“The Story of Lun Tauh, “Our People”: Narrating Identity on the Borders in the Kelabit Highlands”.

Valerie Anne, Mashman (2020) “The Story of Lun Tauh, “Our People”: Narrating Identity on the Borders in the Kelabit Highlands”. Southeast Asian Studies, 9 (2). pp. 203-229. ISSN 2423-8686

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Abstract

This article shows through the vehicle of an oral narrative delivered in the Kelabit longhouse of Long Peluan, Sarawak, Borneo, how there are two ways of understanding ethnicity. The notion of lun tauh, ‘our people,’ presents a fluid, inclusive identity through the course of warfare, alliances and migration, demonstrating an on-going historical process. At the same time, the narrative also features a reified exclusive ethnic construct of ‘the Kelabit’ relating to place and territory. This concurs with other contemporary narratives, which relate a fixed concept of ethnicity to tenure of territory. The purpose of this article is to explain how these two notions of identity and ethnicity have come about.

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