OF MEAT AND MEN: THE KELABIT OF SARAWAK
Monica Janowski
Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich
Chatham Maritime, Chatham, Kent ME4 4TB, UK
Tel: +44 1634 883052
Fax: +44 1634 883706
Paper delivered at the ICAF conference on `Meat’, Bordeaux 2000
To be included in book edited by Marie-Helene Bruyeres deriving from the conference, published by
Berghahn in their Anthropology of Food and Nutrition series
In the forests of the Kelabit Highlands at the headwaters of the Baram river in
Sarawak, East Malaysia, dwells a powerful spirit called Puntumid, literally
`Ancestor/Grandfather Heel’. Puntumid, it is said, used to be human; but on a hunting
trip as a young unmarried man with his brother, he twisted his heel. Because of this
deformity he decided to remain in the forest and hunt humans - `hairless ones’ (tsok
na’am bulu). He told his brother to return home and continue to hunt animals - `hairy
ones’ (tsok inan bulu). Puntumid, who is also referred to as the `Great Spirit’ - ada’ raya
- is considered a danger to humans but also a source of power and life force (lalud).
This image of Puntumid encapsulates the supernatural relationship between
Kelabit men, particularly young men, and the forest, a relationship which expresses itself
most regularly through hunting. In the past, before the Kelabit became Christian during
the period between 1945 and the 1970s, he was invoked for success in hunting. He is
said to have set up close relationships with young men, to whom he has been known to
give powerful substances (tabat, the same word used for modern medecines) which
endowed them with the power of life and death over other humans. He can still be heard,
it is said, roaming the forests at night, calling his hunting dogs.
This paper is an ethnography of the role of wild meat (belabo) in Kelabit daily
life. I have in previous papers focused on the symbolic significance of rice, which the
Kelabit emphasise as their focal food (Janowski 1988; Janowski 1991; Janowski 1995;
Janowski 1998). However, meat is as profoundly significant a food, although the same
level of emphasis is not laid upon it. While rice is associated with women and also with
the married couple (Janowski 1995), meat is straightforwardly associated with men. An
association between maleness and meat, hunting and the wild has been reported in many
parts of the world (Atkinson, 1990; Collier & Rosaldo 1981; Marshall 1976; Shostak
1983; Siskind 1973). I want to look at this association for the Kelabit, to say something
about changes over the past few decades which have relevance to it, and to attempt to
assess their impact.
Since for a group like the Kelabit, the production and consumption of food
dominates everyday life, I soon decided during fieldwork that looking at the way in
1
which food is produced and consumed was an effective way of arriving at an
understanding of what makes the Kelabit `tick’, on both a practical and a symbolic level.
In fact, I suggest elsewhere that the rice meal is the basis of kinship and hierarchy among
the Kelabit (Janowski 1998).
The Kelabit believe that they have gone through a profound change since the
Second World War, associated with the advent of Christianity (Lian-Saging 1976/77,
Chapters VI and VII). In addition, there has been a major population shift within the
Kelabit Highlands which has altered their relationship with the natural environment.
However, through looking at patterns of food production and consumption, important
continuities come to the surface.
The Kelabit Highlands
The Kelabit are one of the most remote tribal groups in Sarawak. Although the
term `Kelabit’ was coined through a mistake in the early part of this century (Harrisson
1958), it has been taken up as an ethnonym by the people of the area now described as
the Kelabit Highlands. Because of clear language boundaries on the Sarawak side and an
international border along the low mountain range separating the Kelabit from their
cousins in Kalimantan, they have, as a group, been able to generate a highly cohesive
identity. There are probably about 7500 Kelabit nowadays, including those living in
town1.
The Kelabit Highlands is part of a tableland area 2 at 3000-3500 feet above sea
level. This is extensively covered with tropical forest, consisting, at this altitude,
predominantly of oak. The area is rich in game; the most important are wild pigs and
three varieties of deer. Pigs migrate regularly through the area in search of acorns; deer
are always resident. Other animals which are hunted and eaten on an occasional basis
include monkeys, civet cats, porcupines, bear cats, monitor lizards, pythons, fruit bats,
tree squirrels and various types of bird. Although fishing is practised too, fish are not
large because of the proximity of the headwaters of the river, and fish represents only
perhaps 10-20% of the protein diet.
