Akar Nusa
A long wooden house raised on stilts above a river. At the far end, someone beats a gong to call everyone. At the near end, a child chases a chicken along a veranda that never seems to stop.
The story
The longhouse is the home of the Iban and of other peoples of Borneo. It is a row of family apartments built side by side under one roof. Clifford Sather, who did long fieldwork among the Saribas Iban, describes how it works.
Each family has an apartment called a bilik. The word also means the family that lives in it, usually three generations: grandparents, a son or daughter, a spouse and the children. In front of the bilik is a covered gallery called the ruai. It runs the whole length of the house. The wall between the two halves the house. On one side is the family's private space. On the other is the public space for the whole longhouse.
A longhouse can be small or large. On the Paku River in the Saribas, 33 longhouses ranged from 6 to 39 families, with an average of 16.5.
Each longhouse is led by a headman, the tuai rumah. Elders, the tuai, help to keep the community's customs (adat) and respect its taboos (pemali). Longhouses were not only homes. Every house had a territory of farms, fruit trees, a cemetery and forest within a half-day's walk. In Iban belief the house also has a "source post" (tiang pemun) that anchors it ritually.
Other peoples build in their own ways. The Bidayuh have the baruk, a roundhouse where the community gathers. Many Penan, who once moved with the sago, settled into longhouse villages after the 1950s.
Where you can still see it today
- Iban longhouses along the Skrang, Saribas, Paku, Rajang and other rivers. At Gawai, open-house visits are part of the custom.
- Ruai: the long gallery where guests are received, meetings are held and festivals are celebrated.
- Pua kumbu: woven cloth wrapped around posts during some rituals.
- Baruk roundhouses near Kuching.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
A house cannot be tested. A longhouse is not a family tree. Families are formed by birth, marriage, adoption and joining, and Sather notes that membership of a bilik comes in all these ways. People who live under one roof may have different ancestors.
So DNA tells nothing about who belongs in a longhouse, a people, a religion or any legal status.
