🌍 DAYAK TODAY | KUCHING : The face of the Dayak today is not the one the outsiders painted long ago. No, not anymore.

The Dayak now have wealth. They walk sharp, smell sweet, dressed in the finest. They ride in cars like those in America, in Europe. And when there’s a family gathering, a celebration, the line of parked cars stretches a whole kilometer.

From Shadows to Sovereignty

The word Dajak first surfaced in 1757, buried within the pages of a colonial monograph from the Dutch East Indies, written in Banjarmasin.

Read Longhouse of the Dayak People: A Reflection of Living Values

In Borneo: Oerwoud in Ondergang, Culturen op Drift (Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, 1986), Jan B. Ave and Victor T. King seemed to leave a whisper in the fog, a fleeting sign, a hesitant acknowledgment of Dayak.

A name that lingers at the margins of records, caught between colonial reports and the scattered tales of sailors. Long before Ave and King, in 1757, J.A. Von Hogendorff, a controller in Banjarmasin, had already written it down.

But what did he really see?

Perhaps nothing more than shadows shifting at the river’s edge, a voice swallowed by the jungle, or a name spoken with uncertainty by someone who had long forgotten where it first began.

Ave and King wrote: "Naar ons weten was het woord ‘Dajak’ reeds in 1757 aan Nederlanders bekend, getuige het voorkomen van die term in de beschrijving van Banjarmasin door J.A. Hogendorff. Het woord betekent ‘binnenland’.”

To the Dutch, it meant inland. But to those who carried it, who lived and breathed it, Dayak was something else entirely—something older, something beyond the reach of ink and paper.

Read "Dayak" as a Standardized Term: A Unifying Identity

Once, in the language of the colonizers, "Dayak" was a curse, a ghost-story whispered to frighten children. A name not just meant to demean, but to damn.

Shadows cast by colonial fear, locked in the language of conquest. A name spoken not with respect, but with warning. A name not their own, but one given, burdened with the weight of someone else's story.

But look at them now. Dressed sharp, scented with the good perfumes of the city, moving through the world in fine cars, their pockets deep with wealth. In every village, a festival, a gathering, and the line of parked cars stretches a kilometer long. They were never the savages they were called—only a people waiting for the right moment to rise.

Unraveling the Dayak: Classifications of a People Rooted in Land and Ritual

Today, the Dayak population is estimated to be around 8 million, spread across the entire island—from the lush highlands to the fertile lowland riverbanks. This incredible diversity makes the classification of Dayak ethnic groups an intriguing subject of study, as they exhibit multidimensional characteristics and share numerous traits with other ethnic groups.

Read The Classification of Dayak Ethnic Groups

To understand the Dayak—these people bound to land, to river, to time—you must first untangle the names others have given them. Anthropologists, colonial record-keepers, and scholars have tried to carve them into categories, each attempt a reflection of what was seen, what was understood, what was missed. But classification is never neutral, never innocent. It is a study in power—who names, who is named, and what that naming leaves behind.

H.J. Mallinckrodt (1928) saw law as the thread that bound these people together, dividing them into six groups: Kenyah-Kayan-Bahau, Ot Danum, Iban, Murut, Klemantan, and Punan. W. Stohr (1959), however, looked toward the dead—how they were mourned, how they were sent into the next world—to define their separations and their sameness.

Then there was Tjilik Riwut (1958), who counted between 405 and 450 sub-groups and understood that history is written in movement, in migration, in the way a people shifts and settles and rises again.

Read Dayak: From Ngayau to the Modern Battlefield

Raymond Kennedy (1974) turned to language, to the cadence and rhythm of Dayak speech, dividing them into six linguistic and cultural groupings. Bernard Sellato (1989) followed the rivers—the Barito, the Kapuas, the Mahakam —knowing that water, more than borders, marks belonging.

Aronson (1978) split them between those whose tongues stretched beyond Borneo and those whose speech stayed close, buried deep in the land.

And long before, in 1894, Dr. Anton Nieuwenhuis walked among them, gathering what he could, writing what he saw, his pen moving across paper while the people before him lived and died, worked and prayed, their stories stretching far beyond the edges of his page.

To name a people is to try and hold them still. But the Dayak have never been still. They are in the earth, in the river, in the breath of the trees. They are in the histories that refuse to be erased. And though the world may press its categories upon them, the Dayak remain—more than the sum of any classification, more than what has been written, more than what has been seen.

The Battle for the Land

Once, the rivers carried traders, the harbors swelled with foreign ships. Now, the roads cut deep into the land, the airplanes land where only sky once ruled.

The Dayak are still here. The land is still theirs. The palm plantations come, the mines dig deep, but the Dayak know this earth, know its breath, know its pulse. They plant, they build, they stay.

But history is never kind, never just a single story. The powerful arrive with heavy machines, with contracts written in languages not their own. They spread their maps, mark their borders, lay their claim. They call it progress. They call it development. But the Dayak have seen this before. They have heard the sweet promises, felt the sharp edges of betrayal.

Writing Their Own History

Yet, they do not kneel. They do not yield.

Their history is not one of silence, but of whispers growing into roars. Of hands calloused from the work of ancestors, now gripping pens, cameras, microphones. The land remembers. The rivers carry the old songs.

And one day, the stories of those who tried to take will fade, while the stories of those who fought, who endured, who refused to let go—those stories will remain.

Read The Vibrancy of Dayak Publications and Literacy from Higher Education Institutions

They will write them in their own words, in their own time. With ink drawn from the roots of their land, pressed into the pages of history.

Because this land, this sky, this breath of the jungle —this is theirs. And they will not let it go.

-- Rangkaya Bada