Before the Second World War, the people of the Kelabit Highlands were scattered
over the area. Since then, most of the population has become concentrated in an area
now called Bario in the northern part of the Highlands, where the only government-run
airstrip is situated. However, there remain three longhouse settlements, of between 50100 people each, in the southern part of the Highlands. I carried out fieldwork in one of
these, Pa’ Dalih, for 20 months between 1986 and 1988 and for another four months in
1992/3. In addition, I spent short periods periodically in Bario.
1
There were estimated to be 5.059 Kelabit in 1987 and a growth rate of 4% from 1970 to 1980 (Ko 1987,
p. 35) so it is probable that the total is now about 7500, with about 3500 in the Kelabit Highlands and 3500
in Miri at any one time, with the rest distributed around other towns in Sarawak. Martin (Martin 1994?)
estimates only about 1000 in Miri, but admits that there is no way of assessing the numbers other than by
guesswork.
2
This tableland has been described as the Kelabit-Kerayan Highland (Schneeberger 1945; Schneeberger
1979).
2
The significance of the forest and the relationship between rice and the
wild
A great deal of effort is put into rice cultivation by the Kelabit, who may be said
to `advertise’ themselves as rice-growers. Rice, as a crop and as a food, is privileged in
terms of the attention and importance given to it, and it is associated with a proper human
lifestyle and with the generation of human life, ulun. The rice meal, which is described
as kuman nuba’ or `eating rice’, symbolizes and possibly effects the generation of ulun
by the leading couple of a household, or, as I term it, `hearth-group’ for their dependants
within it3. However, despite its name it does not consist of rice alone but also of side
dishes, described as nok penguman or `something to eat with (rice)’. In Pa’ Dalih, side
dishes for the rice meal are made up of foods which are either actually wild or are treated
as though they were wild. I have explored elsewhere the symbolic make-up of the rice
meal (Janowski 1991; Janowski 1995). The main point to emphasise here is that the
symbolic as well as practical significance of side dishes is equal to that of rice, despite
the fact that their role is not made so clear by the Kelabit themselves.
The most important of side dishes at the rice meal is meat (belabo). Although
vegetable foods make up a considerable proportion - perhaps 60% - of side dishes, it is
desirable to have at least one meat-based side dish at each meal. When visitors are
present, this is essential; the Kelabit place a good deal of emphasis on hospitality for
visitors. Even without visitors, to go for more than a day or so without any meat to eat at
the rice meal makes people uneasy4. Two-thirds to three-quarters of the meat eaten is
from wild pigs, and the majority of the rest is from deer. However, it is pig meat (belabo
bakar) which is arguably the `proper’ meat to eat at rice meals, and certainly it is the
meat which is liked the most. Pigs have a special symbolic significance, being associated
with humans in some respects5. Their fat (lemak) is the `meatiest’ substance which
exists.
The importance of having meat to eat at a rice meal, and ideally lots of different
kinds of meat, is illustrated in the following extract from the adi (sung story) of Agan, a
Kelabit mythical hero, from the version of the story collected in 1972 by Rubenstein from
Niar Ayu of Bario. Agan’s mother has just prepared a rice meal for him. She tells him to
eat, initially stating, as is the custom among the Kelabit, that there are very few side
3
I use the term `hearth-group, which is a translation of one of the terms for that group, tetal, since the
group is focused upon the cooking and consumption of the rice meal at the hearth.
4
This is an interesting echo of what Fiddes suggests is the case in Europe and America (Fiddes 1991,
Chapter 1).
5
The association of pigs with humans was particularly apparent in initiation rituals for children - both boys
and girls - until the 1950s, when the Kelabit became Christian. At these rituals, when children became full
human beings with gender attributes, pigs were killed and their blood smeared on the children (Lian-Saging
1976/77, p. 138-144; Talla 1979, p. 198-210). This paralleling of pigs with humans appears to have
relevance in the wider region, and its expression in initiation rituals is particularly evocative in New Guinea
(Bloch 1992). Pigs remain the necessary domestic animal slaughtered at Kelabit naming feasts, which are
derivative of the pre-Christian initiation feasts, even now.
