Bajau people are not seafarers

JAKARTA (JP): An expert on the Bajau, an ethnic group with origins in Sulawesi, challenged yesterday the long-standing assumption that the Bajau are sea-faring people.

"If they were a sea-faring people, their boats would have been much bigger and specially designed for sea voyages such as the phinisi, a traditional boat of the Bugis people," said Ali Maturahim, the chairman of Sama (Bajau) Foundation.

Instead, he said, their traditional boats were small, capable of carrying only four people, and were designed for shallow water, Antara reported.

The Bajau people are found in Sulawesi, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Speaking in Kendari, the provincial capital of Southeast Sulawesi, Ali said that there was various evidence which proved that the Bajau are actually land-dwellers.

Ali pointed, for example, to the importance of horse and lance figures to the Bajau in Sabah, Malaysia.

That the Bajau are land-dwellers as opposed to sea-faring people had also been asserted by a French scholar, Ali said, while identifying the scholar only as Gaynor. Ali said the Frenchman had conducted research in 1990 and had ascertained that Bajau actually originated from Balu Island, currently a regency known as Muna in South Sulawesi.

The Bajau became sea-faring people only because they were forced off their land by other ethnic groups, Ali said.

Ali's foundation is designed to improve the standard of living of the Bajau, most of whom now live in poverty, suffer from poor health and do not receive proper education.

He said that it was more important to study ways of improving their welfare than to focus too much research on their origins. (03)