiguous can a community get?
[2] PARAKU, or Pasukan Rakyat Kalimantan Utara, later the armed wing of the NKCP (North Kalimantan Communist Party) were operating on the Malaysian-Indonesian border in Borneo between 1965 and 1972
[3] Or abbreviated, in ‘typical‘ Orde Baru style, as ‘Pangrang‘.
[4] For instance, the Batang Kanyau point the Batang Ai area in Sarawak‘s Sri Aman Division as their place of origin, and point to some Iban groups in the Katibas area in Sarawak‘s Kapit Division as their offsprings.
[5] For instance, the local Temenggong (chiefs), positions originally created by the Dutch Colonial government, had no political significance for advancing interests of communities. Conversely, they were extensions to legitimize Indonesia‘s New Order government policies, and are key liaisons for any party interested in gaining access to local natural resources.
[6] The names have been reverted back to their original Iban names in 1999 after these villages were split (pemekaran) from Kecamatan Embaloh Hulu into the newly formed Kecamatan Benua Martinus (contrarily, the Iban did not protest this name though it has been derived from the first Dutch priest‘s name who spreaded Catholicism in the area).
* Fieldtrip was conducted in December 2001–January 2002 as a preliminary study on local narratives on contemporary Iban history in the Batang Kanyau. Team members: Iwan Meulia Pirous, Rhino Ariefiansyah, Paulus Iwan H. Sardjono, R.F. Satriantoro, Alex Anindito, Romanus Sumaryo and Dave Lumenta. Preliminary results are planned to be presented at the Seventh Biennial Borneo Research Conference in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, July 2002, and the 3rd International Symposium of the Journal ANTROPOLOGI INDONESIA, July 2002, in Denpasar, Bali.
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Source: jai.or.id
