A Dayak Manifesto

The Bornean urge to be heard

Nestled amongst the usurped jungle is Sarawak

We are named Dayaks by Malays

Dayaks            Savages           Outsiders

Headhunters are Bidayuh who are Land Dayaks

Headhunters are Iban who are Sea Dayaks

Let us make meaning of Dayaks, an inclusion, a community

No longer the colonised savage where wildness threatens order

Savage has origins of the woods

That savage can mean of an animal or force of nature that is fierce and uncontrolled. Dayak is channelled into protection in a virulent way, unapologetic as together we look towards a way of life that, like the Bidayuh, is symbiotic with the world around us. The earth, our home, these rainforests deserve our respect and understanding.

Bi                People

Dayuh               Land

            The Wildly Uncultivated – they see threat because we are ungovernable

Resistance to powerful systems, undermining the consumption and possession they encourage

Practicing tenderness towards the ecological

Savages

–  “living in the lowest conditions of development”

Dayak minds amplifies those under, un or mis [represented] voices who struggle to be heard

Dayak minds is like a longhouse. One long flow of voices who are all independent but embedded within a larger [comm]unity of support weaving together the language, the land, the people, the creature, the lost.

The regained, the redefined and rethought but never the rescued, reclaimed or recast.