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# War and Peace in Borneo: Historical Perspective on Conflict Prevention and Resolution

Bernard Sellato

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## To cite this version:

Bernard Sellato. War and Peace in Borneo: Historical Perspective on Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Regina Garai Abdullah. Commemorating a Century of Kapit Peacemaking (1924-2024), Dayak Cultural Foundation, pp.214-227, 2025, 9789671194881. halshs-05423800

HAL Id: halshs-05423800

https://shs.hal.science/halshs-05423800v1

Submitted on 26 Dec 2025

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Sellato, B., 2025, “War and Peace in Borneo: Historical Perspective on Conflict Prevention and Resolution”, in *Commemorating a Century of Kapit Peacemaking (1924-2024)*, Regina Garai Abdullah (ed.), Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia: Dayak Cultural Foundation, pp. 214-227.

# War and Peace in Borneo:
## Historical Perspective on Conflict Prevention and Resolution

Bernard Sellato

**Abstract:** Keeping clear of polemology or irenology theories and the various explanations tendered about religious reasons for tribal war and headhunting practices, as well as of recent international conflicts, this essay describes the general Borneo setting and the particular situation of the Kapit-and-Baleh region as the meeting point of five of the island's major river basins. In an attempt to uncover features common to the island as a whole, it first focuses on its heartland, and examines the customs or adat relative to waging war and restoring peace among traditional peoples of the interior. Then, in a diachronic perspective, it tries to figure out how these peoples' assumed autochthonous methods of conflict prevention and resolution changed across historical periods, from pre-colonial times, insofar as they can be properly identified from both interviews with local people and data from the extant literature; via innovations progressively introduced by contact with and influences from coastal ("Malay") societies; to the sweeping effect of the colonial states' administrative policies; and the subsequent powerful impact of modern national (or State) societal practices and legal procedures. While the last phase has led to the local development of new forms of written adat corpuses, this essay also points to some other post-independence developments, and to what may remain today of ancient patterns regarding conflicts, their prevention, and their resolution.

This chapter proposes to contemplate Borneo as a whole and uncover common features. To do this, it first focuses on the Borneo heartland, and examines the practices of war and peace among its traditional hinterland peoples, in a diachronic perspective, that is, it tries to figure out how they changed and evolved along historical periods.

This begins by an attempt to apprehend and understand pre-colonial practices, insofar as they can be known through interviews with local people and data from books; then, by eliciting changes that occurred due to old coastal societies' influences; then, by eliciting later influences due to policies of the colonial states, which did not deal with war and peace in the same ways; and finally, by pointing to some post-colonial developments, also related to different national laws and policies, and to what remains today of ancient patterns regarding conflicts, their prevention, and their resolution. As Borneo is home to many different peoples, with different cultures, languages, traditions, and customs, this chapter endeavours to give a general picture of the question of war and peace among all these peoples, beyond the particulars of each of them, though case studies will be used when needed.

Before diving into its core topic, the general setting of the island is described; then, more in detail, the particular situation of the heartland, this central mountainous region, which is the meeting point of Borneo's five major river basins. The Borneo land mass is cut in quarters by large rivers flowing to all directions. Till recently, social relations were shaped by the physiography and hydrography, and rivers were the only means of communication between the
coasts and the hinterland. Coastal towns were chain-linked to one another by trading circumnavigation and a network of footpaths in the interior connected upland populations across water divides.

Population was roughly differentiated between Malays, now Moslems, and Dayak, now mostly Christians. Overall, Dayak is a blanket term used by outsiders to refer to hundreds of non-Moslem groups, each with its distinctive name, language, and culture. The term Malay or Melayu refers to a variety of lowland communities, each with its own dialect and cultural traditions, but most sharing in a wider regional "Malay" cultural pattern of language, riparian habitat, way of life, economy and, more recently, religion. A fair part of Malay population historically derived from Dayak communities.

Historically, coastal and interior regions developed into two distinct socio-political spheres: that of trading kingdoms, connected by maritime links; and that of uplanders, linked by waterways, and overland by footpaths. For millennia, a kingdom's economy was based on its position at an interface between a landmass rich in valuable commercial products and the sea trade networks, as well as on its capacity to exert control over the transiting trade. The uplanders' subsistence economy was based mainly on hill rice cultivation, hunting, and fishing, though they were also involved in the forest product trade. This is where the two spheres interacted: on trade routes along river axes.

Beyond the domain of farming uplanders, in remote forested regions, nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers subsisted on wild plant resources and hunting in a self-sufficient way. Some became acquainted with farmers and collected valuable forest products, which they bartered to them.

In terms of social organization, economic system, and ethno-cultural identity, these cultural types – Malay, Dayak, Nomad – shaped a roughly concentric structure in four zones, from the coast up a large river: 1) one or several trading kingdoms (later, sultanates); 2) Dayak groups associated with a kingdom and paying tribute (Dayak serah); 3) free Dayak groups farther upstream (Dayak mahardeka); 4) nomadic bands. Such a set of interdependent categories was found along every major river, and it was a prerequisite for a river basin to function as a social and economic whole. With this description in mind, one may think of Brunei and the Baram, Kutai and the Mahakam, or Banjarmasin and the Barito, or even the early Sarawak of the Brookes, using its door-tax as a form of tribute.

