Tourism and the Refashioning of the Headhunting Narrative in Sabah

“I Lost My Head in Borneo” “I Lost My Head in Borneo”: their understanding of the joke and thus Tourism and the guard their indigenousness and their status as human beings. I also argue that their use Refashioning of the of their headhunting heritage is a means of Headhunting Narrative in responding to the threats to their identities Sabah, Malaysia posed by the Malaysian state, which, in the process of globalization and nation building, has interpolated them into a Malaysian iden- Flory Ann Mansor Gingging tity, an identity that they seem to resist in Indiana University, Bloomington favor of their regional ones. This paper looks USA at what tourism’s refashioning of the headhunting narrative might suggest about Abstract how Sabah’s indigenous groups respond to their former colonization by the West and Although headhunting is generally believed how they imagine and negotiate their identi- to be no longer practiced in Sabah, Malay- ties within the constraints of membership sia, it is a phenomenon of the past that still within the state of Malaysia.1 exists in the collective consciousness of indigenous groups, living through the telling and retelling of stories, not just by individu- spent a large part of my growing-up als, but also by the tourism industry. The years in Tamparuli, a small town near headhunting image and theme are ubiqui- the west coast of Sabah, a Malaysian I 2 tous in the tourist literature and campaigns. state in northern Borneo. A river divides They are featured on postcards, brochures, the town proper and the compound on and T-shirts (a particular favorite shows an which my family and I lived, so sojourns orangutan head with the caption “I lost my to the other side—to tamu (weekly mar- head in Borneo”). One popular tourist des- ket), to the shops, and to the library re- tination, Monsopiad Cultural Village, has quired the use of one of two bridges. The even named itself after a legendary first was a suspension bridge for pedes- headhunting warrior. trians, and the other, only a few minutes While Sabah’s headhunting past has away, a concrete structure for automo- taken on a commercial value, I argue that it biles also used by those on foot. Of the has also taken on a cultural and political one two, my friends and I considered the ce- that seems to resonate with contemporary ment bridge to have the more fascinat- needs and sensibilities, especially among the ing history. We were told that during its state’s indigenous communities. I propose construction, humans were hunted and that the tongue-in-cheek invocation of their severed heads were placed within headhunting by the tourism industry repre- its foundations. The reason: the build- sents one way in which Sabah’s indigenous ers, we were told, apparently believed people counter the outside world’s designa- that the spirits of the heads would for- tion of them as the Other; that is, by parody- tify the bridge and would help to guard ing their headhunting past, they demonstrate it from calamities. Cultural Analysis 6 (2007): 1-29 ©2007 by The University of California. All rights reserved 1 Flory Ann Mansor Gingging As a child, I delighted in hearing and company of the tourism industry. Images telling stories about sagaii (headhunters) of headhunting in the tourist literature and took special pride in knowing that in Sabah are plentiful. They are on post- our very own Tamparuli Bridge was part cards, in brochures, and on T-shirts, and of headhunting lore. But as I became one tourist destination, Monsopiad Cul- older, stories about headhunters and my tural Village, which is especially popu- headhunting past became less fantastic. lar among overseas visitors, has named Despite the occasional semi-serious itself after a legendary Kadazan warrior warning that a headhunter was on the and headhunter, and has made explicit loose, I, and most others around me, gen- use of the headhunting narrative as a erally believed that headhunting, a way of organizing its offerings.6 phenomenon of the past shared by many of the state’s thirty indigenous groups, Fig.1 was no longer in practice.3 As I got older, I began to be aware of the economic and political struggles that indigenous people in my state face. Since becoming part of Malaysia in 1963, Sabah, a former British colony, had never had a chief minister who was both indigenous and non-Muslim. Conse- quently, when in 1984, Joseph Pairin Kitingan, a Dusun lawyer, became the 1 first non-Muslim native to assume this position, being indigenous suddenly meant something to me.4 It was also around the same time that I remember feeling a new attraction to the macabre and exotic elements of my culture—one In my opinion, making headhunting of them being headhunting. Without such a visible icon of tourism in Sabah is quite knowing it, I was invoking those an example of what Michael Herzfeld aspects of my culture that were poten- calls “cultural intimacy,” which he de- tially embarrassing as a way of respond- scribes as “the recognition of those as- ing to the threat I felt towards my own pects of a cultural identity that are con- Dusun-ness. For me, headhunting sidered as a source of external embarrass- ceased being just a part of history and ment but that nevertheless provide in- became, in the most personal way, a part siders with the assurance of common of my heritage—an expression of my in- sociality” (Herzfeld 1997, 3). Monsopiad digenousness. 