Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-5mhkq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-08T12:20:00.712Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Rise and Demise of Kadazan Nationalism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Margaret Roff
Get access

Extract

Writing in June 1960 Donald Stephens, editor of the North Borneo News and Sabah Times, remarked that “… the Penampang Kadazans have seldom found much favour in official circles because of the bit of education they possess and because of the courage they have in fighting for their rights.” Certainly the observations of British North Borneo Chartered Company officials and others in the past often included disparaging comparisons between the then-called “Dusun” people of the Penampang, Papar and Membakut areas south of Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu), and the more tractable people of Tuaran to the north. Owen Rutter, for instance, delivered himself in 1922 of the opinion that “The Dusuns of Tuaran … are … the pleasantest of the lowland Dusuns, just as the people of Papar and Membakut are the most objectionable.” He went on to describe an incident occurring in 1910 in which the people of Papar led a protest movement against the sale of land by the Chartered Company to rubber companies. They contended that such compensation as they had received for fruit trees and ancestral graves was inadequate, and that the land itself was their heritage for which they should also be paid. “At one time”, wrote Rutter, “the agitation movement threatened to spread to Tuaran, but the good people of the district did not appreciate squandering on legal charges the comfortable sum they had extracted from the Tuaran Rubber Estate for their fruit trees, and the Papar envoys went home practically empty-handed.” K. G. Tregonning, alluding to the same incident, merely says “At Papar, a notorious trouble-maker, strongly influenced by the long-established Roman Catholic mission there, found for the Christian Dusuns imaginary faults in the change from traditional tenure.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , May 1969 , pp. 326 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. 30 June, 1960, in an article “Dusun or Kadazan?”

2. Rutter, Owen, British North Borneo: An Account of Its History Resources and Native Tribes, London 1922, p. 60.Google Scholar The book has an admiring foreword contributed by the then secretary of the Chartered Company.

3. Ibid., p. 62.

4. Tregonning, K. G., A History of Modern Sabah, 1881–1963, Singapore 1965, p. 122.Google Scholar

5. For ethnographic and anthropological information, see: Roth, Henry Ling, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, London 1896Google Scholar; Evans, Ivor H. N., Among Primitive Peoples in Borneo, London 1922Google Scholar; Rutter, Owen, The Pagans of North Borneo, London 1929Google Scholar; Williams, Thomas Rhys, The Dusun: A North Borneo Society, New York 1965Google Scholar; Jones, L. W., The Population of Borneo: A Study of the Peoples of Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei, London 1966Google Scholar; and Appell, G. N., “Profiles of Dusun-Speaking Peoples of Sabah”, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, XLI, 2, 12 1968.Google Scholar

6. Report on the Census of Population taken on 10 August, 1960Google Scholar (North Borneo Government Printer, 1961), gives the following figures: Dusuns 145 229; Muruts 22,138; Bajaus 59,710; other indigenes 59,421; Chinese 104,542; Europeans 1,896; other non-indigenes 41,485.

7. Rutter, Owen, British North Borneo, p. 59.Google Scholar

8. St. John, Spenser, Life in the Forests of the Far EastGoogle Scholar, quoted in Roth, Henry Ling, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, London 1896, vol. 2, p. 273.Google Scholar

9. Mojuntin, Peter, “The Kadazan Language”, Sabah Times, 11 and 12 10 1967.Google Scholar

10. Appell, G. N., “The Penis Pin at Peabody Museum, Harvard University”, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, XLI, 2, 12 1968, p. 205.Google Scholar

11. Evans, Ivor H. N., Among Primitive Peoples in Borneo, London 1922, p. 116.Google Scholar

12. The attitude of the successor Malaysian Government has remained similarly ambivalent, and: preference has been given to the term “Bumiputra” — literally, sons of the soil — (a term developed, significantly enough, to describe the Malays of the peninsula), to cover Muslim and non-Muslim natives. The term “native”, it may be remarked, is used generally in Sabah (without any pejorative connotation) to describe the non-Chinese population.

13. North Borneo News and Sabah Times, 30 06 1960.Google Scholar

14. The 1960 census gives the following figures: Christians 75,247; Muslims 172,324; Others 206,850.

15. For a discussion of this see Mojuntin, Peter, “Kadazan or Dusun — the Origin of the Kadazans”, Sabah Times, 23 11 1967.Google Scholar

16. The 1960 census recorded that of all the Dusun, Murut and Bajau people only 10% were literate; i.e. able to read or write a simple letter in any language.