A kingdom needed to create and control an interface near a river's mouth, where forest products from upstream and trade goods brought by sea ships would meet. Without producing wealth, it lived from tribute and by levying tax on trade. At major confluences up the river, it established trade posts for uplanders to bring down their produce (for more recent times, one may think of Kapit, Belaga, or Marudi). With time, these posts became petty polities. Farther upriver, free Dayak set up meeting spots for nomads to bring their trade. This pattern gave the river basin a dendritic social structure.

Finally, the hinterland network of footpaths across mountains was used for war expeditions, long-distance migrations, forest collecting tours, trading journeys, as well as for interethnic alliance meetings, peace-making ceremonies, and marriages.

Let us now close up on this particular cross-border area of intense historical interethnic contact and conflict: along the ridge line between the Baleh/Jengayan, to the north; the upper Kapuas, to the south and southwest; the upper Mahakam, to the southeast; and the Kayan River and the
Apokayan plateau, to the east. In the nineteenth century, this line formed a tentative inter-colonial boundary between the Brooke raj and Dutch positions in west and east Borneo. It later became the international border.

By the mid-nineteenth century, several ethnic groups shared this region. Iban groups had moved from the southwest coast into western Sarawak, then eastward into the Rajang basin, up to the confluence of the Baleh River. They were small, scattered, and fairly autonomous communities of dry-rice farmers, egalitarian but competitive, and often at war with each other. They strived for new lands to farm and collect, and they aggressively deployed upstream, and often beyond water divides. Kayan groups, coming from the east, had moved into the Balui, the Mahakam, and the upper Kapuas, while various Kenyah groups had massively moved into Apokayan and the Bahau River, and the Baram. These Orang Ulu, warlike farmers, had a formal social stratification, in nobles-commoners-slaves, and lived in large villages, sometimes up to 3,000 souls. And many small bands of nomads occupied the so-called "no man's land" in the mountains along water divides, a region with low population density, but rich in forest products.

For millennia, Borneo has exported forest products, as well as gold, to India, China, and the Persian Gulf. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the re-opening of the huge mainland China market triggered a steep rise in demand for forest and sea products throughout Southeast Asia, with prices skyrocketing. And by the mid-nineteenth century, forest products already were of great importance to the exports and the income of Borneo's coastal states, like Sarawak. When trade products had been depleted in the lowlands, collectors looked toward areas further upstream, particularly the Baleh territories, where nomads lived. These nomads collected the same products, which they bartered for salt, metal, and dogs to their traditional trade partners, the Kayan of the Kapuas & Mahakam. Kayan chiefs, acting as middlemen, bartered the products gathered from the nomads to downriver traders.

Meanwhile, despite Charles Brooke's attempts to stop them, Iban collectors kept moving up the Rajang and into the Baleh to get access to new forested grounds. They entered into harsh competition for forest products with the nomads in the Baleh and the Kapuas and Mahakam headwaters, on whom they led an extermination war. The conflicts with these nomads (Lisum and Bukat or Ukit) soon extended to their southern Kayan patrons.

By the late nineteenth century, the Dutch colonial administration and its regular armed forces controlled the Kapuas basin, except its northern border area with Sarawak (not yet mapped), and not at all the upper Mahakam (formally still a part of Kutai). Whereas the Dutch administration was quite bureaucratic, the Brookes governed Sarawak in a very personal way. As Sarawak was unable to maintain a professional army, it divided the river-based Iban groups, with "friendly" auxiliaries, exempted from tax, being used to keep in check the "hostile" Iban rebels, farther upstream. In West Borneo, the Dutch had only a token military presence in upriver posts and, in line with their system of ruling by proxy, they called on the local petty Malay rulers to rally their Dayak allies, and fight off encroaching Iban from over the border.

At that time in Sarawak, economic priority was given to the collecting of forest products over agricultural development, including commercial agriculture and cash-crop plantations. Upriver Iban neglected their paddy farms, bought rice for their sustenance, and paid door tax in kind. For the State, they were both the basis of its revenue and an uncontrollable problem, "a curse and a mainstay". The nomads of the Baleh sought refuge in the Kapuas, the Mahakam, or Apokayan, but even there they still fell victims to Iban raids, called "reprisals" and sanctioned by the State.
In 1885, Sarawak authorized a “reprisal” attack by thousands of Iban on the upper Mahakam, which laid waste to the region and left 230 dead.

With this policy of intimidating foreign Dayak groups into vacating their lands, Sarawak created a wide cross-border “collecting basin”, for the benefit of Iban collectors and State revenue. In this sense, the Brookes’ early Sarawak could be regarded as a “lowland society”, in the continuity of earlier Malay principalities, waging war by proxy on highland societies for commercial profit. As a narrow coastal state, Sarawak not only wanted new territories for their resources and for its revenue, but it also wanted an inflow of population as labour to boost product collecting. Targeting the Kenyah of Apokayan and the Kayan of the Mahakam, it established trading posts, well stocked by Chinese traders, on the middle course of rivers, like Kapit (in 1875), where these foreign Dayak came to barter. This form of soft power led to powerful Kenyah migrations from ApoKayan into the upper Balui and Baram after 1900.

