S.E. Asia - a new exploration

[Yared]

And they build their own guns as a rite of passage?

 

[Masada]

No, problem. Whenever you get time.

 

[stormbind]

A quick note: If you add me on facebook and see 'Jacky Ruado', he helped me on the expedition and was my Tagalog interpreter. He can confirm (or possibly deny) my assertions

As a close-nit team, everything gifted to me was pretty much gifted to him as well. He may have retained contact with the tribes.

 

[stormbind]

Verbal history recounts trade with Chinese, Muslims, Spanish and Filipinos.

I would be interested in the first two principally. But anything you can give me would be welcome.

The Batak have beaded necklaces of a particular shape, which they consider to be traditional and culturally distinctive. All such items are dwindling in numbers and quality because tourists - western tourists (and Filipino tradesmen) ritualise the role of culture-canibals.

Anyway, what struck me as amazing is that Padaw recounted that the original beads were introduced by Muslim traders. I suggest this was probably Bruneian Empire. The Batak now buy plastic replicas from Filipinos, but that historical recount proved amazing because I later travelled to the Brunei museum and found a similar neclace on display. No history was provided for the key sample and the Brunei museum did not return my calls. Bah! Beaded necklaces are common throughout the world. However, there is a particular combination of arrangements that interest me and I would like to uncover its origin and distribution.

The Batak also provided stories of the origin of their imported jungle knives throughout history. They can recount no knowledge of iron-making and no way of life without knives. However, they can make weaker knives from bamboo.

To assist communication, I took Chief Padaw to a museum. This was his first incursion into a city. In the museum, I recorded Padaw as he compared and contrasted academic accounts. Some of the objects he found excited him and he recalled stories from his own childhood - yet the same objects are no longer present in Batak society.

Could you elucidate further on this?

The Batak trade with Filipinos, selling ratan and other goods and buying fish etc. However, they are not well integrated with Philippine society and none of them had been inside a city proper. I realise that I have contradicted everything that is said on the topic, however, it turned out that Padaw wrongly thought that a terminal/market was the city. As outlandish as this sounds, I very tentatively suggest that any 'Batak' who had previously been seen in the city-proper, were in fact actors working for the tourist board.

Padaw travelled with me to the to city museum and no Batak had before seen the collection. Amazingly, no person in Philippine academia had thought of asking the Batak how relevant each object was. For example, there are Filipinos who claim to be experts on the Batak and who write academic papers lacking primary source evidence and which are subsequently riddled with error. Padaw went through every object on display, providing many examples of what was missing, interpreting artefacts from other indigenous groups, and occationally contradicting the academics.

For example, the Batak have a cultural writing system based on the collecting of leaves. The leaves are collected and then arranged to tell a story. They also have long distance non-verbal sound-based communications. Both of these topics were missing from the museum, as was their knowledge of herbal medicines.

For another example, the Batak shaman (Batak: babaylan) carries out rituals. The museum displayed a mock-Tagbanau shaman and not a Batak shaman. Padaw, who is the last negrito Batak shaman, explained the role of every object in the mock-ritual and contrasted each detail with the Batak equivalent.

The NGO that I communicated with was concerned with spreading literacy. However, the NGO is itself heavily influenced by Philippine political aims.

So settlement, adoption of farming etc.

Humn.. -ish

The NGO teaches the elders how to write their own names, and the NGO instructs the Batak to build a static school. The stated aim is that this will empower the Batak to participate in democracy. It does not make any sense to me, and the NGO does not teach the children.

The Batak are farmers who grow rice using slash and burn methods. That is what they know and understand. Effectiveness depends on the creation of ash, which is dependent on selecting overgrown areas to slash and burn (my emphasis).

Philippine influences, such as wage labour, introduce new problems. For example, the Batak will work on Filipino farms and neglect their own crop - which might be left ungaurded and eaten by wild pigs.

Now lets return to the earlier NGO. Note that the NGO requires the Batak to build a static school. The school cannot be moved and the Batak must use their valuable time to build it - like unpaid wage labour. I'm not saying that the NGO is harmful, but it certainly complicates the situation because the building activity can distract the Batak from farming, and it may prevent them from moving to new land for future slash and burn farming.

In another village, an NGO/government planted paper trees and told the Batak that they could profit from them if they stayed and guarded the trees. It is another example of efforts to stop the Batak from moving. However, the Batak need to move in order to grow rice effectively.

We can clearly see efforts to impose settlement. The government has even provided flat-pack housing. However, we also see efforts to prevent effective farming in the uplands. The NGO and government are lacking in practical solutions to the issue of food and nutrition and they are attacking nomadic desires without tackling the cause of those desires (i.e. the desire to survive and avoid starvation).

 

[stormbind]

I know of that controversy, but its a bit beyond my area of expertise. Is there any indication of the age of these instruments? And what exactly did he say about them?

Kulingtang were apparently used in the coastal villages, which may have existed as late as 1970 though this date may come under attack as more information is disclosed. Larger gongs were dismissed as very old.

The interesting thing is that they had such things and then abandoned them. I suggest they last fled the coast (for the last time) in response to the highway being built. I speculate that the Batak may have feared the machines and the building process, land-seeking intrusive settlers, (illegal) mining, or the road's money-seeking builders. Their former sites have now been sold to property developers.

 

[stormbind]

And they build their own guns as a rite of passage?

I do not know their rights of passage. However, only their hunters are armed with guns.

 

[Mad Man]

I cannot find a picture of the rifles. They also had toy-rifles for their children. I do have pictures of the pistol that would be used against smaller game such as monkeys. I'm not aware of Batak terms to describe weapons and they referred to this as a 'Colt'

It's good to know that globalisation hasn't affected the Batak, but seriously though that pistol turned out much better then I imagined, especially when you consider that it was built in a jungle with little to no mechanical equipment

 

[Yared]

I do not know their rights of passage. However, only their hunters are armed with guns.

The primary weapon of a Batak hunter is his self-made smoothbore rifle.

Aha, I just assumed that since you have to make your own smoothbore rifle to be a hunter, it'd be some kind of right of passage

So how do they make them?

 

[stormbind]

They use scraps of disgarded metal and pieces of wood, which they carve using a machete. The metal balls (amunition) are the among the hardest for them to find in the rain forest. I speculate that they might resort to stones and this was not witnessed.

I am not an expert on weapons. However, to my mind, the barrels appeared too good to be made in the rain forest and yet not good enough to be intended for a modern gun. I do not know each barrel's original purpose. It might be that they can buy barrels as a spare part from Filipino farmers or tradesmen, but then I would expect the parts to be rifled. I had very little contact with those Filipinos. For example, there was a ratan trader on the edge of Batak territory. He paid from 1 peso (like 2 US cents) for a long piece of Batak-collected ratan which is used to manufacture westernised furniture. It's possible that such contacts might provide access to metals.

The rest of the gun was hand-made and each one ignited its gun powder using a crude hammer with a sharpened tip. In the case of the 'Colt', the hammer was made by twisting the kind of metal you might expect of a very cheap coat hanger. The hammer accessed the gun powder through a simple hole in the wood.

Batak hunters decorate their smoothbore-rifles (which are typically black) with red string and the tails of flying squirrels. The rifles were not very long, perhaps no more than 1.0 to 1.5 metres and had a lot of kick - I did not measure them but I do have pictures in the video (not currently accessible). Note that European smoothbores with a lot of kick would be very much longer, so I doubt the Batak guns are terribly effective.

 

[stormbind]

And they build their own guns as a rite of passage?

While I do not know the rights of passage for boys to men, I do know of the tests for becoming a shaman.