Kayan River in 2019

 

Kayan River
YouTube screengrab of longboat passing through a rapid along Kayan River

Kayan River originates on Mount Ukeng. It flows downstream passing Tanjung Selor city and then discharges it contains into Sulawesi Sea. The entire river drainage span 576 km long.

This is river that give the Kayan their ethnonym (see Mika Okushima 2006). Into the late nineteenth and early nineteenth century, waves of Kayan migrated northwards (see Jerome Rousseau 1990).

Today they dominate two major riverine in north Borneo - the Baram and Upper Rejang.  

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