3
dishes, and that even they are not meat-based. Agan, however, discovers that this is far
from the case:
“I have placed a bit of rice here [she says], but there is no garnish,
just these two abang shoots, just these two stalks,
and a few beluan mushrooms and alang mushrooms
that grew on a log and which I picked this morning.”
She breaks open a bamboo tube in which she has cooked fish,
And there are big pieces of paliyan and dalo fish inside.
Agan looks down at his wrapped rice
And sees along with it many different garnishes,
There are pig meat and smoked dried meat,
There are the flesh of the tiger [which does not exist in Borneo, but which is a
symbol of strength and supernatural power (lalud)]
And the smoked flesh of the tame deer. (Rubenstein 1973, p. 861)
All meat eaten on an everyday basis is wild meat from the forest. Domestic
animals are only slaughtered for irau naming feasts, which take place in a given
longhouse community of about 100 people perhaps once a year. Meat is strongly
associated with the forest, from which most of it comes. Vegetable foods are also
associated with the wild. About one third to a half of the vegetables eaten as side dishes
are gathered in secondary growth areas. Cultivated vegetables are classed as wild - they,
like wild foods, are said to `grow on their own'’(mulun sebulang). Only rice can be said
to be truly cultivated, in that it is said to require human assistance to survive.
While all wild foods are, in Pa’ Dalih, shared with neighbours and relatives, rice
is explicitly owned and its sharing implies dependence and lower status on the part of the
recipient. Meat is also eaten as a snack food (as are root crops and maize), and in this
context it is always shared with others. It may be said that wild meat is generative of a
certain egalitarian cohesiveness in a longhouse community, whereas rice separates
hearth-groups and, through the provision of rice meals for others, generates a hierarchy
between leading couples of different hearth groups.
Irau feasts
In the past, irau feasts were held at the initiation of children and at the death of
important leaders. Now that the Kelabit are Christian, the latter are no longer held.
However, irau are still held at the naming of children. At naming irau, domesticated pigs
and buffaloes are slaughtered for a huge rice meal which all guests share. These animals
are owned by the hearth-group which is holding the irau. This hearth-group spends years
storing up rice6 and breeding and fattening pigs - which are fed primarily with rice and
6
Before the advent of Christianity, which advocated the abandonment of the drinking of alcohol, irau
would also have necessitated the brewing of huge quantities of rice wine (borak).
4
taro stalks - before it can hold irau. It may also slaughter buffalo - although this is not
essential. If buffalo are killed, this generates additional prestige.
Rice (nuba’), and the meat of domestic pigs (belabo berak), are the two essential
ingredients of the irau. While on an everyday basis wild meat is freely shared, that eaten
at irau may be said to be both wild and owned by individual hearth groups, as rice is.
The domestic animals slaughtered at irau - pigs and buffaloes (kerubau) - are directly
linked to wild animals - pigs are equated with wild pigs and buffaloes with deer (tela’o),
which used to be domesticated and had the same role at irau as buffaloes do now7. Thus,
they are symbolically associated with the wild. However, the fact that the animals are the
product of feeding and care on the part of an individual hearth-group means that the
provision of their meat for others is generative of prestige, as the provision of rice for
others always is.
At the feast, there is a clear association between rice and women and meat and
men. While meat is usually cooked inside the longhouse by women on an everyday
basis, meat from domesticated pigs and buffaloes killed for irau is cooked outside the
longhouse by men.
The special role of the domestic pig (which is called by a different term - berak from wild pigs, which are called bakar) and its meat at irau, the importance of the fact
that it has been fed rice, the balanced opposition between rice and meat, and the
association of meat with men and rice with women are all illustrated in the sedadai (sung
story) of Balang Lipang, a Kelabit mythical hero, in the version collected by Rubenstein
from Inan Diu’ of Bario in 1972. Balang Lipang has just returned to his longhouse with
the head of an enemy and the people are about to hold an irau feast. His father, Burung
Siwan, slaughters a domestic pig for the irau and addresses it beforehand thus:
He clears his throat before addressing the pig in prayer:
“Yes, you dear, my dear,
you have been been fed with rice to make you very big,
fed to make you reach as high as the floor beneath the verandah.
