The Kajang of Belaga Sarawak

Penghulu Puso Abun with his second wife

 

This article is not about the "Kajang tribe of South Sulewasi" nor the Kajang city in Selangor. 

It is about tribal peoples of other islands in the South East Asia archipelago. The Kajang concerned here is a grouping of six minorities that include the Sekapans, Kejamans, Lahanans, Punans, Tanjongs, and Kanowits. They are a citizen of Sarawak, one of the Malaysian states on the island of Borneo refer to the Federal Constitution Section 161A(7) [pdf].

Kajang historical background

Before 1949, no one knows about 'Kajang', although the term has a certain currency deep in the interior of Sarawak. It was anthropologist Dr Ronald Edmund Leach who first coined the term in his “Social Economic Survey of Sarawak” report (Leach 1950:54–5). It was social economic survey commissioned by the Colonial Social Science Research Council published by His Majesty's Stationery Office in 1950.

Leach's sources were the Sekapans of Belaga. Penghulu Puso Abun who assisted him throughout the tour of Belaga and Bintulu was the staunchest proponent of the grouping. In Puso’s articulation (so are the current batch of Kajang community leaders), Kajang means the Punan, Sekapan, Kejaman, Lahanan, Bemali, Seping, Sebob, Lugat, Sian, Tanjong, Kanowit, and Berawan (refer to Leach 1950).

Peter Metcalf who went on to study Berawan about three decades after Leach's visit was less than amused about the classification. He goes as far as calling Leach 'inventing ethnicity'.

The temptation to invent non indigenous super categories was not restricted to amateurs. During his 1947 visit to Sarawak, Edmund Leach was drawn into making yet another ethnic taxonomy of the peoples of Sarawak,refining those made by colonial officers before him. He rejects the Klemantan classification which Hose had stretched to its breaking point. Having ridiculed Hose, however, Leach promptly substitutes a miscellaneous category of his own. Leach’s term “Kajang” was not invented from thin air; it evidently had some currency to describe non-Kayan, non-Kenyah people in the Belaga watershed, but Leach extended it to cover populations like the Sebop and Berawan in the Baram watershed, where the term is unknown. The resulting construct, his Kayan-Kenyah-Kajang Complex (Leach 1950:54–5), is now enshrined in Borneo ethnography, but it is no more justified than Hose’s Klemantan. It represents no indigenous ethnicity, and linguistically Sebop and Berawan are as distant from the languages in Belaga as they are from Kenyah. He, too, fell into the trap of imposing ethnicity, rather than studying ethnification. (Metcalf 2010)

Thereafter, a few tribal groups that Leach designated as Kajang gradually being dropped. A new classification of the Kajang emerged in 2006, that only includes the Punans, Sekapans, Kejamans, Lahanans, Tanjongs, and Kanowits. 

Notably missing were the Kenyah groups, Berawan and Sebop. In Leach's classification, "Punan" refers to the former nomads that include (Aput, Basap, Boh, Buket, Bukitan, Busang Kelai, Lisum, Lugat, Ot, Penyabong). The Punan he described as 'Punan Bah'. 

Subsequently, the nomad was either dropped entirely (Boh, Ot, Penyabong), some reclassified as a separate group (Beketan, Lisum, Sihan), and others grouped as Penan (Penan, Punan Busang, Punan Aput). The term 'Punan' into the twenty-first century has been redesignated as referring to a group that Leach called 'Punan Bah', reflecting the true origin of the name.

Kajang Place of Origin? 

There are two conflicting stories. In the mid-nineteenth century, during the era of Penghulu Puso, it was said the Kajang were originally inhabitants of the Linau and Balui Rivers on the upper reaches of the Rejang.

Their settlements were purportedly scattered between Kebuau (Kebhor on map) and Kajang Rivers (Clayre 1971). Historically, Kajang denotes "Sekapan, Kejaman, and Lahanan". Their true name was Lajih ajo' or Lajang aju', so the Sekapan said (ibid). This also who they were in the Punan oral history.

In the late twentieth century, the story of Kajang origin was changed. It is now said the Kajang ancestors were originally from Apo’ Daa in today’s East Kalimantan (Luhat, 1989:50). They end up in the upper Rejang following two major waves of migrations, about fifteen generations (that is before 1989). 

The first wave brought them to Balui and Linau valleys, hence the Sekapan, Kejaman, Lahanan, and presumably 'Punan Bah'; the second wave, headed westward to the source of Balleh and drifted downstream. This group consisted of the Tanjong and Kanowit, later, occupied the region between Kapit to Kanowit.

No evident of Punan settled in Apo Daa, Linau and Balui Rivers

But strictly speaking, the Tanjong (Tanyung) and Kanowit (Kanawit), and Punan are autochthonous groups in the Rejang (Tillotson 1994). They were not from Apo Daa in Kalimantan nor the Linau and Baluy basin as the Sekapan's narrative.

This myth is contradictory to the ethnohistory and disputed by Punan elders and chiefs long ago, such as Lanyieng Jiui (Punan Sama/Tepeleang), Luton (Punan Ba), Keseng Nyipa (Punan Kakus), Berasap (Punan Pandan), and Adi Avit (Punan Jelalong).

It has always been said the Punan were originally from the Punan River, a tributary of Bah River. The Ba Valley which means "Rice Valley" is where their archaic ancestors came from (see Nicolaisen 1976, 1977/78). The Punan valley is located about 80km south of Bintulu as crow flies, not a hundred kilometres in the southeast of Borneo.

Linguistically, the Punan languages are markedly different from that of the Sekapan, Kejaman, and Lahanan. There were two dialects of Punan: the Rejang and the Tatau dialect. The Rejang dialect, heavily acculturated by the Kajang (Sekapan, Kejaman), Bukitan, Kenyah, and Kayan (Alexander 2017) is widely spoken. 

The other obscure dialect is the Tatau (Taytow) spoken by a few hundred speakers today, mostly along the Tatau drainage. A related dialect was the Siteng dialect (spoken by a group known as Punan Lelak, Punan Ibiek according to Melanau sources), long-extinct and was believed to be a variant of the Tatau dialect.

What is Kajang? 

The Kajang has always been a political grouping, a  contrast to Kayan and Kenyah. It is modeled after Temenggong Oyong Lawai Jau's "Orang Ulu" (Metcalf 2010), a label that subsequently gained mainstream recognition, thank to OUNA (Orang Ulu National Association). In direct response to OUNA formation in the 1960s, an association spearheaded by Kenyah and Kayan; The Kajang (Sekapan, Kejaman, and Punan) proposed a "Kajang association". But the effort, however, fell short. It was only in 2020 that a similar sounding 'Kajang association' was officially registered by the Registrar of Societies, Sarawak branch at Kuching.