Dusun

Dusun, around 1920

Putatan-Dusun Girls (1920)

Marudu-Dusun (1920)

Dusun is a collective name for various indigenous groups within the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo . The members of these groups do not refer to themselves as Dusun. Because of the similarities in culture and language with the Kadazan , the common class of the Kadazan-Dusun was created, which represents the largest ethnic group of the peoples of Sabah with approx. 570,000 members.

Origin of the term

The classification of various ethnic groups in Sabah as "Dusun" was made in the historical context more from a misunderstanding than from serious ethnological research. The people living in an extensive zone between the coast and the mountainous inland were referred to as "Dusun" by foreign visitors to Borneo, without knowing the differences in culture and traditions. Owen Rutter suspected as early as 1929 that the name was given by Islamic invaders. Tunggolou suspects that the first white men on their arrival on the west coast encountered Malay or Bajau, who used the term orang dusun (people of the orchards) for the inhabitants of the coast . Unfamiliar with the translation of the term, the newcomers transferred the term to the inhabitants of the coastal and hill zones.

King concludes that the Malay-derived term Dusun was used by the coastal inhabitants to refer to the agricultural inland population, and that the term Dusun had a derogatory connotation because it was associated with a backward, uncouth rural population.

Today's definition

The more recent ethnology essentially follows the view of Appell and Murdock, according to which the Dusun is less a single community, but rather a "cluster" of different communities.

While the groups belonging to the Dusun were originally longhouse residents, some Dusun tribes gave up this type of dwelling; they began in the western coastal areas and the highland plains with wet rice cultivation and animal husbandry and in the hill regions around the Mount Kinabalu with the shifting cultivation . These groups, originally classified as Dusun , include some subgroups such as the Kadazan, Rungus, Ranau and Tambunan, which differ in their social and cultural characteristics.

Historical classification

In 1922, Owen Rutter divided the Dusun into two groups: Flachland Dusun ( Lowland Dusuns ) and Bergland Dusun ( Hill Dusuns ). Within these two classes, he differentiates again into different groups and subdivisions:

group	designation	Explanation
Lowland Dusun
I.	Bundu-Dusun	Native to the sago- rich districts north of the Sugut Klias.
II.	Membakut-Dusun	colonize the coastal plain between Bongawan and Beaufort.
	Papar Dusun	The dusun of Bongawan, Benoni and Kimanis are also added to the papar dusun. You are closely allied with the Membakut-Dusun.
III.	Putatan-Dusun	Although they live in close proximity to the Papar-Dusun, they differ considerably in terms of language and customs. The Dusun of Inanam and Menggatal can also be added to this group .
IV.	Tuaran Dusun
V.	Tenggilan-Dusun	Located between the Tuaran and Tempassuk.
	Tempassuk-Dusun	Located between Tenggilan and Marudu.
VI.	Tambunan-Dusun	To be found in the Tambunan Plain and the adjacent areas. Although geographically they could be assigned to the mountainous Dusun, because of their cultivation methods they belong to the lowland Dusun.
Bergland-Dusun
VII.	Kiau	Native to the Tuaran and Tempassuk counties and the Bundu Tuhan neighborhood
VIII.	Ranau-Dusun	Native to the villages of the Ranau plain and the upper reaches of Sungai Labuk and Sungai Sugut .
IX.	Marudu-Dusun	Located in the huge area between Tempassuk, Sungai Bengkoka and Paitan.
	Rungus-Dusun	In Kudat home and on the Melobong peninsula and the districts Labuk and Sugut.
X.	without designation	This group refers to the scattered Dusun settlements north of Paitan along the hills on the upper reaches of Labuk , Sugut and Kinabatangan . The group includes the northern tribes of the Tambunwha , the tribes of the Dumpas on the Labuk, and those of the Tenggara of Kinabatangan and Kwamut.
XI.	Tegas-Dusun	former warlike tribe, now at home in the higher mountain ranges of the coastal regions above the Tambunan plain.

literature

• GN Appeal: Ethnographic Profiles of the Dusun-speaking People of Sabah, Malaysia . In: Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume XLI, Part 2, December 1968.
• IHN Evans: The Religion of the Tempasuk Dusuns of North Borneo Cambridge: University Press, 1953.
• Monica Glyn-Jones: The Dusun of the Penampang Plains , 2 volumes, London, 1953.
• LWW Gudgeon: British North Borneo . Adam and Charles Black, London 1913, pp. 22-39
• Godfrey Hewett: The Dusuns of North Borneo. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character , Volume 95, No. 666, 1923, pp. 157-163
• LW Jones: The Population Of Borneo - A study of the peoples of Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei , University of London, 1966, reprinted 2007: Opus Publications; ISBN 978-983-3987-08-5 .
• GP Murdock: Ethnographic Atlas: A Summary . The University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh 1967.
• J. Staal: The Dusuns of North Borneo. Their Social Life. In: Anthropos , 18-19, 1923, pp. 958-977
• Owen Rutter : British North Borneo - An Account of its History, Ressources and Native Tribes , Constable & Company Ltd, London, 1922.
• WH Treacher: "British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan and North Borneo" . Singapore, Government print department, 1891.
• KG Tregonning: A History Of Modern Sabah (North Borneo 1881-1963) , 2nd edition, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1965, reprint 1967.
• Thomas Rhys Williams: The Dusun: A North Borneo Society . Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1966.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Census 2010 ( Memento of the original from November 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 7.1 MB), page 71  
2. ^ Appeal, page 132
3. ↑ Owen Rutter: The Paganas Of North Borneo ; Hutchinson & Co, London, 1929, p. 30
4. ↑ RF Tunggolou: The origins and meanings of the terms "Kadazan" and "Dusun" ( Memento of the original from June 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Kadazandusun Cultural Association , 2004  
5. ^ King, Victor T .: The Peoples of Borneo ; Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1993, ISBN 0-631-17221-1 ; Pp. 55-57
6. ↑ ^{a b} Appell, George N .: Ethnographic Profiles of the Dusun-speaking Peoples of Sabah, Malaysia ; Journal of the Malaysian Branch Royal Asiatic Society; Issue 41; Pp. 131-147
7. ↑ quoted in Appell, p. 131
8. ^ Appell, George N .: The Status of Social-Anthropological Research in Borneo ; Southeast Asia Program Data Paper 109, Ithaca: Cornell University, 1978
9. ↑ Rutter, pp. 54f

Remarks

1. ↑ The term "Dusun" is derived from the Malay word of the same name for "fruit plantation".