Now Lord Balang Lipang has come home from fighting.
So I want to smear him with the blood of your head, my dear.
After Burung Siwan has smeared blood on Balang Lipang and his companion (a ritual
associated in pre-Christian times with transition between the supernatural world and that
of the longhouse) and examined the pig’s liver for omens,
The people of the longhouse
singe the bristles of the pigs in the fire
and slough them off with their parang knives;
taking off all the bristles down to the feet of the pigs,
They cut the pigs into pieces on the cutting mat
And put them into the big cauldron on the three-legged stand.
7
In the extract from the story of Agan quoted earlier there is mention of the meat of tame deer.
5
Before long it is cooked They cut it into smaller pieces on the mat
Make long sticks to skewer the pieces of meat on the sticks,
and skewer all the pieces of meat on all the sticks,
All the people of the longhouse are called together for the feast.
The old man Burung Siwan says to the people of the longhouse:
“Distribute the rice.”
Before long the young girls have distributed all the rice.
The young men wearing parang sheaths
Distribute the sticks full of pieces of meat.
Each stick is very long,
Taking two young men, one at each end, to carry a single stick.
When the food has been distributed
Outward to both ends of the longhouse,
They all begin to eat.
After everyone in the longhouse has eaten,
The leaders of the men distribute pieces of fat to each one.
For each share of fat he gives out,
The distributor has pushed back at him one piece he must eat.
They give out two chunks of fat to each person in turn,
Each chunk at least one handspan long. (Rubenstein 1973, p. 830-831)
This description of the preparation of meat and the distribution of rice by young
girls and meat by young men, as well as the distribution of fat, could be applied as well to
irau nowadays in the Kelabit Highlands.
Hunting
Hunting is a daily activity in Pa’ Dalih. The sight of men departing for a hunt or
arriving back and of men butchering, skinning and preparing meat for cooking are
commonplace. After a hunt, parcels of meat are sent round via small boys to hearths
belonging to hearth-groups other than those of the hunters.
The term for hunting is ngera’ad, although men tend not to say that they are going
hunting but rather that they are `going in to the forest’ (me lam polong), both to avoid
embarrassment should they get no game and because there is a feeling that the game
might be warned off. Hunting is done either with a shotgun or with a spear (boso). Until
the middle of this century, blowpipes (put) were used instead of shotguns, as they still are
across the border in Kalimantan. Nowadays, there are a limited number of shotguns and
shotgun licences in the Kelabit Highlands; these are handed down from father to son.
Dogs are usually taken hunting, and are essential if hunting with a spear since they corner
the animal for the kill. Most men own hunting dogs, and they are matter of some pride.
6
Longhouse communities have specific areas which are their hunting territories,
and it seems that individual men also have areas within the longhouse area which are
regarded as theirs - these are usually areas in which their immediate ancestors made
swidden rice fields. Hunting is usually done in areas of old secondary forest, although
young men also go into primary forest.
Hunting is done both individually and communally. On an everyday basis, it is
most often done individually, although teenagers will often accompany their father, older
brother or cousin while they are still learning hunting skills. Communal hunting is most
often carried out when the whole longhouse eats together in kuman peroyong, literally
`eating together’. These events occur at harvest, when outsiders come to the longhouse,
or in order to raise money for the church. For such occasions, each hearth-group supplies
some rice and all the rice is mixed, so that people do not eat the rice which they have
supplied themselves. Thus the occasion is not hosted by any one hearth-group, either in
terms of the rice or the meat, and, because of this, the occasion does not generate prestige
for any hearth-group.
