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Routledge Handbook of Urbanization in Southeast Asia
Rita Padawangi
Between tradition and modernity
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Yunci Cai
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179
14
BETWEEN TRADITION AND
MODERNITY
The ritual politics of indigenous cultural
heritage in urbanizing Sabah, East Malaysia
Yunci Cai
Introduction
Modernization and urbanization have influenced indigenous peoples of Sabah in the eastern state
of Malaysia to embrace world religions such as Christianity and Islam. Since the 1970s, ritual prac-
tices in Sabah have undergone a significant decline, as many indigenous peoples have converted
from their traditional animist religions. Since the late 2000s, however, these ritual traditions are
increasingly valorized as a symbol of indigenous identity and pride, as well as a cultural icon for
the promotion of tourism. While the commodification of ritual traditions has revived the once
fledging cultural practices, this transformation seems to have put their ritual efficacy in question.
My objective is to explore the impact of modernization and urbanization on the transfor-
mation of ritual traditions through an ethnographic study of two indigenous groups in Sabah,
to illuminate how and why the practices of ritual traditions have changed over time, and the
cultural politics of this transformation. Based on a six-month immersive fieldwork with the
Kadazan people from the District of Penampang and the Lotud people from the District of
Tuaran from April to September 2015, I demonstrate how the transformation of ritual traditions
in Sabah is deeply intertwined with the changing local socio-economic and political contexts
faced by the indigenous peoples and explore the cultural politics of this transformation.
Primary data are derived from participant observation, and unstructured and semi-structured
interviews carried out during the six-month immersion with the two indigenous groups in
Sabah. As my research concerns indigenous peoples, I followed the strict ethical guidelines that
govern such research, including adherence to the principle of free, prior and informed con-
sent (FPIC) as outlined in the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples, which means that I secured prior signed consent from my interviewees and research
subjects for documenting any conversation, interview or activity. I extensively used informant
quotes to allow the issues to emerge in my informants’ own words to facilitate a better apprecia-
tion of the local contexts as experienced by the indigenous peoples.
In what follows, I will discuss how urbanization has led to the widespread conversion of
indigenous peoples to world religions since the 1970s, leading to a demise in the practice of
ritual traditions. I then explore their revivalism in commodified forms since the late 2000s for
the assertion of indigenous identity and the promotion of cultural tourism, which seems to put
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Yunci Cai
180
their ritual efficacy into question. I will then consider the revivalism of ritual traditions in the
aftermath of the 2016 Mount Kinabalu earthquake, when indigenous peoples in Sabah variously
drew upon their ritual practices to appease the angered mountain guardians of Mount Kinabalu
to neutralize the calamity, attesting to the continued belief in the ritual efficacy of their tradi-
tional practices. I conclude with some observations on the relationship between the practice of
ritual traditions and their efficacy in the face of urbanization and modernization.
Decline of ritual traditions in the face of modernization
and urbanization
While foreign missionaries existed in Sabah for over a century since the establishment of the
British North Borneo Company in 1881, large-scale conversion of the indigenous peoples to
Christianity, and to some extent, Islam and Buddhism, began in earnest only from the 1970s.
Until the 1970s, the foreign missionaries made little inroads into converting the indigenous
peoples to Christianity due to the close entanglement between their social organization and
their ritual practices in their vernacular lives, which revolved around the cultivation of rice.
Both the Lotud and Kadazan peoples, like other Dusunic groups in Sabah, are traditionally rice-
cultivators and organize themselves around the cultivation of rice (Blood 1990).
Until the late twentieth century, the Lotud and Kadazan peoples followed a ritual complex
structured around the cultivation of rice, with different stages of rice cultivation celebrated with
its own ritual practices, entangled within an indigenous cosmology which defined the relations
with spirits, ancestors and other non-human entities. They believe that the ideal world is one
that maintains a balance between physical and spiritual worlds, with the physical world paral-
leling the spiritual world, where balance is achieved when human beings behave in a morally
upright manner in the regulation of the self and in their actions towards the environment, as
prescribed in the sacred texts known as the rinait (Cai and John Baptist 2016: 65).
