The Melanau View of their Environment.
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THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL |
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Title :
The Melanau View of their Environment. |
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Author :
H.S. Morris |
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Abstract:
The Melanau are a diverse set of peoples who speak related dialects, not all of which are mutually comprehensible. In 1960 just over 44,000 people were counted as Melanau, of whom about 10,000 were still pagan. The rest were muslim, except for a small number of Roman Catholic Christians. The Melanau population inhabits the coastal area stretching from the delta districts of the Rejang river north-eastwards to Bintulu. These people have cultural, linguistic, and social links with the Kajang groups living in the middle Rejang and Balui river areas, as well as with other groups along the coast to the Baram river and in the hilly districts. Although it is probably legitimate to speak of a Melanau culture and type of social structure, it is doubtful how far any one group can thereby be distinguished from related peoples in the interior, whether of the Kajang groups, who claim close historical connexions with the coastal Melanau, or of other groups who make no such claims. One group almost imperceptibly merges into the next until it ultimately becomes very difficult to decide what connexion the last has with the first. Ethnographers and the people themselves do, however, agree, in spite of difficult borderline cases, that the Kayan and Kenyah peoples differ significantly from the Kajang and Melanau groups in language and culture, though all belong to similar stratified societies which stretch from the coastal Melanau in a broad band across the centre of Borneo. These stratified societies differ markedly from the more egalitarian groups, such as the Iban and Land Dayak, in south and south-western Borneo, and from those in the north, such as the Murut and Dusun.
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| DOI: XXXX |
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How to cite:
Morris, H. S. (1981). The Melanau View of their Environment. The Sarawak Museum Journal, XXIX (50): 27-58 |
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References
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