Bajau people are not seafarers

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)