The Lotud and Kadazan peoples have their own rinait in their respective indigenous lan-
guages, which recount their creation myths, the exploits and retributions of their deities, the
origins of rice, prescriptions for moral living, ritual practices and other aspects of their cultural
lives (Pugh-Kitingan and John Baptist 2009: 250). When human beings conduct themselves in
an immoral manner, or treat the environment in an unsustainable way, the universe will become
too ‘hot’ (alasu), and will require rituals and sacrifices (sogit), to make it ‘cool’ (osogit) to restore
the balance (Cai and John Baptist 2016). Natural and human calamities such as landslides, earth-
quakes, floods, wars and murders occur due to the imbalances in the universe, and these need
to be restored through rituals and sacrifices performed by the ritual specialists (ibid.). In the same
vein, immoral behaviors such as rape, incest and obscenity, can cause the universe to overheat,
leading to natural or human calamities, and require rituals and sacrifices to remedy the situation
(ibid.). Governed by a system of prohibitions, prescriptions and omens embodied within their tra-
ditional cosmologies, the rhythms of everyday sociality in traditional Lotud and Kadazan societies
are intricately intertwined with the ritual practices associated with the agricultural cycle of rice
cultivation, as well as the responsibilities and obligations towards the physical and spiritual worlds.
It was not until the 1970s, when widespread rural-urban migration began to take off in Sabah
as young people set off to the urban areas to look for waged labor, and following the demise of
traditional rice cultivation in rural villages, that the intricate connection between ritual practices
and everyday sociality declined. Since the 1970s, Sabah has undergone massive transformation,
achieving a high level of urbanization due to large-scale rural-urban migration. In Sabah, the
percentage of urban population has risen marginally from 16.9 per cent in 1970 to 19.9 per cent
in 1980, but took off steadily thereafter, reaching 33.2 per cent in 1991 and 48.1 per cent in
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Between tradition and modernity
181
2000 (Mazlan 2014). As of 2010, more than half of Sabah’s population at 53.3 per cent lives in
urban areas (Mazlan 2014). The high level of urbanization in Sabah has inevitably led to signifi-
cant changes in the social organization and relations among the indigenous peoples.
Until the 1980s, the Lotud and Kadazan societies supported a significant number of high
priestesses and ritual specialists, known as tantagas among the Lotud people, and as bobohizans
among the Kadazan people, many of whom were women. The training to become a tantagas or
bobohizan typically involves years of pupillage with senior tantagas or bobohizans to understand
the indigenous customs and cosmologies, memorize the rinait and learn the sequence of the
different ritual ceremonies. Each tantagas or bobohizan will have a familiar spirit which will help
them in their ritual consultations and ceremonies. The familiar spirit is believed to reside in the
komburongo, an item of ritual paraphernalia made up of sacred ginger pieces strung together,
which can be awakened by saying a chant to it. Among the Lotud ritual specialists, some of
the tantagas are also spirit mediums, known as libabou, but not all tantagas are bestowed with the
abilities of a libabou, and not all libabou undergo training to become tantagas.
At present, there are three surviving senior bobohizans and a handful of about twenty liv-
ing tantagas and libabou in Sabah, with no prospect of replacing them when they pass on. The
younger generation typically migrates to the city to find work, as is reflected in the general
urbanization trend in Sabah. This presents significant challenges for the transmission of ritual
traditions in the villages. The difficulties of learning the art of bobohizan is keenly felt by a young
Kadazan aspiring to be a bobohizan, Adam Gontusan, whom I met while conducting fieldwork
at the Monsopiad Cultural Village, the oldest indigenous cultural village in Sabah.
