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.