Pioitan- (friendly name to call each other)

I've always been amused by this very thing. Dusuns, especially my parents' generation (and the generations before) have this practice of having a special name they use between either two friends or a group of friends. The names are normally hilarious in nature, having been born under hilarious situations. Or it could be one that reminds people of an exceptional event they decide to commit to their memories forever. For example, my Dad and one of his friends call each other 'katangki' (root=tangki 'water tank') due to whatever funny situation that took place when they were dealing with some water tanks.

My late grandmother and one of her neighbours called each other 'ganakau' (root=takau 'thief'). I suspect the nickname must have started when they were discussing someone who stole something. It must have been either very funny or very annoying that they decided to remind themselves of the event forever by choosing it to be their nickname. The funniest thing about that was it became a family nickname. All my grandmothers' daughters and granddaughters including yours truly followed suit in calling the neighbour 'ganakau'. Even now that my grandmother is gone, we still call 'ganakau' that. And 'ganakau's' daughters/granddaughters still refer to my late grandmother as 'ganakau' too.

This practice, I think, owes its existence to the Dusuns' reluctance to address people by their real names. Somehow it is considered impolite to call a person directly by their name, especially when the person is older than oneself.(I remember when I was young it was almost a crime to say my grandparents' names out loud. My grandfather used to threaten us the grandchildren that our knees were going to turn yellow if we ever said his name at all!)
Hence, we often hear 'i kuo' (=so and so) as a term of reference, rather than the real name of a person.

I'd have thought that this 'pioitan' practice is outdated, but surprise, surprise, I just discovered that one of my younger brothers who is in his 30s and his best friend (also a cousin of mine) actually call each other 'kalado' (root=chili). Hmm...the culture is very much alive it seems.

The Dusuns in the 1900s

"The Dusuns in character are quiet and orderly and not particularly brave,
but no doubt would be industrious if occasion arose; a very
good rural population, with somewhat yokelish notions. Any
slight bloodthirsty tendencies that circulmstances and the want
of proper restraint have driven them to, are gladly abandoned
wherever our influence has spread. They show every symptom
of thriving and increasing, under a proper firm government, and
there is no fear of their melting away and disappearing, like so
many races have done, when brought into contact with the white
man. Much the same thing may be said of the sea coast races,
who also possess many good work-a-day knockabout qualities,
but not to the same extent as the Dusuns."
(W.B Pryer, 1887: 236- The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 16
(1887), pp. 229-236)

Wow! So they have discovered us or rather our ancestors in the late 1800s. The Dusuns were still headhunters then but I gather from this writing that they weren't very happy with the custom too. Headhunting must have been a tradition they held on to simply because it was tradition, not because they were bloodthirsty. (Am I relieved to read that- that means I have the blood of peaceful ancestors, who somewhat braved their existence because that was all they knew then.

And it seems that the hardworking traits have had always been there. You know the work-till-you-drop-dead thing. I'll stop complaining about that then.

Dusun tatoos?

I believe no one would ever associate tatoos with Dusuns nowadays. I, for one, has never seen any Dusun with a Dusun made tatoo since my late paternal grandfather who tattoed his name on his arm. (He died at 102 in 1993). I never thought much of his tatoo then because unlike our Iban neighbours in Sarawak, his looked too simple. Just a spelling of his name, no patterns whatsoever.

It came as a surprise when somebody emailed me this picture:


Apparently in the 1900s, tatooing was quite a common practice among the Dusuns. And this particular one is of a man in Kundasang/Bundu Tuhan area, my hometown. How exciting!

The rice people

They say the Eskimos have over 20 words for snow. Well the Dusuns don't have any, not surprisingly, them being land people. But the Dusuns have various words to refer to rice. It shows how important rice is to them huh? Here are some of the rice referents:

1. takano 'cooked rice'
2. wagas 'uncooked, husked rice'
3. parai 'unhusked rice or riceplant'
4. bukid 'hill rice'
5. tadong 'black/purple rice'
6. tompurion 'unripe rice grains'
7. rinolok 'rice seedlings'
8. tomot 'the rice that have been harvested'
9. tomoton 'the rice being harvested'
10. parai wagu 'fresh rice grains, normally have just been harvested in the last month or so'
11.pulut 'sticky rice' (though I'm not sure whether this one is borrowed from Malay)
12. kuruluh 'dried rice stalks'

and I believe the long list goes on. It is very true indeed that language mirrors the community.