Adam is an apprentice bobohizan who is undergoing training with a senior bobohizan to
become an initiated specialist of Kadazan rituals. He has been a dancer and a narrator at the
Monsopiad Cultural Village, before transforming into his current role as the resident bobohizan
of Monsopiad Cultural Village. Adam laments about the challenges of learning the craft, as many
bobohizans are getting old, and they no longer remember the rituals since they do not perform
them regularly. There are also limited opportunities to participate in or observe ritual ceremo-
nies, as it is prohibitively expensive to conduct rituals in Sabah today. Faced with the immense
difficulty of learning the craft from the senior bobohizans, Adam relies on his ingenuity to make
the best out of what he has. Adam frequently engages his familiar spirit, or divato in Kadazan
language, living in his komburongo to guide him in his rituals, as he said:
The divato is the familiar spirit that can do many things. When the bobohizans perform
the ritual, they ask their divatos, who live inside the komburongo, to assist them and to
support them during the rituals. When the divato is awake, you can smell an orangey
smell from the komburongo. You can ask the divato to help you do many things, like
curing a person. The divato will tell the bobohizan what she needs to do.
I had the opportunity to interview one of the three remaining senior bobohizans in Sabah, Ina Gusiti,
who spoke about the demise of the Kadazan ritual practices and her difficulties of passing on the craft:
I’m very sad but I cannot do anything because we don’t have any bohungkitas (chief
bobohizan) to continue the teaching and study. At the same time, most of the com-
munities are turning to Christianity, some to Muslim, some to other religions. And
I personally cannot pass down the traditional knowledge because I’ve forgotten a lot
of things. Even though I can remember some, I’ve forgotten others, so even if I pass
down to another person, it’s not correct because when people go for Modsuut, and the
rinait is not proper, then it’s not good for that person.
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Due to the demise of many tantagas and bobohizans due to old age and their conversion to world
religions such as Christianity or Islam, both of which discourage the practice of ritual traditions,
many ritual traditions are gradually being lost. Based on the 2010 population census of Malaysia,
65.4 per cent of Malaysians living in Sabah identified themselves as Muslims, while a further
26.6 per cent were Christians; only a dismal 0.2 per cent, or 5,962 individuals, identified them-
selves as having other religions including traditional animistic religions (Cai and John Baptist
2016). Many indigenous youths do not believe in the significance of their ritual traditions and
have no interest in acquiring knowledge about how they are conducted. There is a real pos-
sibility that the indigenous ritual practices will be lost in their vernacular forms in the future.
The commodification and touristification of ritual traditions
Since the late 2000s, ritual traditions have gradually transformed from forms of ritual rites to
serve the spirits in their vernacular lives to forms of cultural performances that are symbolically
staged for family celebrations, as well as state carnivals organized by the Sabah state government
in major urban areas. One such example is the Magavau ritual performed by the Kadazan people.
The Magavau ritual has been transformed from a rice-honoring ritual conducted in the rice fields
by bobohizans to welcome the rice spirit, Bambaazon, and bring the spirits of the strayed rice
grains home during the harvest season, to a cultural performance that is staged at family and state
celebrations by a mixed group of bobohizans, villagers and performers who have learnt to sing the
chants. The Magavau ritual, which celebrates a successful harvest, has become an embodiment of
Kadazan identity and values, and is a major highlight of the annual month-long Pesta Kaamatan,
or Harvest Festival, celebrated around Sabah in May and June annually.
The Magavau performance (Figure 14.1) typically features a group of Kadazan performers,
dressed in the traditional Kadazan costume of a long black dress, marching out in a single file
Figure 14.1 Magavau Performance at State Kaamatan Celebration in 2015
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Between tradition and modernity
183
formation while singing the relevant rinait in melodical voices. A head of the delegation, usually
a man, leads the march. He will wield a traditional Kadazan sword, representing the Kadazan
warrior. This symbolizes the action of threading through the rice fields in a single file along
its ledges to welcome the Bambaazon and to summon the spirits of the strayed rice grains to
bring them home. The performance concludes with the traditional sumazau dance, symbolizing
merry-making and celebration on successfully bringing the Bambaazon and other strayed rice
grains home.