Men, meat and wild life force
The reliance on the forest in a community like Pa’ Dalih is not only practical; it is
also spiritual. On a practical level, the forest provides a large proportion of food, all
handicraft materials and all firewood. On a spiritual level, the forest is a source of lalud,
which may be translated as `raw life force’8. Lalud is both awesome and frightening on
the one hand and essential for human life on the other. It is brought in to the longhouse
community in various ways (including, in the past, headhunting). The most regular of
these is via the meat of hunted animals.
There is a powerful association in the Kelabit Highlands between men and the
forest, and this is explicitly or implicitly associated with men’s acquisition of lalud, or
wild life force, while in the forest. Women in Pa’ Dalih used to joke during fieldwork
about the sexual appeal of men who have just returned from the forest, who were said to
smell of it. This is despite the fear that women themselves have of entering the forest.
No man, on the other hand, would say that he was afraid of entering the forest. To say so
would be to unman himself. Manliness, in fact, is associated with the possession of
lalud, which men bring to their sexual activity and which, in the form of hunted meat,
they may be said to supply for the rice meal9.
It is hunting which is the quintessential male activity in the forest. All men hunt.
However, while younger men in Pa’ Dalih have a virtually total identification with
hunting as an occupation, older men who are married become more and more involved in
8
The Kelabit concept of lalud is one of a group of South East Asian concepts which refer to a quantifiable
something, of finite quantity in the universe, which has been described by Anderson as `power’ or
`primordial essence’ (Anderson 1972), by Geertz s `charisma’ (Geertz 1980) and by Errington, more
recently, as `potency’ (Errington 1989; Errington 1990). Geertz (Geertz 1980, p. 106) has argued that this
something may be equated with the force which is, in Polynesia, described as mana.
9
The association of hunting and sex is widely reported cross-culturally (Fiddes 1991).
7
rice cultivation and become part-time hunters. The young men in Pa’ Dalih spend their
nights hunting, their days sleeping, playing the guitar and singing hymns and their
evenings playing football. They go hunting almost every day, while older men go once
or twice a week. However, older men express great interest in hunting and continue to
participate in interminable, and highly animated, fireside conversations late at night over
a rack of pig about the progress of different hunting expeditions.
Normally, women never enter the primary forest or the big secondary forest
except on marked trails, in the company of others, on their way to other human
settlements. There are a very small number of women who do enter the forest to gather
handicraft materials or firewood, but I have never heard of a woman hunting. Women,
however, do gather vegetables in areas of young secondary forest growth.
The forest is believed to be full of ada’, spirits. These are of all sorts - spirits of
the human dead, Puntumid, and many others. It would appear that the less an area is
under the control of humans, and the longer it has been since an area has been cultivated,
the more likely it is that there will be spirits in it and the stronger the lalud in the area10.
Women’s fear of ada’ is the reason most often given for the fact that they will not enter
big secondary growth and primary forest.
Hunting is, of course, killing. Life, which is ended with death, is something that
is made possible through the possession of lalud, which all living things have. Death
involves the release of the ada’ of the living creature, and its lalud, into the forest. When
humans hunt animals, their lalud is, I would suggest, transferred to their killers. Death is
clearly associated with men - it is they who hunt, and also they who slaughter domestic
animals. In the past, they hunted human heads. Men take the dead to their final resting
place in graveyards in the forest. This is still the practice, even with Christianity.
The forest may be seen as part of a broader category of what I call the `out there’,
the area beyond that tamed by humans, an area conceived of as full of ada’ and of lalud.
The `out there’ is conceived of as being made up of forest and mountains, but it also
includes places which are mythical in our terms (the boundary between `real’ and
`mythical’ does not have the same significance for the Kelabit as it does for Western
societies). For example, in the story of the mythical hero Tukid Rini, he is said to visit
places which Rubenstein, who collected a version of this story from Ngamung Raja of
Long Dano in 1972, has translated as the Hollow Roaming Moon, the Mouth of the Great
River Connecting Earth and Sky and Outside the Sky (Rubenstein 1973). Tukid Rini and
his companions find men with great lalud in these places with whom they do battle and
win. In these stories, whose Kelabit heroes are said to live on a flat area (Luun Atar,
which Rubenstein translates as Earth), the connection between men, the `out there’ and
lalud is very clear, and so is the mountainous nature of the `out there’.
