The Voice of My Heart
The Voice of My Heart
Here, I would like to quote what Simon Takdir said, "The diminishing
quality of our life is a reality and it is happening.The climate
change, the depleting sources of clean water, the natural disaster, and
the ever arising of different viruses that estrange our life and the
wild life are the course of human activities."
To the people of
Orang Asal (the natives of the land) it’s happen because the imbalance
between our life and the cosmology.The predatoric nature of humans have
caused correlation imbalance within the eco-system.
I'm not
going to elaborate further on this matter. My main focus is about the
"thinking culture" within the Salako in Sarawak. With other words, the
functions of the Adat (religare / customary rituals) within the Salako
itself, and how are they going to with held this adat, that is fast
diminishing especially among the young generation.I don’t deny that the
globalize era of modernization needs us Salako to think globally. But,
it is also not wrong for us to take action in keeping our adat.
Our
community (Salako) as we carry our daily rutin life, we will not miss
the traditional religare practice (Adat), the Neolithic religare, that
we have inherited from our fore fathers, especially when we interact
with the eco-system.We have been taught by our fore fathers that
everything we do in our daily rutin life, either it is bad or good;
there is always interference from other super natural elements.
Within
our traditional religare or Adat, it’s contains all the rules, the
norms, and the ethic that organize the correlation from human to human,
and human with the non-human elements such as nature and the super
natural that exist in the cosmology system.The Horticulture Dayak
Salako have our own way of viewing our universe cosmology which to us
the visible and the invisible life exist together. We believe the
universe cosmology also consist of the Jubata (god and goddess)that
lives in Kayangan, and the Awa Pama (the soul of dead's) that lives in
Subayatn (heaven). We believe that life is shape by a system of the
visible and invisible that correlated together to form a balance system
harmonically within each other. The correlated relationship that exist
harmonically are practice as our faith and belief.
A customary
ritual (Adat) influence and shape the behavior of the Salako community
when they communicate among themselves, and with their environments.
And so the Salako community behavior within their lives is influence
and shape by the customary ritual base on their persepation towards the
nature and environments. We, through our perceptions as a Salako see
human being as one of the being within nature, and here we create our
myth to explain our perceptions. These perceptions within the Dayak
Salako make our community have high regards, respect, and friendship
towards our environments.
I hope, with this explanation the
Salako community especially in Sarawak can open up their "thinking
culture" base on this prayer that has been taught by our fore fathers
since the Neolithic religare period:
1."Jubata ang baramu’ ka ai’ tanah. adil ka tahino, bacaramin ka saruga, basengat ka Jubata, samue’e baranse’ ka jubata."
(God
create the world, fair and just to all living thing, He looks at us
from heaven, we breathe through Him, and everything hang in balance
upon Him)
2."Jubata anak munuh, Jubata anak tidur, Jubata anak Bengkok"
(God did not kill, God did not sleep, God did not do anything wrong)
3."Labih
adat Jubata bera, kurakng adat antu nuntut. Adat manusia sakanyang
parut, adat Jubata sapatok insaut.kurrrrr rak sumangat’e"
(Do not do
more in adat, God will get angry, do not do less in adat, the ghost
will ask. Human religare (adat) is to fill the stomach, God religare is
sacred. Kurrrr rak, please bring back my soul.)
Why do I write
this? My dear fellow Salako in Sarawak, our identity is getting
lost,our thinking is not developing far. We are proud of our high level
in educations that we have achieve, but we are running away from the
reality of preserving our customs and heritage, that is our pride. I
envy our neighbors, that have wrote a lot to preserve theirs, but when
are we going to starts? Its better late then none.