Akar Nusa
A longhouse veranda at dusk on the Skrang River. Pots clink, a rooster calls, and an old woman works a loom, tying patterns into cotton thread as her mother did.
The story
The Iban are the largest native people of Sarawak. About 700,000 Iban were counted in the 2020 census, around 29 percent of the state. Their language belongs to the Malayic branch of the Austronesian family.
Iban memory says their ancestors came from the Ketungau stream in the Kapuas basin of present-day West Kalimantan. The historian Benedict Sandin dated the start of the move into Sarawak to about the 1550s. They looked for good farmland and moved away from conflict. A major early settlement was at Lubok Antu. Over several generations they spread through the Batang Lupar, the Saribas and the Skrang. From the early 1800s some moved on into the Rajang basin, and by the 1870s Iban were on the Oya and Mukah rivers.
Iban society was organised around river regions rather than chiefs of a whole people. Each river had respected elders, and in the old days war leaders who gathered followers. Raids and taking heads in conflict were part of Iban belief and war until the early 20th century. Brooke rule, from 1841, set out to control and regulate them, and set up appointed headmen and native chiefs (penghulu). That is plain history. It is a small part of a long and rich story.
The older word Sea Dayak was a Brooke-era name. The name Iban became widely accepted after the Second World War.
Where you can still see it today
- Longhouses, still the heart of Iban village life. See "The longhouse" story on this site.
- Pua kumbu, the woven ritual cloth, made by women. Some are tied around longhouse posts during ritual.
- Gawai Dayak each 1 June, with the ngajat dance.
- Place names: Skrang, Saribas, Lubok Antu and Batang Lupar are Iban river names.
- Language: Iban is spoken by roughly 790,000 people, according to the Languages of Malaysia list.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
A 2011 study of 94 Iban people from Sarawak found that their DNA is closest to Indonesian, Cambodian and Thai samples. Common mother lines were M, B4a, Y2 and Z. Common father lines were O2a (42 percent) and O3 (40 percent), with some O1. Taiwanese gene flow was found but was smaller than earlier ideas suggested.
Malaysians we have tested with a B4 or Y2 mother line, or the O-M122 or O-M119 father lines, may share parts of this deep story. But DNA cannot say whether someone is Iban. That is a matter of family, language and community. It cannot decide religion or any legal status.
