Akar Nusa
An evening in a longhouse on the upper Baram. A young man tunes a sape, a lute with strings made for slow, bright tunes. A child looks on. Outside, the river is high and brown.
The story
The Kenyah live in the interior of Sarawak, North Kalimantan and East Kalimantan. They are counted among the Dayak peoples, and in Sarawak the interior peoples are often grouped under the name Orang Ulu, "upriver people". The Kenyah, Kayan and Bahau together form a cluster called Apo Kayan.
An estimate of about 72,000 Kenyah in 2023 covers Malaysia and Indonesia. Kenyah society has more than 40 sub-groups and many lepo, which are tribes or clans. Lepo Tau is one.
Kenyah tradition says their origin is the Usun Apau plateau, also called the Apo Kayan highlands. A 2022 review of Borneo's peopling says there is little historical evidence about their origin. So the Kenyah memory is the best account we have, and it should be read as tradition, not as settled history.
Their traditional way of life is shifting farming, with longhouses as the village. A Dayak longhouse can stretch over 200 metres, with the shared gallery as the village street. The Kenyah hold a harvest festival, since most families still farm.
Music is part of the identity. Instruments include the sape (a guitar-like lute), the jatung utang (a wooden xylophone), the lutong (a bamboo tube zither) and the keringut (a nose flute).
Most Kenyah today are Christian, mainly Evangelical Protestant. Their older belief system is called Adat Pu'un, and a small number still follow the Bungan faith. Some Kenyah live in towns such as Miri and Samarinda. Near Samarinda in Indonesia, the Budaya Pampang village was declared a cultural village in 1991.
Where you can still see it today
- The sape, the Kenyah lute, which you can hear played by Kenyah musicians.
- Longhouses in the Baram and other interior districts.
- Harvest festival, the major yearly gathering.
- Budaya Pampang, the Kenyah cultural village near Samarinda in Kalimantan.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
We found no mother-line or father-line study of the Kenyah that we could open. A 2022 review says Borneo's native peoples speak Austronesian languages and Sarawak's natives are believed to have come from the neighbouring islands of Southeast Asia. A Malaysian we have tested may see a region estimate pointing to Borneo and island Southeast Asia, and the Kenyah are part of that wider picture.
That estimate cannot tell whether someone is Kenyah, which is a matter of family and community. DNA does not decide which people you belong to, your religion or any legal status.
