Dayak handicrafts coming to shopping malls soon

Dayak handicrafts coming to shopping malls soon

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): The beads were green, black, red and yellow,
stitched tightly on a blouse in a swirling curlicue pattern. The
owner of the blouse, and matching skirt and hat, beamed as she
greeted mesmerized observers. Yulia Aloy, head of Yayasan Burung
Enggang, a foundation promoting the indigenous peoples of
Kalimantan, popularly referred to as Dayaks, knew it was one
memorable outfit.

Presiding over the registration booth of the Dayak Arts
Seminar she organized here last week, Yulia joined her colleagues
in playfully chiding a visitor in non-Dayak attire.

"If you would wear a batik shirt to a formal function, why not
a Dayak ikat shirt?," said one woman.

Why not, indeed? That's the main question the seminar
attempted to address and resolve. Why not wear Dayak ikat shirts
with Dayak bead necklaces, carry Dayak bamboo-woven bags, sleep
on Dayak rattan mats and work on a Dayak-carved desk?

That few Dayak handicrafts make it to the marketplace is the
answer offered by the seminar speakers, comprised of handicrafts
entrepreneurs. Despite having the potential to rival Bali as a
handicrafts source and to offer more income to cash-strapped
farmers, promotion of commercial Dayak arts is still in its early
days.

Improving productivity and marketing, pine the panelists, are
what's needed to boost business.

"Now, villagers still weave for their own consumption, they do
it in their spare time. An ikat cloth can take months to make,"
Yulia said. One ikat cloth has a market price of Rp 90,000 --
after deducting transport costs and commissions, weavers receive
only a quarter of the sale price.

Yet that is no small income for small-scale farmers.
Convincing Dayaks to produce more weavings and carvings rather
than crops is one of the foundation's objectives, said Yulia.

Then it wants to teach craftspeople and industry gatekeepers
the art of the sale. Johnny Utama of handicrafts distributor
Yayasan Dian Tama said determining what designs sells best in
which country and effective promotional tools for those markets
was key, but rarely done. The seminar, it turned out, was less a
discussion of traditional arts than a crash course in its
marketing.

Designer Samuel Wattimena, for example, scolded his colleagues
who destroy the beauty of an ikat pattern by cutting up the cloth
into small pieces. "If you cut it up too much, the motifs
disappear," he said.

Bags and jobs

Aesthetic reasons weren't the speakers' sole motivators --
they also want to better the welfare of Dayak communities. They
are concerned that Dayak handicrafts production increasingly
takes place outside of Dayak villages, particularly in Java's and
Bali's urban centers.

That means loss of income and jobs for the Dayaks. In West
Kalimantan, unemployment looms at 13 percent (1995 census), and
many of the unemployed are Dayaks. A way out is boosting exports,
advised Johnny Utama, because they "make money and jobs".

Riches, sure, but does it make culture? Handicraft villages
exist in all tourist destinations, be they Kalimantan or Kenya,
but are the communities reproducing "traditional" images for sale
necessarily cultural gold mines?

The potential overkill of the cultural heritage isn't lost on
Yulia Aloy. "I can see that Dayak motifs are now so popular, but
I wonder, do the Dayaks themselves like them?"

Yulia said the foundation was trying to find a balance between
cultural promotion and preservation, and correspondingly, between
the traditional and modern worlds.

"Of course Dayaks need money, but we don't want to bring them
to Jakarta because then they are taken away from their roots. We
don't want them to be influenced by too much modernity."

Another reason for keeping craftspeople in the villages is
that there may not be many crafts otherwise.

Guardian figures

Anthropologists note that Dayaks love decoration -- some
longhouses boast railings carved into dragons -- but not
necessarily because they have a heightened appreciation of art
and beauty.

Instead, the ubiquitous curlicues and S-patterns synonymous
with Dayak art act as protection against bad spirits. Dayaks
carve because every carving invokes new, guardian spirits, such
as the snake-like dragon, symbol of fertility, and the hornbill,
which created the Tree of Life.

That was why the doors and posts of communal longhouses were
rich with decoration. Baby carriers (ba') were also heavy with
beads and feathers, because they were a family's most treasured
possessions -- the bag's detailed design reflecting its role as
protector of the new generation.

Dayak objects, prizes of any museum curator, were functional
as well as beautiful. Sleeping mats were tightly woven so bugs
could not get in. Even the Dayaks' infamous tattoos, smaller
versions now offered by tattoo artists in Jakarta, had purpose.
Among the Iban of northwest Kalimantan, tattoos were believed to
be shields against evil, and some designs were said to cure
illnesses.

At the seminar, a traditional dance troupe sported fine
tattoos on its legs and arms, but they were painted with
temporary ink. Today, tattoos are disappearing along with
elongated earlobes, the ancient custom of wearing multiple
earrings now shunned by younger generations, and many other
visible symbols of traditional life.

Ikat arts are now prevalent only among the Iban and the Benuaq
of East Kalimantan. Researchers say that even in upstream Dayak
villages, only a few people remain versed in woodcarving.
Government discouragement of longhouse living and of animist
totem poles has allowed carvers few channels of exercise.

The island's approximately 200 tribes have called the island
home since 5000 B.C., and once had societies more sophisticated
than their neighbors (Dayak metallurgy, now extinct, was said to
be unrivaled in the archipelago). Today, only 40 percent of
Kalimantan's 10 million people are Dayaks, who live in remote
upstream villages. The rest of the population are long-settled
Malays, Chinese, Bugis, Banjars and Kutais (peoples of Javanese
descent living in South Kalimantan and East Kalimantan
respectively), and thousands of Javanese and Madurese competing
for meager livings under the government's transmigration program.

Thus references to a "Dayak" culture are naive. There are many
different categories of livelihoods alone (for example, the Iban
are hillside rice cultivators, the Punan are nomads). "Dayak"
itself was a once derogatory term coined by others -- the people
often identify themselves by their tribe names, or as orang hulu
(upstream people). Historically, many tribes battled each other
-- Iban warriors were famed for their head-hunting forays against
neighbors. Only recently has "Dayak identity" become a calling
card, perhaps due to a belief there is strength in numbers.

That there is increasing urgency among Dayaks to safeguard
their identity and traditions is encouraging, especially
considering that some provinces have few community-based
organizations. In East Kalimantan, for example, efforts to
promote magnificent Kenyah woodcarvings are contradicted by the
lack of community-based non-governmental organizations working to
market these crafts. In contrast, the Asmat of Irian Jaya stage
an annual auction of their woodcarvings, albeit with the
sponsorship of neighboring mining giant Freeport.

Stefanus Djuweng, head of the Institute of Dayakology, says
the contradiction should not be overlooked. "The authorities say
they're promoting human rights, that they love Dayaks. But they
also say local culture is animist and backward."

But these so-called animist cultures produce "primitive"
crafts in popular demand. This is another concern for Djuweng.

"I don't agree with ecotourism which sells handicrafts because
it's selling primitivism. Why not sell substitutes for plastic
goods like woven trash bins or book racks, goods used for daily
use, similar to how the Dayaks use them," he said.

Although Djuweng would like to see more appreciation and
production of Dayak arts, he disagrees with attempts to enrich
the material culture without the same support for ritual life.
Encouraging traditional life, says Djuweng, would automatically
encourage traditional arts as well.

"If you tell farmers to make handicrafts more often, they
wouldn't have the time to work their fields. This takes them away
from the real source of culture which is shifting rice
cultivation. It's good if Dayaks have additional sources of
income, but I don't want them to become laborers of industry."