Dayaks will be Dayaks, nothing else!

They have put Putrajaya and the Sarawak Government on notice that they will henceforth be known in official forms as Dayak, not Bumiputera Sarawak, or even worse “lain-lain” (others) in their own country.

KUCHING: Fifty one years after their homeland, Sarawak, entered into a Federation with Sabah and the peninsula, the Dayaks in Sarawak once-feared for their head-hunting ways want to call a spade a spade.

They have put Putrajaya and the Sarawak Government on notice that they will henceforth be known in official forms as Dayak, not Bumiputera Sarawak, or even worse “lain-lain” (others) in their own country.

They know what they are and want officialdom to take note of that and not pin labels they detest on them.

The Dayak in Sarawak, Orang Asal i.e. indigenous or Native, are puzzled by the term Bumiputera Sarawak and see it as nothing less than reducing them to less than full citizenship, sort of 2nd class citizens or subjects.

“I strongly oppose the term ‘Bumiputera Sarawak’ as I have strongly opposed the words ‘lain-lain’ as the Dayaks will remain as ‘2nd class’ Bumiputera under any other term,” agreed lawyer and Ba’Kelalan Assemblyman Baru Bian.

He was commenting on a Barisan Nasional Youth Resolution on Saturday in Kuching for the immediate removal of the offensive term “lain-lain” in official forms and replaced with “Bumiputera Sarawak” and “Bumiputera Sabah” to classify the Dayak and KadazanDusunMurut respectively.

Baru, among the Dayak leaders who spoke up on a longstanding issue, said there was no reason why the Dayak should not be classified according to their ethnicity.

“Why do we have to use Bumiputera Sarawak? asked Baru who is also Pakatan Rakyat Sarawak chairman. “Does the Bumiputera term include the Malays in the peninsula? If yes, then the problem of 2nd class Bumiputera arises.”

The Sarawak Dayak Graduates Association (SDGA), likewise, said that “lain-lain” should be dropped from official forms.

“The policy to categorize the Dayaks as ‘lain-lain’ is one of the government’s policies that have become a stumbling block to Dayak progress,” read a media update from the association. “The word ‘Dayak’ should replace ‘lain-lain’.”

NCR activist Nicholas Bawin recalled that a National Unity Committee discussed the “lain-lain” issue some years ago but nothing came out of the meeting.

“I told the forum how we could not achieve unity when Dayaks and KadazanDusunMuruts are termed ‘lain-lain’,” said Nicholas who is also Lubok Antu PKR division chairperson. “Lain-lain is not in the law.”

Mengga Mikui, the Dayak National Congress (DNC) President, said that “Bumiputera Sarawak” and “lain-lain” are equally offensive terms, the former being too vague while the latter meant nothing.

The term “Dayak” covers Natives in Sabah, Sarawak and Kalimantan, he added, in echoing the stand taken by the Pan-Borneo Dayak Forum headed by Bingkor Assemblyman Jeffrey Kitingan.

“The term Dayak can be qualified, for example, as Dayak Dusun, Dayak Kadazan, and Dayak Murut in Sabah,” he stressed.

“In Sarawak, it can be Dayak Iban, Dayak Bidayuh, Dayak Melanau and Dayak Orang Ulu.”

He did not say where this leaves the Sarawak Malays, classified in this manner by the Brooke Dynasty of White Rajahs in taking a leaf from the British in the peninsula. The British codified the term Malay to cover the Muslims from Sulawesi, Java and Sumatra whom they found in the peninsula speaking in Malay to communicate with each other.

The Sarawak Malays are mainly Bidayuh and Iban living along the coast who became Muslims.

The term Bumiputera is not law either.

It was first Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman who coined the term Bumiputera as an umbrella political term to bring the Orang Asal in Sabah and Sarawak, the Orang Asli in the peninsula and the Malays under one classification.