265 Vol. 48 Borneo Research Bulletin DAYAK IDENTIFICATION AND DIVERGENT ETHNOGENESIS AMONG TIDUNG IN NORTH KALIMANTAN AND SABAH Nathan Bond School of Social and Political Sciences University of Melbourne Melbourne, Australia nathan. [email protected] Introduction Scholars of Borneo have long noted the ethnic, religious and geographic constellations that have characterized a distinction between "Dayak" and "Malay." Dayaks have broadly been known as the non-Muslim, dispersed peoples of the highland interior, whereas Malays have broadly been known as the Muslim, politically centralized peoples of the coastal lowlands. At the same time, "becoming Malay" (masuk Melayu) has been a process of long-standing significance on the island and beyond. Attention has thus been paid to processes in which Dayaks convert to Islam and thereby convert ethnicities. Recent scholarship has drawn a more nuanced image of these dynamics (Sillander 2004), and the peoples of contemporary Borneo have brought the Dayak• Malay distinction further into question in novel ways (Chalmers 2006; Chalmers 2009; Sillander and Alexander 2016). These categories have not become irrelevant or merely fuzzier, but have been transformed and granted a heightened political significance. This is taking place as part of broader efforts to forge new identities, scales and political projects across the island (for an overview, see King 2017). Given the specific importance of the Dayak-Malay distinction to the region and its scholarship, such changes warrant attention. The Tidung may be considered an exemplar of these issues. They are a Murut- speaking (Lobel 2013), culturally Malay, Islamic ethnic group. They mainly inhabit the riverine lowlands and outlying islands ranging approximately from the Sandakan district of Sabah, Malaysia, in the north to the Bulungan district of North Kalimantan, Indonesia, in the south. They have a long and proud history of "precolonial" lowland polities (Okushima 2002; Sellato 2001). Their population was estimated at 70,000- 80,000 in 2003 (Okushima 2003a). While mobile in some senses, they are relatively sedentary and at least presently do not engage in shifting cultivation. In short, they have the typical characteristics of a coastal Malay people, and few characteristics of a Dayak people. Many Tidung, especially in Sabah, would consider themselves to be Malay. Indeed, based on data gathered in 1939, Schneeberger noted that Tidung "proudly call[ ed] themselves Orang Malayu" (Schneeberger 1979:17). This makes the question of why some Indonesian Tidung are now proudly identifying as Dayak of considerable interest. It is my aim in this article to analyze this claim and discuss its implications for scholarship on Borneo. Specifically, I argue that Tidung in Sabah and North Kalimantan are currently undergoing a process of divergent ethnogenesis. I delineate several important issues 266 Borneo Research Bulletin Vol.48 shaping the contemporary Indonesian claim to being Dayak: firstly, myths of ethnogenesis in which Tidung come about as a distinct people through separation from Dayaks; secondly, the ascendance of the insular scale for thinking about ethnicity; thirdly, the identification ofDayaks as the indigenous peoples of the island ofKalimantan; fourthly, the implication drawn that, since Tidung are indigenous to Kalimantan and came into being through separation from other such people (Dayaks), then they must be Dayaks in some sense; fifthly, the importance of the claim as compounded by tense relations between Indonesian Tidung and migrants from South Sulawesi. Meanwhile, Tidung in Sabah do not claim to be Dayak and do not seem to feel any need to do so. The potential for a Tidung claim to being fundamentally something other than Tidung is therefore already present in their vernacular ethnology, but the actualization of this and the form it takes (as being Dayak) is shaped by imaginaries of the insular and the ethnic that seem to be distinctively national. So, the case brings together several key interests in the study of Bornean ethnicity and identity, especially Dayak-Malay boundary shifts and transnationalism. It demonstrates that seemingly transnational concepts and identities can be formulated in national terms. As such it suggests the need to continue attending to the myriad ways that Bornean peoples are incorporated into, and incorporate themselves into, nation-states. -- A secondary aim of this article is to contribute to the literature on the Tidung, a group about which little research has been published (but see Arbain 2016; Hamzah 2012; Okushima 2003a). Tidung Dayak identification has, however, attracted the attention of other researchers. For example, a book on "Islam Dayak" with reference to the Tidung has been published