Akar Nusa
A woman sits at a backstrap loom on a longhouse gallery. Her fingers move along dark threads. The pattern is her own, and when it is done it will be hung at a gathering and spoken of for years.
The story
Pua kumbu is a patterned cotton cloth made by the Iban of Sarawak, West Kalimantan and Brunei. It is worn or displayed on special occasions, especially at Gawai and other Dayak celebrations. "Pua" means blanket, and "kumbu" means a cover.
It is made by ikat, a tie-and-dye process. The weaver ties the yarn in a pattern before dyeing, then weaves. Plant dyes are used. Rengat gives indigo blue, akar penawar landak gives yellow and mengkudu gives red. The weaving uses a backstrap loom, and the whole process takes several weeks.
The cloth is sacred to the Iban, especially for women. Each piece may tell a weaver's personal story or a tale from myth. A folktale says a hunter named Menggin married Tinchin, a daughter of the Iban god Singalang Burong. When she went back to her own realm, she left behind two handwoven cloths. The designs use straight lines at angles. A basic motif is the empit, a rhombus, with key-shaped marks called kunchi attached.
The Iban say weaving is the women's warpath, while kayau, headhunting, was the men's. That tells you how much honour the cloth carries. A weaver who made fine cloth earned respect for herself and her family.
In 2012 Malaysia's National Heritage Department declared pua kumbu a Fine Art National Heritage. That means it is formally protected as part of the nation's heritage.
Pua kumbu is made across the Iban lands of Sarawak, West Kalimantan and Brunei, so the cloth, like the people, is found on more than one side of a border. Our page on Iban migration tells how the Iban spread from the Kapuas basin. Pua kumbu remains a key cultural practice, not only a museum object.
Where you can still see it today
- Gawai Dayak, when pua kumbu is displayed and worn.
- Iban weddings, where the groom wears kumbu cloth, according to a 2026 report in The Star.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
DNA cannot read a cloth. A pua kumbu pattern is passed on by teaching, from weaver to weaver, not through genes. This page has no mother-line or father-line tie, and we have not made one up.
What DNA can say is separate. Malaysians we have tested may see a region estimate that points to Borneo. That says nothing about who weaves, or about which people you belong to. DNA does not decide race, religion or any legal status.
