KUCHING: The life of the Kenyah has always revolved around rice as it shapes their perception of the landscape and time.
Dr Annina Aeberli from University of Bern, Switzerland said the cyclical rice cultivation determines the year and calendar of the harvesting season, in which the time is perceived through rice as well.
“Rice also shapes and stratifies the community such as labour exchange, festivities, status marking and others,” she said in her talk entitled ‘Taking Care of the Land: The Kenyah’s Duty’ held at Telang Usan Hotel here on Tuesday evening (Feb 28).
She said rice is also the core of the old religion of the Kenyah community.
Called the “Adet Pu’un”, she said rice also has its signs and omen when performing a ritual called the “Palup”.
“This is to seek permission from ‘paselong’ or ‘bungan’ (highest spirits) to work the land with animals such as hawk, eagle, birds, deer or snake to indicate which is a good place to harvest and start sowing rice.
“Playing away disease such as spinning top (to help get rid of pests) is also involved in the ritual for a bountiful harvest,” she added.
To appease the spirit, Aeberli said one must wear beautiful clothes at sowing to please its spirit or face punishment should one waste the rice and make noise when harvesting.
In today’s context, she noted that there is less rice cultivation as the Kenyahs now are transitioning to Christianisation and conversion to Catholicism in the late 1940s.
“The conscious decision for Catholicism is to get rid of food taboos or omens and it also replaces Adet Pu’un,” she said.
From subsistence to cash crops, she said the Kenyahs are experimenting with different crops to improve their socioeconomic.
“Planting implies ownership and in this context, the planting of rice shows that you have the ownership of the land,” she said.
Aeberli is a social anthropologist whose research investigates human-nature relationships among the Kenyah. She has been researching and working in Sarawak for over ten years.
One of her works include the relationship between the Kenyah and their environment at Tanjung Tepalit, along the Baram River with 66 households and focusing on rice, forest gardens and crops, land, pig and the Baram River.
The talk was co-hosted by Friends of Sarawak Museum (FoSM) and Sarawak Biodiversity Centre (SBC), supported by Telang Usan Hotel, Kuching.
