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Dayak Tribes of Borneo (Kalimantan)

Dayak is one of Indonesia multicultural tribes. Dayak is located at the biggest island of Indonesia archipelago, called as Borneo or Kalimantan. Dayak is the name for a group of tribes who live in Borneo. Dayak has lived in all over the island. These are some Dayak tribes: Dayak Benuaq, Dayak Tonyooi, Dayak Kenyah, Dayak Bahau and Dayak Modang. All of these tribes have many differences of cultures and societies.

According to the history, all the tribes of Dayak are not native people of the island but their ancestors came from the migrations of the Mongols, so Dayak have Mongolian origin rather than Malayan origin. Their habitats are forests and living by hunting. But, some Dayak tribes also live by agriculture.

The origin of Dayaks are animism and ancestors' worshipers. They also believe that the ancestors souls may live in animals, plants, natures even in handicrafts. This beliefs have similarity with the belief of native tribes people who live in America continental.  But, because of influences of outsiders, the Dayaks now also hold another beliefs too. The Dayaks are also known have magic power, both which are called as white and black ones. By magical acts, the Dayaks magicians may control one's psychology to do as the magicians will to do.

More information of Dayak cultural society can browse here.


This picture on the right shows the similar custom of  Dayak traditional dancing dress with the Chinese traditional opera and dancing dress.

Indonesian Art of Textile

Although the process of decorating cloth through the process of batik is found in several regions in Africa or India and even in some South East Asian countries, the batik of Indonesia is unique and unequaled.  Indonesian Batik is made in several regions, but the center of the art is Central Java, in cities like Yogyakarta, Solo, Cirebon, Pekalongan and Indramayu.   The pride of Indonesians to wear batik till the present day has preserve this art of textile. The beauty of Batik is a tribute to the patience, creativity of the woman of Java, the main island of Indonesia. Credit should be also given to men who prepare the cloth and handle the dyeing and finishing process.

Batik is generally thought of as the most quintessentially Indonesian textile. Motifs of flowers, twinning plants, leaves buds, flowers, birds, butterflies, fish, insects and geometric forms are rich in symbolic association and variety; there are about three thousand recorded batik patterns.

Indonesian Batik has a worldwide recognition.

The word "batik" is Indonesian in origin, even if the concept was known by Egyptians and Indians. It is known to be more than a millenium old, and there are evidences that cloth decorated through some form of resist technique was in use in the early centuries AD in several West African, Middle-Eastern and Asian communities. The word Batik is originally an Idonesian-Malay word and means to dot .This art of textile is spread in the hindu and malay world, but Indonesia is certainly the heart of the Batik.This way of painting and coloring textile has reached its higher degree of excellence in the Island of Java , in cities like Solo, Yogyakarta, Pekalongan or Cirebon. From Java this 'batik' cloth was exported to other islands of the archipelago and to the Malay peninsula.

On the 17th century, the Javanese sultanate of Mataram accorded important ceremonial functions to the Batik clothes. Sultan Agung of Mataram is known to have dressed in white cotton decorated with Indigo blue, and his court dancers wore kain kembangan colored with a red organic dye. During the past two or three centuries batik has become one of the principal means of expression of the spiritual and cultural values of Southeast Asia. - batik archive continue -