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."