Not only are men associated with obtaining meat by hunting, they are also its
most important consumers. Although everyone eats meat, and enjoys it, men particularly
10
Towns, with their concentration of humans and the high level of control of the environment, have, I was
told by informants, almost no ada’.
8
relish it, and they eat the fat of the pig, which is considered dangerous for females
because, I would suggest, it is too heavy with lalud11. At irau feasts, men ritually feed
each other with pig fat, and hold fat-eating competitions, in which men are under a good
deal of pressure to participate12. Although, as illustrated in the extract above from the
story of Balang Lipang, fat is distributed to women, they do not, in my experience, eat it,
but take it home after the feast and render it into lard with which to cook. Thus, its power
may be said to be dissipated and distributed among all members of the hearth-group.
Hunting as `play’ and what it means to be a `good lad’ in Pa’ Dalih
Both hunting and gathering are viewed, by both men and women, as being
enjoyable in a way that rice cultivation is not. I have a number of times heard hunting
and gathering described as raut, the same word used to describe the play of children,
while rice-growing is described as lema’ud and is said to make you `tired’ (meror).
Adults as well as children engage in raut activities, but to engage in them to the exclusion
of rice cultivation is regarded as a failure to accept adulthood. A neighbour of ours
within the longhouse, a man with a young son, refused for many years to involve himself
in rice-growing, preferring to spend his time with the unmarried young men. He was
treated with little or no respect until he decided to knuckle under and began to work at
rice cultivation with his wife. After this, he gained respect very rapidly and was even
elected to be a deacon of the church.
As an enjoyable activity, as raut, hunting exerts a powerful pull upon men, and
particularly upon young men. It acts, in Pa’ Dalih, as an organising force which gives
young unmarried men a purpose. Despite its being categorised as `play’, young men who
indulge in it are regarded as engaging in the most appropriate activity for their age group
and gender. The young men (dela’i bru, literally `new males’) of Pa’ Dalih are generally
considered by other members of the community to be well-behaved (doo serawe) - the
equivalent of the English concept of `good lads13. No pressure is exerted upon unmarried
men to engage in rice cultivation. If they do turn up to help with the rice harvesting,
which is done in large cooperative work parties, I have seen this greeted with extreme
amusement and excitement, as something out of the usual, welcome, but slightly
inappropriate. It is only once they are married that young men are expected to become
rice cultivators, in collaboration with their wives. Young girls, on the other hand, are
expected to assist their parents in rice cultivation from their teens, and certainly to take it
up seriously immediately they marry.
11
I witnessed a Kelabit mother panicking because her daughter insisted on eating pig fat at one irau, telling
her that it would make her unwell. She was quite unperturbed by her son of a similar age eating fat.
12
Our next-door neighbour was a reluctant fat-eater, but he was not able to refuse to participate in fateating competitions at irau, although he told us that he did not really like fat.
13
Although it was felt necessary by the headmaster of the primary school in Pa’ Dalih, Baye Ribuh (`One
Thousand Crocodiles’), during our first period of fieldwork, to set up a club called the Kelab Sukan
Kelapang, or `Kelapang River Sports Club’, to ensure that their energies were channelled into worthy
activities - mainly related to raising money for sports - when they were not hunting.
9
Bario: a more remote forest and less hunting
Bario in the northern part of the Kelabit Highlands now consists of eight
longhouses within at most an hour’s walk of each other and has a population of about
1000. As in Pa’ Dalih, the focal activity is rice growing. However, while in Pa’ Dalih
this is for subsistence purposes, in Bario it is primarily for sale. The area is flat and peaty
and is suitable for the growing of certain varieties of rice which will only grow in wet
fields and which are in demand in town. Thus, there has been a concentration on growing
these varieties and exporting them by air (MAS, the national carrier, allows a special rate
for rice). This has meant that more and more land has been brought under cultivation by
people moving to Bario from the communities in the Highlands which do not have access
either to an airstrip or to much flat land for growing wet rice.