Since the early 2010s, there has also been a revival of ritual practices in the private spheres
in urban Sabah, as families re-enact the Magavau performance at family celebrations because
the Kadazan people believe this will bring good luck and blessings. The Magavau performance
was re-enacted at two family Kaamatan celebrations which I attended. The Kadazan perform-
ers assured me that the Magavau performance is different from other cultural performances,
because they observe certain taboos when learning the Magavau chants. As one female per-
former said:
Although we do not understand the meanings of the chants as they’re in old Kadazan
language, we need to learn the chants from our ancestors, to show appreciation for
our ancestors and to preserve our culture. There’re also some taboos and superstitions
about learning the Magavau ritual which we take seriously as well. For example, when
we’re learning about how to perform the Magavau ritual, we must take it seriously
and cannot fool around, or the spirit of the rice will do something to us, or our fam-
ily will not have a good harvest. We still respect these superstitions despite that we’ve
converted to Christianity, because Christianity also teaches us to respect other cultures.
So, we practice Magavau ritual with respect.
In the recent years, the Magavau performance has taken on a larger stage in Sabah’s state capi-
tal, Kota Kinabalu. At the SabahFest 2014, the Magavau performance was incorporated into
a musical entitled ‘Aki Nabalu’ curated by the Sabah Museum and produced by the Sabah
Tourism Board, which highlighted the ritual traditions of seven groups of indigenous peo-
ples in Sabah. A cultural group comprising bobohizans and non-bobohizans from the District
of Penampang, including Adam, was invited to Sabah’s largest cultural complex at the JKKN
(Jabatan Kebudayaan dan Kesenian Negara / National Department of Culture and Arts) to re-
enact the Magavau performance as part of the ‘Aki Nabalu’ musical. The musical also included
a segment of the Lotud people’s Mohlukas ritual, a housewarming ceremony intended to bless
a newly constructed dwelling. Based on Lotud tradition, a newly constructed house must
be cleansed through a Mohlukas ritual ceremony to remove any malignant spirits and other
undesirable elements, which may adversely affect the new occupants of the house, and to
pray for a blessed life for its dwellers (Cai 2016). The week-long Mohlukas ceremony, which
comprises several separate rituals, involving days and nights of chanting the rinait by the tan-
tagas, and the ritual sacrifices of animals such as a buffalo, chickens and chicks, was condensed
into a twenty-minute segment as part of the ‘Aki Nabalu’ musical in Kota Kinabalu. Unlike
the Magavau ritual which was performed by a mixed group of bobohizans and non-bobohizans,
the Mohlukas ritual was performed by a full squad of tantagas from the District of Tuaran.
The author of the musical script, Judeth John Baptist from the Sabah Museum at Kota
Kinabalu, emphasized how she had preserved the authenticity of the ritual traditions performed
in the musical by ensuring no or minimal interference on the sequence of the rituals as decided
by the ritual specialists and local villagers, as she said:
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We identify the ethnic groups through advice from different people, such as the
village headman or the district headman or the local assemblyman. I do a very
thorough research, and always emphasize on the peoples who really know in-depth
about their cultures related to whatever programmes I do. This matters because
otherwise, it will have a lot of unnecessary campur-campur (mixing), and I don’t like
that. This is an opportunity and a venue for local communities to showcase their
cultures on stage. And I emphasize whenever we do the performance on stage, I
always say that you don’t change whatever choreography they’ve done because it’s
their cultures, and they should be the masters of their own cultures, so you must
not tamper with anything. I don’t want you to tamper with the music, dance, or
movement, and even the costume. To me, we always emphasize the sensitivity of
these peoples and their cultures. These peoples’ cultures need to be highlighted
and respected.