17. No published Kadazan dictionary existed until 1958. In that year a Kadazan-English and lunglish-Kadazan Dictionary, compiled by the Rev. A. Antonissen, was printed by the Australian Government Printing Office, Canberra, under a technical assistance grant from the Columbo Plan. The Rev. Antonissen had been a missionary in Penampang from 1932 until the Japanese occupation, and it is upon “Kadazan as spoken in Penampang and the villages round about it.” that the dictionary is based.

18. Jones, L. W., The Population of Borneo, p. 60.Google Scholar

19. See Baker, M. H., North Borneo — The First Ten Years, Singapore 1962, pp. 74–80.Google Scholar

20. For a useful and detailed account of the formation of parties in Sabah see MacDougall, John Arthur, “Shared Burdens: A Study of Communal Discrimination by the Political Parties of Malaysia and Singapore”, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1968, pp. 118–127.Google Scholar

21. North Borneo News and Sabah Times, 7 11 1961.Google Scholar

22. Ibid, 25 November 1961.

23. Ibid, 11 January 1962.

24. Ibid, 1 February 1962.

25. Report of the Commission of Enquiry, North Borneo and Sarawak, (Kuala Lumpur, Government Printer, 1962), particularly pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

26. These concessions, which are subject to periodic review, were awarded by the British in the early 1950s. It is sometimes said that in the case of both Stephens and Mustapha the concessions were given specifically in order to provide them with funds for the creation of viable (and reliable) political organisations, which the British might subsequently be able to use for the transfer of power.

27. See Report of the Commission of Enquiry, pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

28. North Borneo News and Sabah Times, 15 01 1962.Google Scholar

29. For some account of this phase of Sabah Chinese political activity see Lee, Edwin, “The Emergence of Towkay Leaders in Party Politics in Sabah” Journal of Southeast Asian History, IX, 2, 09 1968, especially pp. 315ff.Google Scholar

30. The Democratic Party and the United Party merged to form the Sabah National Party. This Chinese party subsequently underwent two changes of name to become in turn the Borneo Utara National Party and finally the Sabah Chinese Association (SCA).

31. For discussions of these elections see Tilman, Robert O., “The Alliance Pattern in Malaysian Politics: Bornean Variations on a Theme”, South Atlantic Quarterly, LXIII, 1, Winter 1964Google Scholar; Milne, R.S., “Political Parties in Sarawak and Sabah”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, VI, 2, 09 1965Google Scholar; and Glide, Henry Robert, “The Chinese Community in Sabah in the 1963 Election”, Asian Survey, V. 3, 03 1965.Google Scholar

32. Reported in several Malaysian newspapers, 16 December 1964, and by Reuters in the Sabah Times of this date.

33. Sabah Times, 12 08 1964.Google Scholar

34. Ibid, 3 August 1964.

35. Ibid, 1 August 1964.

36. See, e.g., Sabah Times editorial, 14 12 1964.Google Scholar

37. Sabah Times, 29 01 1965.Google Scholar

38. Ibid, 13 March 1965.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid, 3 August 1965.

41. Ibid, 23 August 1965.

42. Ibid, 16 September 1965.

43. See my article, “Pre-election Politics in Sabah”, Australia's Neighbours, 4th Series, No. 41, 01–02 1967.Google Scholar

44. See my article, “Sabah's Political Parties and the 1967 State Elections”, International Studies, 04 1968.Google Scholar

45. At a private dinner party for successful UPKO candidates on 29 April, 1967, Stephens urged them to work above! all for Alliance unity even though it might be initially difficult to accept USNO leadership. “We've nothing to lose”, he concluded, “but our foreskins”.

46. MacDougall, , “Shared Burdens”, op cit, p. 286Google Scholar, concludes the second section of his thesis (“A Systematic Examination of Communalism in Malaysia and Singapore”) with the finding — “The rank order of discrimination against the major blocs, running from most to least burdened, seems to run Radazans, Chinese, Iban, Indians and Muslims”.

47. See e.g. Sabah Times, 27, 28 and 29 11 1967.Google Scholar

48. Ibid, 28 November 1967.

49. For the full text of his resolution and speech see Sabah Times, 11 12Google Scholar

50. It should be noted, however, that the Kadazan clubs and associations from which the party grew continue to function and thrive.

51. Sabah Times, 14 12 1967.Google Scholar