Iban Agressive Expansion(part 4)

by Stephanie Morgan

This glance at relatively recent history has brought out some of the main characteristics of Iban migration. It was in most cases rapid; aggressive; persistent; and successful. It also seems to have been so basic to the Iban outlook on life that there are few cultural and technological traits of their society that do not either necessitate a frequent change of site, facilitate it, or (the exact relationships are hard to trace) even derive from it. Culture and the migratory pressures perhaps evolved together; where this happened, what might be the source land of migration, is itself a problem frequently discussed. As recounted in Mr. Sandin’s book, the earliest people to possess a recognizably Iban culture seem to have been inhabitants of the Kapuas basin in West Kalimantan.

                                               (ignore this pic of me...i just have no idea of what pic to put)

Most probably the curious immigrants from overseas, landing at Merudu Hill and Cape Datu, head some of the traditional Iban genealogies because their descendants married Ibans rather than for any Iban identity of their own; indeed, Derom is curiously linked through his offspring not only with Ibans but with peoples as diverse as Bukitans, Melanaus, and Kelabits.7 Through many similarly misty links (such as those shown in the tusut appended to Mr. Sandin’s book) the line of Iban ancestry seems to go back to men, if they were men, living somewhere in the Middle East (some of them near Mecca) who moved, or whose descendants moved, to Sumatra then to Kalimantan, sometimes by way of Brunei. It is not likely that this outline represents any actual mass movement of population (favourite recourse of early theories, like that of Dr. Hose which derived the Ibans from fighters imported from Sumatra by Malay pirate nobles); but it may be symbolic of the drift of some of the cultural traits which apparently diffused into the Kapuas area, there to be woven by a people of unknown origin into their own style of life, whose shape we can only guess at, with explosive results. The historical processes surrounding the evolution of the Iban ethnic identity can only be viewed through a prism of myth; the commitment to expansion which permeates traditional Iban culture, however much of it may be the result of what it might be used to explain, is far easier to investigate.

...to be continued

*source Tansang Kenyalang GN Mawar

Rentap the movie

There is news about making a movie about Rentap.

Will it be as good as Apocalypto or Braveheart?

Looking forward to it!

Iban Agressive Expansion (part 3)

By Stephanie Morgan

 The more traditional, more lasting process of aggressive expansion up into the Rejang and Balleh was rather curiously accelerated by the Brooke regime, whose avowed interest was to keep the Ibans close at hand. Migration was under way well before the English, intending to control the pirate raids, built their forts in the Iban rivers; but the resulting official divisions into downriver and upriver groups gave a new impetus to population movements. As some Iban groups had co-operated for mutual benefit with Malays, so the same groups came to co-operate with the English. “Only Dayaks can attack Dayaks to make them feel in any way a punishment” said the Rajah Charles Brooke, and he made great use of Iban levies, conveniently costless: they came gladly, arranging if possible attacks on their own enemies, or taking advantage of the government’s.

The great Kayan expedition of 1863, while it thoroughly revenged the murder of Fox and Steele, in the process so completely broke the power of this other expansionist group that they never again resisted Iban migration into the Rejang.5 This went so far that some non-Iban interior tribes concluded that invading Ibans were always working for the Government. The rebellious pioneers took heads and raided; and after them came the equally deadly allies with official blessing, taking heads and burning longhouses, punishing them in the way most familiar to both. The inevitable result was that the upriver and downriver Ibans retained and practiced their ideology of aggression; and those upriver, who had most opportunity to migrate away and were most often raided to punish them for trying to do so, migrated even farther to be out of reach.

Both these aspects of Iban expansion and aggression in the nineteenth century – piracy, and movement to the north and east – were affected by outside pressures that suggested their form and direction; but it seems clear that neither Malays nor English had any real control over the wellsprings, the pace or the ultimate expression of Iban activity. The rare efforts to counteract this cultural drive (as with settlement in the Balleh) met with no more permanent success than did, in the long run, attempts to direct the urge for the formal rulers’ benefit. It is clear that in the matter of aggressive expansion Iban culture, while superficially highly adaptable, had a fundamental resistance to being changed.

*to be continues...

Source= Tangsang Kenyalang

Iban Aggressive Expansion (part 2)