The ‘Aki Nabalu’ musical enables the ritual traditions of Sabah to be made relevant to contem-
porary times, albeit a departure from the original ritualistic meanings and symbolism. Detached
from the village setting of the rituals, the placement of the musical in an urban setting as a
performance is a reflection of the urbanization of cultural heritage, through which rituals are
re-interpreted to fit the economic development trajectory. Such a performance helps to place
indigenous cultures in Sabah on a global stage and can be perceived as a vehicle for political
positioning for the assertion of indigenous identities, as well as an effort to capitalize on the
economic potential of Sabah’s multi-cultural heritage through tourism. The commodification
of the Magavau and Mohlukas performances as part of the ‘Aki Nabalu’ musical resonates with
what Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (2004: 61) considers as a ‘metacultural production’ of intangible
cultural heritage:
Persistence in old life ways may not be economically viable and may well be incon-
sistent with economic development and with national ideologies, the valorization of
those ways of heritage (and integration of heritage into economies of cultural tourism)
is economically viable, consistent with economic development theory, and can be
brought into line with national ideologies of cultural uniqueness and modernity.
The Magavau performance represented Malaysia for a regional conference organized by the
Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts (SEAMO-SPAFA) in Bangkok
from 11 to 14 May 2015 on the spiritual dimensions of rice culture in Southeast Asia. Malaysia’s
participation was coordinated by Judeth, who organized the delegation of performers and spoke
about the ritual as the museum expert. As there were slightly variations in the Magavau rituals
that were performed by different Kadazan community groups, Judeth consulted with several
senior bobohizans to work out a sequence of the Magavau ritual that would suitably represent
Sabah’s cultural heritage within the timeframe assigned for the performance at the SEAMO-
SPAFA conference. Given the constraints, only important segments of the Magavau ritual were
re-enacted, and the traditional sumazau dance was incorporated to facilitate audience participa-
tion, as a climax to end the performance. As Judeth said:
I discussed with the senior bobohizans to work out the ritual performance. We took
certain parts of the ritual, because we could not do the whole ritual. It’s impossible.
We mainly included the climaxes of the ritual. For one segment, we were supposed
to put a live chicken, and a coconut palm leaf, on top of the sarong used to cover the
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Between tradition and modernity
185
people. The live chicken represents symbolically the action of bringing the spirits of
the people to their bodies. We didn’t use the live chicken at the performance, but we
explained this to the audience.
The effort to define a representative Magavau ritual for Sabah for the SEAMO-SPAFA confer-
ence in consultation with the ritual specialists highlights how the onus has been placed on the
ritual specialists to decide what is deemed acceptable as a representation of the Magavau ritual.
Interestingly, the commodified ritual traditions have become an inspiration for apprentice
bobohizans like Adam to revive the Kadazan ritual traditions. At the end of my stint at the
Monsopiad Cultural Village, I asked Adam if he could perform a ritual ceremony at the cultural
village, which I would be glad to sponsor, as a way of showing my gratitude to the spirits in the
area which had assisted me in my fieldwork. It would also provide me with an opportunity to
document a small appeasement ritual at the cultural village. After consulting with the spirits in
the area through his divato, a ritual ceremony, which comprised a few rituals from the Magavau
ceremony, namely the Modsuung, the Modsuut and the Magampah, was set for 14 June 2015,
a Saturday afternoon. The Modsuut and Magampah rituals, which would normally last at least
one full day and include animal sacrifices, was condensed into a three-hour segment with no
animal sacrifice. I later learnt that some cultural taboos associated with these rituals were also
not observed. For example, a Magampah ritual would usually involve placing a live chicken on
the sarong, a local tube cloth, that was used to cover the seated participants, symbolizing the
bringing of the spirits of the people to their bodies through the conduit of the live chicken;
but instead, Adam swept the sarong with a coconut palm leaf. This ritual ceremony appears to
have been drawn heavily from the cultural performance of the Magavau ceremony that was re-
enacted at the SEAMO-SPAFA conference, alluding to how apprentice bobohizans have drawn
upon the urbanized and globalized cultural performances as an inspiration for improvising their
ritual practices.
