KELABITS' STORY THE GREAT TRANSITION

There was a group of people who originally lived in North East of Borneo who did not know what race their group was called but prefer to call them by regions and places where they live. That allowed others to impose race names upon them and had sadly divided them into three peoples until today. In later days probably before the Christian era they migrated up into the highlands the remotest place in central Borneo. In the Kelabits’ Story - The Great Transition the author writes about the Kelabits one of the groups mentioned above who had incredibly fast to transform themselves educationally, economically, socially and spiritually within sixty-six years from 1946 to 2012. Now they have considerable influence on the Malaysian Nation despite that they are one of the smallest ethnic groups in Malaysia. In his effort to write the book the author referred to some books, interviewed several old folks from various Kelabit longhouses, but as a Kelabits himself he relied heavily on his own experiences living with the Kelabits in their longhouses, teaching their children for twenty years in schools in the Kelabit Highlands. Some of the activities highlighted in the books are: the ancestors feast and the feast to celebrate the birth of a child which they called irau, the traditional spirit worship, reasons for carrying out head hunting, the jar coffin and the deep stone hole burial at Arur Saled, Bario, their conversion to Christianity, their involvement in World War II and Indonesia’s confrontation to the formation of Malaysia which the writer call blessing in disguise for the Kelabit community. Immediately after the Second World War Tom Harrisson had rightly establish a primary school in 1946 to enable Kelabit children to go to school which they never had the chance before. This school had contributed to the dawn of transformation of the Kelabits. During the Indonesia and Malaysia confrontation the British Army evacuated the Kelabits who lived along the border of Sarawak with Kalimantan, Indonesia to be protected at one place at Bario. That had made a big number of Kelabits settled at one place and made it easier for the Government to carry out economic and social development for them. The writer had identified that the biggest problem faced by the Kelabits before 1960s was their isolation. This was because they live very far up in the Kelabit Highlands and the only way to get to them and for them to get out of the highlands was walking through thick jungle, cross many rivers, climbed numerous high mountains and by boat to commercial centers in the coastal areas. School children who had to continue their studies had to go through the same way to their schools in town centers. Up to 1950s they had to live in this way and in isolation, but because of the request by Penghulu Lawai Besara BEM the Government built a grass airfield at Bario and introduced regular air services from Marudi and Miri to Bario from 1962. Economic activities were carried out by air and school children did not have to walk to attend schools in town centers any more. This had further contributed to the Kelabit’s transformation. In this book a reader could read how a small backward community living in isolation in a remote place could transform into a modern community and successfully had some influence in a nation’s life despite their small number.