Musings: Family Matters

Sea Dayaks (Iban) women from Rejang, Sarawak, wearing corsets decorated with brass ings and filigree adornments. The family adds to the corset dress as the girl ages and based on her family's wealth. 

Dayak Cheif.

Dayak Headhunters

Raden Demang Béhé, head of the Ot-Danom-Dayaks in Ambalu (Upper Melawi river), Central-Borneo. Photographed between 1890 and 1920.

Heritage is something so alien, so disconnected from what I really am, especially at the age of 22, when I can barely grasp who and what I am. its so far removed from who I actually am. When I  go home, I see these pictures of these people, I google them. I've seen their faces before, I see their faces when I look in the mirror everyday. Who are those people? They're me. But how do I reconcile who they are, with who I am? We are connected by blood. I know these things, but is that really me? For me, I can't even talk to my grandmother, we don't speak the same language but yet, a quarter of her is me. She is me, I am her, how do I enjoy something and claim it's mine, and that it's part of me if I dont even feel like it is mine? I know it, on an intellectual level, but I dont feel it, so whats real? How and when will I have the forsight to connect the two? Perhaps that's why I'm endlessly interested in indigenous cultures, as if somehow, learning about them will spark a connection, but a genuine curiosity is something completely different from acceptance and full acknowledgment of its significance in your own life. This is not just a question of native identity, but cross-cultural identity as well. 

Swirling around in my head... my grandmother lives in the rainforest, I am native. I am Dayak. I am Bidayuh. My ancestors were headhunters. But what does it mean to be Dayak? How is one recognized as one, in the head, in the heart? Language? Dress? Physical appearance? Attitude? To gain acces to a community, you must first speak the language, right? but how  do I do that? How can I claim to be something when I have no accessibility, no agency to do so?  How do I approach? Inside, I feel like a global citizen, so where do my loyalties lie? There doesn't need to be a choice made, but I know it's a question, an issue that will more than likely be assessed in the future. I'm still very much a "tourist" when I come home. When I moved to New Zealand from Malaysia at the age of 4 my culture was fossilized as something not totally inaccesible, constant trips back home make it easier for me to understand, to assimilate. But this distance, this unknowing, is not a relationship that I'm satisfied with. My interpretation of it all is something fully removed from me. I can't lay claim to a culture, to a people, most of which I don't even know how to communicate with. It's embarrassing. Maybe it's my own pride and stubbornness, actually, I know it is. I guess I can find comfort in the fact that I'm concerned and I want to question, I want to know. I guess only time and maturity will tell.