Revival of ritual traditions in the aftermath of 2016 Mount Kinabalu
earthquake1
On 5 June 2015, an earthquake of 6.0 magnitude rattled the state of Sabah, with the epicenter
near Mount Kinabalu, one of Southeast Asia’s highest peaks, a UNESCO World Heritage
Site and a popular climbing spot. The earthquake killed 18 mountain guides and climbers, and
stranded over 100 climbers who were later rescued. Allegations soon emerged on social media
that the earthquake had been caused by a group of ten Western male and female tourists who
had photographed themselves naked on the mountain. These photographs had been circulated
the weekend before the earthquake struck, angering many residents who believed that Mount
Kinabalu was sacred and should be treated with respect. They also believed that the earthquake
had been caused by the actions of these tourists, which had angered the mountain’s guardian
spirits. When the photographs first emerged, a group of high priestesses from Sabah’s indigenous
Dusunic groups warned that something bad would happen and that a big ritual sacrifice would
be needed to appease angered guardian spirits.
Mount Kinabalu holds special significance to the indigenous Dusunic groups, who believe
that the mountain is the spiritual resting place for the souls of the departed. They believe that
the souls of their ancestors live on Mount Kinabalu. They also believe that when they die, their
souls will also travel upwards towards their creator in the sky. Due to their imperfect contrition,
their souls will rest on the peak of Mount Kinabalu and wait for emancipation. After the deadly
earthquake on 5 June 2015, over a dozen ceremonies to cleanse the mountain were conducted
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186
by the high priestesses of different Dusunic groups living on Mount Kinabalu and in its foothills,
as well as those living within sight of the mountain. These included the bobolian priestesses of
both the Dusun Tindal of Kota Belud District and the Central Dusun of Ranau District, who
are part of the Kadazandusun isoglot. The Lotud tantagas from the District of Tuaran also took
it upon themselves to conduct an appeasement ritual for Mount Kinabalu’s guardian spirits on
16 June 2015 with the support and assistance of Sabah Native Court.
I was conducting fieldwork in Sabah when the Mount Kinabalu earthquake struck, dur-
ing which I documented the appeasement rituals conducted by the Lotud tantagas from the
District of Tuaran with my research collaborator, Judeth John Baptist from the Sabah Museum.
Although there was no traditional ritual for the appeasement of Mount Kinabalu, the tantagas
felt that they had an obligation to restore the balance between the angry guardian spirits of
Mount Kinabalu and the people of Sabah. The tantagas consulted with the spirits through two
Monolibabou rituals to seek guidance from the spirits about what triggered the earthquake on
Mount Kinabalu and how the angry mountain guardians could be appeased. A Monolibabou
ritual is part of a Lotud consultation process with the spiritual world on spiritual matters which
involves the libabou going into a trance to establish communication with the spirits of the other
world to understand their concerns and seek their guidance on spiritual matters.
Through these consultations, the tantagas learnt that the mountain guardians were upset not
only by the transgressions of climbers of the mountain but also by the immoral behavior of
some villagers living in the mountain’s foothills. As recounted by the familiar spirit of Odun
Lumanjar, the presiding libabou for one of the consultations:
[The mountain guardians] are angry about one man, tall and white who asked permis-
sion to climb but he had a wife who was also five months’ pregnant. So the wife was
prohibited to make the climb. They went home and maybe because their desire was
not fulfilled, the child was stillborn. The man was not happy. They cremated the body
and brought the ashes to the top of the mountain. There, they spread the ashes but
they did not ask permission from the souls that reside there. The ashes fell into holes
on the mountain. How can you take all the ashes out again?
(Patrick 2015)
The Lotud people still observe the tradition of burying their dead and have a strong taboo
against cremation. They viewed the alleged incident as deeply offensive to the mountain guard-
ians of Mount Kinabalu. The guardians of the mountain also expressed unhappiness about the
behavior of climbers who ‘behaved like animals’ and performed sexual acts while on the moun-
tain, but they also complained about local people who had committed incest (Patrick 2015).
Sexual relations between father and daughter, as well as marriages between first cousins and
siblings are considered as abominations in the local society and incur heavy penalties under local
customary laws (Woolley 2006).
