Dayak Katingan community offer gesture of peace

Dayak Katingan community offer gesture of peace

The Dayak Katingan community, the third largest Dayak sub-
ethnic group, held a rare traditional rite last week. The three-
day ceremony, from April 21 through April 23, was basically a
celebration of their victory against the Madurese and to return
the spirits of their ancestors possessing them and helping drive
the Madurese people whom they see as enemies out of the Dayak
ancestral land. The Jakarta Post's Pandaya covered the event on
the invitation of Go-East Institute and has this report.

BUKIT BATU, Central Kalimantan (JP): It was a fine dancing day
last Sunday at Bukit Batu (Stone Hill).

Amid vigorous drum beats and the sound of gongs, women and men
danced encircling two palangka, miniatures of a Dayak traditional
house, loaded with offerings.

Now and then, the merry laughter and deafening battle sounds
were interrupted with hawawa...huuu... a call the Dayak use to
inflame the fighting spirit when at war.

When sweat began to run down under the scorching sun, some
elderly people waiting their turn to dance jumped down and served
beer to the rejoicing folks.

Thousands of people of all ages flocked to the hill that the
Dayak Katingan consider sacred. Some three hours drive south of
the Palangkaraya provincial capital, the hill features a compound
of edifices, some looking like the famous Stonehenge in England.
In a swampy area like this, rock is an oddity.

The hill also serves as a monument to honor the legendary
Tjilik Riwut, a national independence hero of Dayak Katingan. The
Palangkaraya airport has been named after him.

Folks came all the way from the upstream hinterland to
downstream Sampit, the scene of the recent ethnic bloodbath
between the native Dayak and immigrant Madurese in which hundreds
of people were killed.

The peak of the folk festivity came at midday with the
slaughtering of a water buffalo, a cow, a pig and three chickens.
An elderly woman took a cup of the buffalo blood and with a
finger smeared it on everybody's face or chest for good luck.

So the meat was the fare of the day for the revelers. The
festivity was capped the following day with the burial of the
buffalo's head.

"It (the head) is the offering for the spirits of Pak Tjilik's
friends, who are the guardian of the earth," said Ebeb Rajab, 65,
the elder who led the ceremony.

It had been the largest ceremony of its kind since more than
100 years ago.

Under Dayak religious belief, the higher the level the
offerings made, the more numerous and powerful spirits would be
present and therefore the greater the blessings they would
bestow.

Parsudi Suparlan, an anthropologist from the University of
Indonesia, Jakarta, described the rite as "the most important" in
107 years. In 1894, leaders of all Dayak subtribes across Central
Kalimantan held a similar ceremony in Tumbang Anoi in which they
vowed to stop the head-hunting tradition (ngayau).

"This is a goodwill gesture that the Dayak want peace. Now
that they are no longer possessed by their ancestors' spirits,
they have peaceful hearts and can easily accept a truce," he
said.

Tiyel Djelau, a respected Dayak Katingan leader, said the
ceremony was to demonstrate a unilateral ceasefire, as the ethnic
vendetta shook not only Indonesia but also the world.

"We are making peace with ourselves first of all. We returned
the ancestors' spirits and so we are no longer controlled by
anger," Tiyel said.

"We want peace with everybody irrespective of their ethnic
backgrounds but in return, please do not disturb us (Dayak)."

The ceremony called menyanggar and membayar hajat was aimed at
returning the spirits of ancestral war commanders and to honor
what the people promised to the spirits when they were about to
go to battle.

Under the Dayak belief, the spirits are inseparable from their
people's daily lives. The spirits have control over them and have
to be respected like ancestors.

So when they received news that a number of Dayak were
murdered in Sampit, some elders spiritually consulted ancestral
spirits in a rite called nenong, asking if it was justifiable to
take revenge to defend Dayak dignity.

It was at the nenong that the Dayak promised what they would
repay the spirits after the war, and thus the mystical contract
was over.

Tiyel said that it was the spirits who decided everything:
giving the green light and full support to assure victory.

"We would not have gone to battle had the ancestors' spirit
told us that we would lose," he said at his spacious house on a
four-hectare property near Katingan river in Kasongan village.

Kasongan sent a core team of 87 warriors called Pasus or
pasukan khusus (special force) to the Sampit battle. They had
been selected based on the ancestral spirits' advice. A spiritual
leader would take them before leaving for the battlefield to
sacred places where they bathed, made offerings and called the
spirits of Dayak war commanders to enter them.

Magical power is the key to Dayak victory, according to Tiyel.
The warriors were in trance as they were possessed by spirits. In
this condition, they could sense the presence of the Madurese
and, so the story goes, they could use their mandau (dagger) by
remote-control -- beheading opponents from a distance or set
buildings on fire by simply waving a hand.

But to retain the magical power is no easy job for the pasus
members, according to Tiyel. "Any form of crime or self-
righteousness is taboo," he said.

The ethnic vendetta involved practically all Dayak ethnic
groups throughout Central Kalimantan, according to Parsudi, who
was involved in the government-sponsored peace-making efforts.

If Parsudi is right, the Bukit Batu ceremony is no guarantee
that other Dayak sub-ethnic groups would give up ngayau when
social tension remains high.

Said Tiyel, "We could easily call the spirits again anytime
the situation compelled us to do so."