Consequently, while forest suitable for hunting in Pa’ Dalih is at most half an
hour’s walk away, in Bario it is a couple of hours’ walk away. Even this forest is overused and does not contain as much game as does the forest in the southern part of the
Highlands around Pa’ Dalih. This means that it is difficult, in Bario, to go hunting. Most
men appear to go out rarely, although some make the effort to go the distance necessary
to reach areas where there is game. Older men who are involved in rice cultivation have
too much to do and too much to gain from their labours in the rice fields in terms of cash
return to be willing to invest the amount of time necessary to reach good hunting
grounds. Even young men, who have the time, seem rarely to go hunting.
Because few men go hunting, there is little fresh meat coming in. There are as
many domestic pigs and buffaloes as in Pa’ Dalih, but these are, as in Pa’ Dalih, killed
only for irau feasts. What meat there is, is brought in by men from other longhouses
further away for sale.
There is a definite sense of unease about not having fresh meat to prepare as side
dishes at the rice meal in Bario. This was clearly apparent even to us during our
occasional stays there. This underlines the continuing importance of meat for the rice
meal. In Pa’ Dalih, it is said that the people of Bario have `nothing to eat with their rice’
(na’am nok penguman). This is not literally true, since they have tinned meat and fish
brought up from town, bought with money earnt from the sale of rice. They also have
some wild vegetables - although these too are less abundant than in Pa’ Dalih. Having
`nothing’ to eat means, in fact, having no meat. Although having tinned foods is
prestigious because they cost money, they are not considered appropriate as the only side
dishes to a rice meal.
Christianity, Gender and Life Force
After the Second World War the Kelabit were converted to a form of pentecostal
Christianity by the Borneo Evangelical Mission. The mission was instrumental in setting
up a local church, the Sidang Injil Borneo (SIB), based in Lawas in the Fifth Division of
10
Sarawak14. The membership of this church is almost entirely made up of Kelabit and
related peoples living in the 4th and 5th Divisions of Sarawak. All Kelabit - with the
solitary exception, to my knowledge, of one rather eccentric Muslim in Bario - belong to
the SIB. Membership may, in fact, be said to be an ethnic marker.
Pre-Christian Kelabit deities and spirits included Puntumid, the `Great Spirit’ of
the forest referred to at the beginning of this paper. They also included a deity called
Deraya, associated with rice-growing, and a Creator Deity called Baru. While Puntumid
is believed to be male and to have related to men, there are indications that Deraya is
female and certainly it is women who used to relate to her. The gender of Baru is
unclear, although some Kelabit men told me that Baru is male. This may, however, be
due to the conflation of Baru with God the Father under Christianity. While Puntumid
was associated with access to lalud, Deraya was associated with the generation of ulun,
which is closely linked to the successful growing of rice.
Nowadays, people pray to Christ for both lalud and ulun. He is believed to be a
more potent channel to the ultimate source of both of them, the Creator Deity. However,
this does not mean that the Kelabit no longer believe that Puntumid, Deraya and other
minor spirits exist or that they are not potential channels of lalud or means of generating
ulun. It is simply that a more effective channel has become available - Christ. In fact,
the Kelabit do not talk of `belief’ - they say, rather, that they `follow’ Christ rather than
pre-Christian deities, using the term maya’.
Interestingly, access to Christ, unlike that to Deraya and Puntumid, is not
gendered. Both men and women pray to Christ, go into trances and speak in tongues,
about equally often. Christianity, then, has in some senses `ungendered’ access to both
lalud and ulun. This may have had implications with regard to the significance of `being
male’ and `being female’. As far as men are concerned, the fact that they no longer go
headhunting or to war means the abandonment of an important male activity. These
kinds of activities are, in myths and tales, associated with masculinity and the display of
lalud.
