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."