and contains a brief discussion of the topic (Muthohar 2015). However, it contains some confusions in approach and in fact. Rather than looking at the emergence of these debates in the context of vernacular theories of ethnicity, the book simply assumes the validity of the "Dayak Tidung" ethnonym and a corresponding primordial "Dayak" ethnicity. This leads to misunderstandings like the following: Internally, part of the Dayak Tidung community that is Muslim has dialectically moved toward identifying themselves as not Dayak anymore. They prefer to call themselves ulun pagun. Ulun pagun is a popular term for the Tidung community that has embraced Islam in Tarakan, Bulungan and Tana Tidung at present. (Muthohar 2015:145) This article aims to clarify the issue by presenting a more accurate account of these terms and the sequence in which they have emerged. In doing so, the article lends support to the argument that On both the lower and gradually emerging higher levels of identification, ethnicity in Borneo was and continues to be distinctively based on the articulation of place and politics, reflecting shared association with a particular or generalised location and locality• defined group. Group affiliation and group fonnation were (and are) fundamentally political, based on orientation towards local or regional centres of political and social gravity ( ... ) . This condition [ ... ] resonates with an emerging generic Dayak identity predicated on aboriginality [ ... ). (Sillander 2016:103) I also bring this approach to bear on contemporary reconfigurations of the categories of Dayak and Malay. As the relevant scale of locality has shifted upward to the island, classically Malay peoples may increasingly be included in this approach. Further, Vol. 48 Borneo Research Bulletin 267 because Tidung live across both North Kalimantan and Sabah, the present case study is well placed to inform us about whether and how contemporary articulations of ethnicity are specific to one national setting. Before proceeding, it is necessary to make a clarification. I do not suggest that Kalimantese and Sabahan Tidung ethnicities are fundamentally diverging. This is not the case. Tidung in Kalimantan and Sabafi both identify as Tidung and understand that to mean a single Tidung ethnicity that is nonetheless fluidly subdivided along lines of locality (e.g. 'Tidung Kalabakan,' 'Tidung Sembakung,' "Tidung Malinau,' etc.). They often cross the border to attend ritual events or to visit kin. CulturaJly, Tidung typically claim to be only 'superficially different' from any other Tidung. As such, while the metaphor of ethnic conversion may be. useful (Chalmers 2006), I do not think it is entirely adequate for understanding the Tidung case (see also Sillander 2004). Indonesian Tidung are not becoming Dayak in the sense that a Dayak classically becomes Malay on converting to Islam. In general, those that embrace the term Dayak and those that reject it agree on the basic idea that they have the same ancestry, but not on the implications of this. The important difference between Sabah and North Kalimantan is that in the former this debate is non-existent or entirely insignificant. So, the divergent ethnogenesis to which I refer is a subtler process of the drifting apart of vernacular ethnohistorical theory in accordance with national boundaries. Ethnogenesis in myth Tidung origin myths vary, but one type includes an ethnogenetic separation from upstream people. This is sometimes an account of conversion to Islam involving an angel, spirit, extraordinarily powerful human, or something of the sort that converts a proto-Tidung, religiously and therefore ethnicaJly, who subsequently disseminates the religion.1 I have heard variations on this story in a number of geographically dispersed places, but it does not constitute an orthodoxy (for another variant see Okushima 2003a:250).2 I stress it here because of how clearly it brings out my larger point about the Dayak question arising partly through vernacular theory. I also want to go beyond the idea that ethnic identity is being actively manipulated by elites for political economic ends. While this is not entirely absent from the case, it overlooks the vernacular ethnohistorical debates that are currently going on, which substantially draw on and refer to stories such as this as evidence concerning the Dayak question. These ethnohistories imply that Islam is inherent to being Tidung, and yet suggest continuity with a pre-Islamic time. The stories play out in a period when, to put it in local terms, Tidung were 'still practicing animism' (masih animisme). This period is l There are also accounts of the dissemination of Islam by Arab migrants. This has been addressed in previous historical work and I do