Regarding the tourists who posed nude on the mountain, the familiar spirit of Odun
Sobinting, another presiding libabou for the consultation, said:
[The mountain guardians] tried to tell the tourists that stripping nude is not allowed,
but they cannot hear them. One cannot do bad things when climbing Mount Kinabalu,
but now the taboos have been broken, there is a need to do a cleansing ritual. One
cannot wait, and the ritual must be conducted quickly. It can be a sacrifice of rice
grains, and can be done at the village.
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Between tradition and modernity
187
To the relief of the Lotud people, the guardians of Mount Kinabalu explained how they could
resolve the situation. According to the familiar spirit of Odun Lumanjar, the Lotud villagers did
not need to travel to Mount Kinabalu to conduct their appeasement ritual, and there would not
be any animal sacrifice. As explained metaphorically by the familiar spirit of Odun Lumanjar:
It is a long climb from the bottom to the top of the mountain. You should do it slowly,
and I will guide you as long as you say the rinait correctly. You will need to chant
this section of the rinait, moving from the bottom of Mount Kinabalu, going to dif-
ferent parts of the mountain, and eventually reaching the top. Because the mountain
is huge, you can divide yourselves into smaller groups to cleanse the different parts of
the mountain, until you reach the top. You will collect the impurities and dirt at the
different geographical areas of the mountain, and roll them into a ball, and flush them
out to the open sea, as you travel down the mountain. This will cleanse the mountain
of the impurities that have accumulated there.
On 16 June 2015, the Lotud ritual specialists conducted a cleansing ritual, known as the Tumabur,
to appease the guardians of Mount Kinabalu (Figure 14.2). After placing a few white stones to
symbolize Mount Kinabalu on the ground, the tantagas and libabou began chanting, sometimes
with the jingling of a piece of ritual paraphernalia made from a string of small bells that they
used to summon the spirits. The libabou brandished a ceremonial sword in a dance movement
called the Rumantas to clear their pathway to Mount Kinabalu, which looked as though they
were clearing grass, as they scattered grains of uncooked rice on the ground as an offering. Every
now and then, the two libabou, who had also participated in the Monolibabou rituals, went into a
trance as they communicated with the guardians of Mount Kinabalu through their familiar spir-
its. Odin Badin, the head tantagas, periodically asked the two libabou to ascertain their locations
on Mount Kinabalu, so that the relevant sections of the rinait could be chanted according to the
geographical areas of the mountain the familiar spirits were surveying. As explained by tantagas
Inan Jarambah who participated in the ritual:
In our culture, during the ritual, we would first go up the mountain and then we will
travel to meet the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky and then go back to the mountain,
to the valley, the river and at last, to the sea.
(Patrick and Majantim 2015)
The ritual lasted five hours, excluding an hour-long lunch break, ending with the presentation
of a gong, a ceremonial sword and a traditional necklace to the District Native Chief, the Village
Head and the Kadazandusun Cultural Association’s Executive Secretary, to symbolize the ritual
offering and compensation to the guardians of Mount Kinabalu and the departed souls that reside
on the mountain. The tantagas then offered food to the familiar spirits that had helped them in
the spiritual journey to Mount Kinabalu for the Tumabur ritual. The presentation of these offer-
ings completed the Tumabur ritual.
During the Tumabur ritual, news arrived that a major flood in the foothills of Mount
Kinabalu had triggered flows of wood, rocks, boulders, mud and debris down the mountain.
The mud washed away houses and damaged the bridges that provided access to these villages,
forcing the evacuation of more than 1,000 people living at Kampung Mesilau on the eastern
side of the mountain and Kampung Kiau in Ranau District on the western side (The Straits
Times, 17 June 2015). Uprooted trees and rocks from the floods choked the Liwagu and
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Yunci Cai
188
Figure 14.2 Tantagas in trance for Tumabur ritual
Mesilau rivers on Mount Kinabalu, creating dams of floating debris that could result in even
more damage to the villages along its banks should they cause the rivers to overflow (The
Straits Times, 19 June 2015).
