Having just finished the mild war of the recent state election, it is now time to drink to the Dayak harvest festival in Sarawak. I am eternally grateful to the nice Iban nurse who sent me a few bottles of the most excellent langkau a week ago. In this fiery nectar from Bumi Kenyalang, resides the spirit of the vast good earth of Sarawak.

The Hari Gawai is not really a Gawai. I once looked up Anthony Richard's authoritative Iban Dictionary, which is more like an encyclopaedia on the Iban civilisation than a dictionary. There are over 60 different types of Gawai, all with something to do with religious offerings and rituals for various purposes largely connected with their unique agricultural way of life.

I have attended more than a few Gawai celebrations. On one occasion, during a Gawai Kenyalang celebration somewhere in the Iban heartland of the Rejang Basin, thousands of villagers from communities within miles up and down the river were all invited to this one longhouse.

The religious ceremony was very solemn, accompanied by much feasting, drinking and dancing the traditional ngajat . It went on for days. Very much later, I learned that a Gawai on that scale can be very expensive. Each family in the longhouse is responsible for hosting quite a few guests from the surrounding longhouses, and every need of the visitors is taken care of during the entire celebration. The hosts have to save for a few years in order to hold such a grand event. Some of them go nearly bankrupt afterwards.

The most memorable Gawai for me was a Gawai Sandau Ari somewhere along the Miri-Bintulu Road. In name only, it was a minor celebration, one to welcome a new day. The reality was much more complicated.

The land where these Ibans lived and farmed happens to be situated in the most fertile stretch of land in Sarawak. In the name of development, the state government of Sarawak had allocated tens of thousands of hectares of this land to a plantation company from "Malaya". Overnight, the Iban farmers who had farmed the land there for many decades according to their customary laws had become squatters and trespassers in the eye of the Sarawak Land Code!

The Ibans' passion in the defence of their land is legendary. Their fierce independence had led them to war against the Brooke Rajahs, who had descended over 100 years ago from England via Singapore and wrestled the rule of the state from the Sultan of Brunei in the style of Conrad's Lord Jim.

Spared modrn economics

Modern outsiders would have a great deal of difficulty in understanding the relationship between the Sarawak natives and their land. These people had been spared the economics of Adam Smith until the modern era. To them, land cannot be owned as a form of capital. Instead, their claim to land is through usage, by clearing a chunk of primary jungle, and planting rice for their use.

This sort of land claimed through native Customary Right (NCR) is given recognition in theory at least under the Sarawak Land Code for land cleared prior to 1957. In practice however, throughout the length and breadth of Sarawak, modern economic forces in the form of the logging, dam building, and plantation industries have brushed aside these legitimate claim to land usage, causing widespread hardship to all the indigenous people of the state.

This is what had happened to the 18 longhouses along the Miri-Bintulu Road.

They decided to hold a big meeting to discuss the issue, as one of the village chiefs, a tuai rumah , was to be charged in court the next day in Bintulu for trespassing. The gathering of many hundreds of angry Ibans was bound to alarm the authorities. Furthermore, they did not want to apply for a permit for a public assembly. So they organised a Gawai Sandau Ari instead.

All the trappings of a traditional Gawai were there of course. As a VIP then, I was invited to slit the throat of a screaming pig at the foot of the staircase leading up to the common corridor, or ruai . I politely declined, and an Iban representative of mine did the gruesome honour.

The pig, together with other animals and vegetables, was properly cooked for all the invited guests. Its raw liver was presented to the village elders for inspection. They squatted in a ring and examined the organ with great care. After a while, they declared that they had seen signs of a bright future for their struggle, to the roaring cheer of the restive crowd.

Dressed in impressive warrior gear, all the tuai rumah of the 18 affected communities took turn to step forward, cited a passage from their favourite epic poem, the sampi , concluded with blood-cuddling war cries, dipped the tip of their parang in pig blood and then touched the back of their heads with it.

Land their blood and bone

Then a mass assembly was held. One after another, the village leaders stepped forth and told of their case. The land was their blood and bone, they said. Their ancestors had cleared it for their subsistence farming at first. Then they were buried on their land, and their spirits still guarded over the children and grandchildren.

The land was not something you buy and sell like a pig they said. There were spirits everywhere, in the woods, in the sky, and in the rivers. Their land was their home and their universe. Once the plantation took away their land, all the spirits would be disturbed. Peace and harmony would be destroyed. They would go hungry, and be forced to work for the plantation company as collies earning pittance.

Then, somebody in full warrior paraphernalia climbed up to the roof of the longhouse and fired a succession of booming shots into the air, inviting the god of earth Pulang Gana and other deities to come and partake of the goodness that they had prepared. Then, and only then, did the gongs start their rhythmic cacophony, and the festivities begin in earnest.

Early the next morning, the town people of Bintulu were shocked to watch hundreds of Ibans from the Miri-Bintulu Road marching in the street towards the court house. They had been ferried into town on the open back of a construction truck from very early in the morning, and the truck driver had to make many trips.

The crowd later thronged the small court room. Those who could get in packed it to the brim, while manangs , or tribal doctors, went around the court building trying to cast some kind of charm over it with their utai pengaruh.

His honour the sitting judge was not amused. When the name of the single accused was called out, the whole room of people stood up. The lawyer who defended the tuai rumah accused of trespassing later told me that the judge almost wanted to cite him for contempt!

Lack of cultural sensitivity

This simple tale goes to show just how resourceful the Dayaks of Sarawak are, in adapting their traditions towards meeting the challenges of surviving in a modern hostile environment. Despite the corrosive assault from the forces of modernity, their cultural values and their "pagan" religious beliefs continue to nourish their collective memory and their soul that is so deeply rooted in their land.

As I write, I was invited to attend a political meeting organised by Party Keadilan Rakyat at the Chinese Assembly Hall in Kuala Lumpur to-night. Dominique Ng, the newly elected YB from Kuching, and others will address the audience there.

I am a little irked by their lack of cultural sensitivity. Today is Hari Gawai. Although it is not a Gawai in the traditional sense, it is the official Gawai Day for all the Dayak people of Sarawak, established shortly after independence, in recognition to the native status and contribution of the Dayak people to the history of Sarawak.

This is a time to declare a moratorium on all political activities. All friends of the Dayaks would do well to honour the day with expressing gratitude to the deities in the heaven and on earth, to rejoice in family and clan reunions, to renew ancestral bond with much feasting and drinking.

This is what is happening in the towns and the jungles across the entire state of Sarawak. For once in a year, millions of the indigenous Dayak People in the Land of the Hornbill will cast their care aside, and indulge in the celebration of life and the renewal of their indomitable human spirit to carve a niche for themselves in this big wide world'

As the Ibans will say on this day: Gayu Guru, Gerai Nyamai!