5 Cultural Village is one site where I sug- Of course I was not alone in my real- gest cultural intimacy is performed. I ization of the value of headhunting as a believe that the Village’s strategic asso- marker of indigenousness—I was in the ciation with headhunting (and the unfa- 2 “I Lost My Head in Borneo” vorable connotations that it might carry) Borneo’s shore recorded his impres- is an instance of how native people in sions of what he had seen (Saunders Sabah have recognized that by assum- 1993, 271). ing agency over their culture, and especially by embracing their Otherness, they Saunders’ argument is clear: modern- find a common ground—in the present day visitors to Borneo arrive with expec- case, a headhunting past—with which tations that have been formed by early to respond to outside attacks on their in- literature about the island and its people. digenousness. 7 It was not until the late nineteenth century that the British gained control Headhunting as a response to the so- over Sabah, but the region as a whole had cial imagination of Borneo received European visitors before that I have already suggested that time. They came in various capacities— “headhunting tourism” in Sabah might as diplomats, business people, and ex- be seen as one way in which indigenous plorers—and their contacts with, and people counter the outside world’s imag- reports about Borneo not only contrib- ining of themselves as the Other. In this uted to general knowledge about the is- section, I argue that early travel accounts land, but also helped to create an image of Borneo have, in part, created this “Oth- of the place and its people in the Euro- erness”; that is, these accounts have con- pean mind. Saunders suggests that, in tributed to how the island and its native fact, many of the images of headhunt- groups are perceived. Thus, I will now ers, orangutans and long houses now turn to a brief discussion of how early associated with the island are products literature about the region, written of these early accounts (Saunders 1993, mainly by European travelers, has 271). played a role in the “invention” of The first Englishman to write about Borneo; an invention that has lived on his travels in Borneo was Daniel in tourist literature, and, in my opinion, Beeckman, who went on business to an invention to which the invocation of Banjarmasin, the present capital of South headhunting in the tourism industry in Kalimantan, in 1714. His accounts of life Sabah is responding. Of this notion, his- in Banjarmasin were often astute; none- torian Graham Saunders makes the fol- theless his characterization of the orang- lowing observation: utan as being like a human—that, in- deed, one originated from the other—has Travellers to Borneo today arrive with advanced the idea of a wild Borneo, to certain expectations. They carry with which current tourism campaigns still them an idea or image of Borneo, an allude: image which tourist brochures have conveyed, authorities have culti- The monkeys, apes, and baboons are vated. What an image is [is] the cul- of many different sorts and shapes; mination of a process that began but the most remarkable are those when the first European traveller to they call Orang-ootans, which in their 3 Flory Ann Mansor Gingging language signifies men of the woods: what I am going to tell you about these grow up to be six foot high, they Borneo and its people, I hope you will walk upright; have longer arms than have learned that the “wild man from men, tolerable good faces (hand- Borneo” is not such a bad fellow af- somer I am sure than some Hottentots ter all (Mershon 1922, 13). that I have seen), large teeth, no tails nor hair, but on those parts where it Thus, we see that while Mershon’s pur- grows on humane bodies; they are pose for writing her book appears to be very nimble footed and mighty noble, her portrayal of the people of strong; they throw great stones, sticks, Borneo is nevertheless rather unflatter- and billets at those who offend them.

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