However, the fact that lalud is now derived from God the Father via Christ has
not carried with it the loss of the association between lalud and the `out there’. Prayer is
believed to be most effective in the forest and especially on hills and mountains. The
people of Pa’ Dalih used, during my first period of fieldwork, to go regularly to a place
on the top of a nearby hill where a kind of outdoor church, with benches, had been
constructed. This habit of praying in the forest, and on top of hills appears to be common
among Kelabit and related Lun Bawang belonging to the SIB church, which regularly
sent exhortations while we were in Pa’ Dalih for people to stop doing this and to pray in
the proper churches only. However, large-scale pilgrimages to the highest and most
remote mountains for the purposes of prayer are regularly undertaken under the auspices
of the SIB church, accompanied by the hope of miracles. Thus the association of lalud
and `out there’ remains, even for the leaders of the church.
14
Lees describes the history of the conversion of the Kelabit and the establishment of the SIB (Lees 1979).
11
The Kelabit themselves are emphatic that there has been a radical break with the
past, symbolized most especially by the adoption of Christianity. This is something
which is very frequently mentioned in church and has also been said directly to me many
times. Kelabit living in town are very unhapppy about any implication that pre-Christian
beliefs or practices live on15. However, there do seem to be continuities. The fact that
even within Christianity lalud is associated with forest and mountains is an example of
the way in which old and new systems of religious practice co-exist and overlap.
The continuing importance of meat within the rice meal, displayed by the unease
about not having any meat-based side dishes for any significant period of time, is
arguably an expression of the same continuity between old and new. The rice meal is, I
would suggest, a profoundly important statement of kinship, society and cosmology 16,
and meat is an essential part of this. I would suggest that the continuing importance of
the balanced relationship between rice and wild meat within the rice meal displays the
continuing significance of a way of accessing lalud which is derived from pre-Christian
modes of accessing it from the forest.
Despite the ungendering of access to ulun and lalud in the context of Christianity
- and the fact that both men and women pray in the forest and on mountains - it continues
to be men who have contact with the lalud of the forest, primarily through hunting, and
women continue to be afraid of the spirits of the forest. Men, then, and not women,
continue to be associated with access to lalud for the rice meal.
Conclusion
I have looked at the relationship between Kelabit men, the forest and access to life
force through meat. Men continue to be inextricably linked with hunting, which has, now
as in the past, a spiritual as well as a practical function - bringing in lalud from the forest
for the rice meal. This remains true despite the fact that Christianity has provided an
alternative, and more powerful, channel to lalud via Christ, which presents a picture of
how lalud is accessed without there being a special male relationship with its source.
Even with Christianity, the association of lalud with the `out there’ - the forest and
mountains - continues to hold. There are, then, clearly visible continuities with the past,
and access to the forest remains profoundly important to Kelabit society and cosmology.
The Kelabit Highlands are just about to be logged; the logging trails have reached
Remudu, three hours’ walk from Pa’ Dalih. Previous experience in other parts of
Sarawak indicate that logging will mean much reduced access to game, even if it is done
selectively. It seems likely that the Kelabit will be able (unlike many other tribal peoples
in Sarawak, who have no easy cash crop equivalent to the Kelabit wet rice varieties) to
replace game meat with tinned meats and perhaps even fresh meat imported from town,
through the sale of rice. It seems likely, however, that although this may mean no
The `break with the past’ is explicitly discussed by Lian Saging, a Kelabit himself (Lian-Saging 1976/77,
Chapters VI and VII).
16
I discuss this elsewhere (Janowski 1998).
15
12
significant nutritional impact, there will be a disruptive social and spiritual impact
because of the symbolic role of wild meat. The beginnings of this can already be seen in
Bario.
To end, I want to return to Puntumid, the `Great Spirit’ of the forest with whom
we started. Until the 1950s, Puntumid provided a symbol of the special, male association
with lalud and its source. Nowadays, he, and the pre-Christian deities, have been set
aside in favour of Christ, who is believed to be a more direct and effective channel to the
ultimate source of lalud and ulun - the Creator Deity, God theFather/Baru. Our
neighbour in the longhouse in Pa’ Dalih, Balang Pelaba - whose name means, literally,
`Forever a Tiger’, evoking that most powerful symbol of masculinity and lalud - had, as a
young man, had a relationship with Puntumid. He, who had known the `Great Spirit’,
expressed pity for him. Puntumid, he said, was lonely.
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