The Voice of MY Heart.

Here, I would like to quote what Simon Takdir said, "The diminishing quality of our life is a reality and it is happening.The climate change, the depleting sources of clean water, the natural disaster, and the ever arising of different viruses that estrange our life and the wild life are the course of human activities."

To the people of Orang Asal (the natives of the land) it’s happen because the imbalance between our life and the cosmology.The predatoric nature of humans have caused correlation imbalance within the eco-system.

I'm not going to elaborate further on this matter. My main focus is about the "thinking culture" within the Salako in Sarawak. With other words, the functions of the Rukun (religare / customary rituals) within the Salako itself, and how are they going to with held this Rukun, that is fast diminishing especially among the young generation.I don’t deny that the globalize era of modernization needs us Salako to think globally. But, it is also not wrong for us to take action in keeping our rukun.

Our community (Salako) as we carry our daily rutin life, we will not miss the traditional religare practice (Rukun), the Neolithic religare, that we have inherited from our fore fathers, especially when we interact with the eco-system.We have been taught by our fore fathers that everything we do in our daily rutin life, either it is bad or good; there is always interference from other super natural elements.


Within our traditional religare or Rukun, it’s contains all the rules, the norms, and the ethic that organize the correlation from human to human, and human with the non-human elements such as nature and the super natural that exist in the cosmology system.The Horticulture Dayak Salako have our own way of viewing our universe cosmology which to us the visible and the invisible life exist together. We believe the universe cosmology also consist of the Jubata (god and goddess)that lives in Kayangan, and the Awa Pama (the soul of dead's) that lives in Subayatn (heaven). We believe that life is shape by a system of the visible and invisible that correlated together to form a balance system harmonically within each other. The correlated relationship that exist harmonically are practice as our faith and belief.

A customary ritual (Rukun) influence and shape the behavior of the Salako community when they communicate among themselves, and with their environments. And so the Salako community behavior within their lives is influence and shape by the customary ritual base on their persepation towards the nature and environments. We, through our perceptions as a Salako see human being as one of the being within nature, and here we create our myth to explain our perceptions. These perceptions within the Dayak Salako make our community have high regards, respect, and friendship towards our environments.

I hope, with this explanation the Salako community especially in Sarawak can open up their "thinking culture" base on this prayer that has been taught by our fore fathers since the Neolithic religare period:

1."Jubata ang baramu’ ka ai’ tanah. adil ka tahino, bacaramin ka saruga, basengat ka Jubata, samue’e baranse’ ka jubata."
(God create the world, fair and just to all living thing, He looks at us from heaven, we breathe through Him, and everything hang in balance upon Him)

2."Jubata anak munuh, Jubata anak tidur, Jubata anak Bengkok"
(God did not kill, God did not sleep, God did not do anything wrong)

3."Labih adat Jubata bera, kurakng adat antu nuntut. Adat manusia sakanyang parut, adat Jubata sapatok insaut.kurrrrr rak sumangat’e"
(Do not do more in adat, God will get angry, do not do less in adat, the ghost will ask. Human religare (rukun) is to fill the stomach, God religare is sacred. Kurrrr rak, please bring back my soul.)

Why do I write this? My dear fellow Salako in Sarawak, our identity is getting lost,our thinking is not developing far. We are proud of our high level in educations that we have achieve, but we are running away from the reality of preserving our customs and heritage, that is our pride. I envy our neighbors, that have wrote a lot to preserve theirs, but when are we going to starts? Its better late then none.