The tantagas and libabou who conducted the Monolibabou and Tumabur rituals surmised that
these events were the result of the ritual cleansing of Mount Kinabalu. The floods and mud-
flows flushed out impurities on the sacred mountain and sent them to the sea, restoring the
balance on the mountain which had been overheated. Additional cleansing ceremonies were
conducted by a Dusunic group in Ranau on 27 June 2015 and by the KDCA on 7 July
2015, both at the villages located on the foothills and slopes of Mount Kinabalu, followed by
a dozen more conducted by other Dusunic groups in Sabah. Since the completion of these
appeasement ceremonies, the balance of Mount Kinabalu appears to have been restored and
life for those living around the mountain has gradually returned to its former tranquility. The
Mount Kinabalu appeasement rituals demonstrate that the indigenous peoples of Sabah have
returned to the rituals to appease the spirits and mountain guardians after the Mount Kinabalu
earthquake took place, revealing a deep-seated belief in the efficacy of their ritual traditions to
neutralize calamities.
Conclusion
While urbanization and modernization have led to the decline in the practice of ritual traditions
among the Kadazan and Lotud people in urbanizing Sabah since the 1970s, these ritual tradi-
tions have undergone a revival since the mid-2000s as commodified cultural performances. The
transformation of ritual traditions into cultural performances offers an avenue for the preserva-
tion of indigenous cultural heritage in urbanizing Sabah, at a time of diminishing bobohizans and
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Between tradition and modernity
189
tantagas and the demise of ritual practices. These ritual traditions have been transformed into
cultural performances, instrumentalized by the state authorities such as Sabah Tourism Board
and the indigenous people themselves, for the assertion of indigenous cultural heritage and iden-
tity on platforms such as the SEAMO-SPAFA Conference, the ‘Aki Nabalu’ musical, as well as
the state and family Kaamatan celebrations.
This transformation, however, put their ritual efficacy into question, as elaborated ritual
traditions are condensed into short, representative performances devoid of their original ritual-
istic meanings. At the same time, apprentice bobohizans have drawn upon these commodified
cultural performances as an inspiration for improvising their ritual practices. When the Mount
Kinabalu earthquake happened, the indigenous peoples in Sabah turned to their ritual traditions
to appease the spirits and restore the balance between the spiritual and physical worlds, attesting
to the continued faith among the indigenous peoples in the ritual efficacy of their traditional
practices at moments of calamities. The episode of the Mount Kinabalu earthquake and the
appeasement rituals that ensued demonstrate that while indigenous cultural heritage has increas-
ingly been mobilized to serve various economic, political and social objectives in modernizing
Sabah, the indigenous peoples seem to fall back on the efficacy of their ritual traditions to neu-
tralize calamities when crisis strike.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my Kadazan and Lotud informants for their warm hospitality and gen-
erous sharing of information, without which this chapter would not have been possible. I
would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Adam Gontusan, Ina Gusiti, Ms. Christine Perroud,
Ms. Winnie Jimis, Ms. Augusta Lojikin and Ms. Lowina, from the District of Penampang for
their assistance in my research. I would also like to register my thanks to the communities of
Kampung Bantayan, Tampurali Sub-District, in the District of Tuaran, especially Odun Badin,
Odun Lumanjar, Odun Sobinting, Odun Gading and Ina Jarambah, as well as the Village Head
Antakin Andau and his wife for hosting us at the village and for providing us with the opportu-
nity to document the appeasement rituals described in this chapter. Most importantly, I would
like to acknowledge the friendship, assistance and advice from my research collaborator, Ms.
Judeth John Baptist from the Sabah Museum. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude
to my supervisors, Professor Paul Basu from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
and Professor Rodney Harrison from the UCL Institute of Archaeology, for their guidance and
advice towards my PhD research. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the generous financial
support offered by the UCL Overseas Graduate Scholarship and the UCL Graduate Research
Scholarship towards my PhD research at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, as well as the UCL
External Training Fund for sponsoring my Malay language training at the University of Malaya.
Note
1 Materials cited have been published in Cai and John Baptist 2016.
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