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A Hybrid Community in East : The Sino-Kadazans of and their Search for Identity

Article in Archipel · January 2012 DOI: 10.3406/arch.2012.4364

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Danny Wong University of Malaya

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A Hybrid Community in East Malaysia: The Sino-Kadazans of Sabah and their Search for Identity

In 1962, an organization called the United National Kadazan Organisation (UNKO) submitted a memorandum to the Cobbold Commission 1 outlining the Kadazan community of North Borneo’s (present- day Sabah) position vis-à-vis the idea for the formation of the new Federation of Malaysia. According to the memorandum, “Those who say that the country should first get self-government before thinking about Malaysia are people who belong to the immigrant races; people who have only been in the country for a few years or in the case of a few those who are at the most second generation North Borneans.” The memorandum went on to state that: “If North Borneo gets self-government and independence within the foreseeable future by itself, the heirs when the British leave will be the Chinese. Today they already hold most of the jobs in Government Service and Commerce. Because they always lived in the towns and because of their economic superiority, they had been able to send more of their children to better schools and most if not all the university or college trained men in the country today are Chinese. This will reach the stage where the natives will realize that all hope of their ever reaching parity with the Chinese are gone and there would be only one

1. The Cobbold Commission, or the Malaysian Commission of Enquiry, was appointed by the British and Malayan governments to ascertain the views of the people of North Borneo (Sabah) and on the proposed inclusion of these two territories in the newly proposed Federation of Malaysia. The Commission was named after its chairman, Lord Cobbold, and consisted of two other British members and two Malayan members. The commission had 50 meetings in Sabah and Sarawak where the members met 4,000 individuals and 690 groups. See The Encyclopedia of Malaysia, Volume 11: Government and Politics, 1940-2006 , Kuala Lumpur: Archipelago Press, 2006, pp. 42-43.

Archipel 84, Paris, 2012, pp. 107-127 108 Danny Wong Tze Ken

resort to undo what they would consider a completely unfair balance – violence. […] We are also convinced that it is Malaysia which is the best possible security the Chinese themselves can have, if they are genuinely patriotic to the countries of their adoption in this part of the world. […] The UNKO has been accused of starting a racial organization. But the Kadazans are among the more backward people of the country and without a national organization capable of speaking for them they would have been swallowed up by Chinese-dominated parties and organizations where their rights and their future would be completely forgotten, where they would merely be the tools with which to fashion a so called independent country where the Chinese will be the master and the indigenous their slaves forever”. 2 Like all memorandums submitted to the Cobbold Commission, UNKO’s five-page memorandum laid out the views of the organization on the formation of Malaysia while, at the same time, expressing its concerns about the future. The extract from UNKO’s memorandum above clearly echoes the Kadazans’ deep resentment towards the