By STEPHANIE MORGAN
 
Recent expansion:
The main expressions of the second surge of restlessness were migration to the Rejang, which continued an old trend partly under new impulsion; “intertribal warfare”, which may be seen as a natural outgrowth of the local territorial rivalries of periods I and II, extended farther by more settled and regionally consolidated populations; and piracy, which shaded off from the above intra-Iban conflicts, through attacks on mixed and weaker groups, to predatory sea-raiding on non-Ibans far down the coast of Kalimantan. On this vast scale of numbers involved and distances covered, raiding was something quite new; it seemed to be a sparking-over of the resurgent aggressive drive, an expansion not at all connected with ecology. Land was available to the north and east; the pirates went southwest for heads. The Europeans, who could understand taking a head as souvenir of a warrior’s valour, found the emphasis on simple quantity a wanton exacerbation, and blamed as instigators the Malays – with whom the Ibans, as their population continued to expand, had come into closer contact along the coast.3
Undoubtedly the Malays did encourage Iban warfare, among Ibans themselves (Indra Lela) and against Malay-ruled peoples who evaded contribution. They sanctioned raids in return for a share of the plunder, and at times joined with the Ibans, dividing work and spoils in a manner which showed that the value systems of the two cultures were conveniently complementary: “Their pilots are Malays, who always show the way; the spoil is the property of the pilots, the women and children and skulls are the property of the Dayaks.”4 Each group in fact made use of the other, for the Ibans were strong enough to resist being manipulated against their will, and had, moreover, the ever-present option of migration. (It was evident then, and still more so under the Brookes, that what the Ibans considered political oppression was as much of an impetus as the desire to avoid a feud.) The techniques of piracy may have been learned under Malay guidance, though at this time or earlier some Ibans were serving apprenticeship on Illanun pirate ships while others, such as Unggang (Lebor Menoa), adopted their methods and fought against them; but the uses to which the techniques were put were purely Iban, and often Malays themselves were their victims. The indiscriminate emphasis on a quantity of heads, as far as it existed, may well have grown from the novelty of the entire situation. These raids were not in the traditional context of inter-group hostility, and would usually not be reciprocated; the most dangerous part of a raid on land was getting away, but these shore-dwellers, if they had boats large enough to give chase, would rarely be left with either the men or the daring to do so.
The nomadic groups that the Ibans had attacked before were few in number, but their defeat freed vast areas of good land, Here the raiders made no settlement (for which, according to Mr. Sandin, they were criticized by more migration-minded leaders); unable to gain prestige by working his well-earned forests, the raider made up the lack in heads alone. Each warrior owed the first bead or captive that he took to his war leader, which meant that he must take several to get some of his own; and as more heads were taken, the prestige value of small numbers fell, evidently creating an inflationary spiral to be stopped only by force.

source= Tansang Kenyalang

Iban Aggressive Expansion: Some Background Factors

By,
STEPHANIE MORGAN

Mr. Benedict Sandin’s recently published book, The Sea Dayaks of Borneo before White Rajah Rule, has no doubt become familiar to all interested in the people and traditions of Borneo. Here, for the first time, a highly educated and scholarly Iban writes with authority on his own people, and therefore with an understanding which a Westerner, even after years of field study, could rarely hope to approach. Familiar from childhood with the traditions of the Iban past, Mr. Sandin has drawn the skeletal structure of his study from the orally transmitted genealogies, tusut, of which thirty-two are appended to his text. The tales associated with these remembered ancestors illustrate his main theme, the westward migrations of the Iban people from Indonesian Borneo to the Second Division of Sarawak, and west again and north, during approximately the past fifteen generations. The material so vividly presented here is enough to feed theory for many years to come, and another book dealing with earlier and more recent periods is underway. The present short paper draws on aspects of Mr. Sandin’s material as well as other sources in an attempt to explore certain generalities, which underlie his narrative, and some of the points, which, because of their speculative nature, fall outside the scope of his book. In dealing with this complex range of material, I have drawn upon suggestions given by Dr. Robert Pringle and Dr. George Appell. The impetus and advice provided by Mr. Tom Harrisson, for whose seminar on Malaysia at Cornell University the body of this paper was originally written, have been invaluable; and Mr. Sandin himself has contributed the benefit of his experience in essential explanation.

The process of Iban migration, as Mr. Sandin’s material makes very clear, was far from orderly or organized either in space or in time. Its patterns were shaped by chance, by a network of individual decisions. A man such as Punoh* would quarrel with a neighbour, and move out to avoid the consequences; another, like Tindin, would make a friend in new rich land; another would hastily migrate, as Kaya did, to prevent relatives or strangers from getting to new territory before him. In the days when local conflict spread and hardened into “inter-tribal” hostility, the whole river populations might be driven out, even long-settled ones like the Undups. But the basic force of most directed migration was the desire for fertile land, which led to prestige and prosperity; and this meant, in these areas of thin and basically infertile soil, the old jungle living richly on itself. Those who felled it first owned the land forever, or as long as they wanted it: but as long as the forest seemed inexhaustible, farther pioneering was more attractive, symbolically and practically, than close-knit, rotated exploitation. So untouched land might be left ignored and once-settled areas deserted, till claims had lapsed so long that no one of a later immigration could tell who had first felled the forest they were clearing once again.(1) Specially erratic, migrations also moved at varying paces, according to the strength of the migrants’ motivation and the quality of the land. If nothing compelled them and the land was good, a group (probably several related families) would move gradually up from the mouth of a tributary, clearing its side spurs from valley to crest, as far as the headwaters: then away to a neighboring tributary, perhaps to return ten or twenty years later, or not at all. The Tuan Muda judged their average progress as four or five days’ journey every one or two years.2

(*The particulars of his story, and those of other men mentioned, may be found in Sea Dayaks of Borneo: page references are given with the names, in the first Index following this paper.)

The conscious motivations of migration, however, need not be the only reasons for the existence and persistence of this cultural option; nor do they explain why it became such a powerful and cherished part of Iban values, nor why its impulse seemed to be stronger before 1700 and after the early 1800′s (periods I and III of Mr. Sandin’s book) than in the relatively sessile interim. The first period, out of range of written history, is the more problematical; in the more recent, Iban movements were affected by outside influences, novel and shallow compared to the cultural drives which often they invoked (and then found most difficult to repress). But this very lack of depth may make their effect on the Iban easier to trace; and the more recent, documented Iban may be a convenient introduction to the Iban of the farther past, which is in large part an extrapolation.

*to be continued

source= Tansang Kenyalang