A few decades ago, the ikat weaving tradition of the Dayaks, the indigenous people of Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), was considered a disappearing art (Gittinger 1979; Heppell 1994), but through the work of the Dayak Ikat Weaving Project based in Sintang, West Kalimantan, the tradition has been revived.

This chapter considers the role the Weaving Project plays in the revitalisation and preservation of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) associated with Dayak weaving. The Project is examined in the light of preservation strategies recommended under the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage as well as Indonesian laws recently enacted or drafted to protect intellectual and cultural property. I suggest that efforts such as the Dayak Ikat Weaving Project offer more culturally appropriate, holistic and integrative heritage interventions than those proposed by the Convention and Indonesian laws. Special attention is given to indigenous curatorial practices embedded in Dayak ikat weaving traditions, and how these exist as both forms of intangible cultural heritage as well as strategies for their preservation. My goal is to show how the intangible cannot be detached from the tangible, or the whole fabric of life, and preservation strategies need to be informed by more ‘ecological thinking’, as Michael Brown recommends in his article ‘Heritage Trouble: Recent Work on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Property’ (2005). For Brown, ecological thinking is ‘characterized by holism and awareness of interconnections.’