The Dutch blamed the Sarawak government, and tried to better control their northern borde. Meanwhile, the stratified groups of the Kapuas, Mahakam, and Apokayan, finding their economic system severely disturbed by Iban interference, joined forces with their respective nomadic trade partners to deter Iban collecting on their territories. This rampant conflict went on well into the 1920s.

What do we know about conflicts, and war and peace practices, in precolonial times? James Brooke's success in Sarawak in the 1840s encouraged the Dutch to consolidate their presence in western Borneo. We have reliable archival sources, on both sides, from the mid-nineteenth century, but no first-hand material for the upper Mahakam and Apo Kayan before 1900.

Earlier reports by travelers to the interior describe a horrific situation of endemic interethnic massacres and widespread slavery (e.g., Dalton in Kutai 1825). Indeed, no peaceful relations could be sustained in a context of extreme competition for high-value commercial resources. Let us now look briefly at conflicts, first “internal” disputes, and their resolution.

Disputes may erupt at any time within a village between any two villagers, over land or property, a spouse, a broken promise. Each village had a council of elders, formal or informal, to hear the parties and attempt conciliation, and a legal custom, complete with the necessary tools and oral jurisprudence, to pass judgements and impose sanctions. The word *adat* is used today to refer to local traditional legal custom, among other things (see below).

Two related methods were also used, under the *adat* elders’ ritual supervision: oaths (or swearing on a sacred object) and ordeals (or trial by dangerous tests). Both parties may swear on a sacred sword, a ritual stone, a tiger fang, or metaphorically on a dog, just like some people may swear in court on a sacred book. Ordeals may consist, for both parties, in dipping one hand in boiling water, or remaining submerged in the river. In oaths, the spirit of the sacred object is supposed to strike the guilty (or lying) party with a bizarre illness resulting in death, while in ordeals, the gods are expected to protect the innocent party from any harm deriving from the test. In both methods, then, contrasting with trial by a council of elders, judgement is left to supernatural entities to pass, and sanctions to result. Such methods for settling personal clashes are also relied on to settle conflicts between groups.

Why make war? The reasons for people to attack their neighbors were many and varied. People were keen to have territories, first of all, good farming land, and also certain natural resources,
such as iron ore deposits or salt springs. The swift growth of the trade in forest products intensified the need for vast territories.

Territorial conquest may be made necessary for people running short of farming land due to demographic growth, or being displaced by progressive advance by other neighbors and appropriation of their lands. This amounted to massive invasion by groups deploying to another river basin: a period of harassment raids, followed by actual occupation. This had significant demographic consequences, often with the massacre of men and the elderly and the capture of young women and children. For victors, plundering contributed to booty and a gain in prestige.

Oral history reports that, faced with Kayan stratified invaders set on settling in permanently, part of the attacked and decimated resident groups fled elsewhere; others submitted without fighting and entered into a relationship of vassals, but retained their autonomy and identity ("vassal" here stands for Sanskrit *bhakti* and Malay *tunduk*); others yet resisted and, when defeated, were shared as captives or slaves among the winners. As for the Iban, after their threatening raids and killings, they appropriated the vacated lands, to make them their exclusive zone of forest product collecting. They then progressively established their villages and rice fields in a safe buffer zone. Residents who resisted were killed or kept as captives, while some were returned for ransom, and survivors were assimilated into the Iban cultural sphere.

Finally, among both Kayan-Kenyah and Iban alike, ambitious junior chiefs or chiefs' sons, with no expectations for becoming a village headman, could gather friends and followers and initiate a village scission to go find a new place for themselves, eventually by forceful methods.

Revenge was one good reason for endless conflicts and precolonial wars, which persisted during the colonial era until the early twentieth century. When custom trials and fines failed to assuage and satisfy the wronged party, a personal or family feud may trigger a long string of cross murders: this is the *vendetta* system, from its name on Corsica Island, where it continues today.

In Borneo, the usual rationale for a retaliation raid was the need for a fresh enemy head to close the mourning of a murder victim. To refrain from retaliating would be perceived as a sign of weakness, bound to inspire further attacks. Vendettas opposing families or kin groups seem to have long prevailed between Iban and nomads (Lisum, Ukit), or between Iban groups, with both sides choosing to snub colonial rules. Some vendettas turned into full-fledged interethnic wars.

When a conflict reached a stage when it involved a whole village or ethnic group, balancing the head count between the two parties became a crucial issue. To put it simply, according to some, the count of heads gained and lost was believed to be a measure of the amount of vital force gained or lost by a community. War parties took great care to carry away the heads of their own slain warriors, so that enemies would not appropriate their vital force. This balancing system, common among many groups, was used by colonial administrations, in the continuity of the Malay states, to achieve peace negotiations between warring local groups.

If war is endemic and violence is permanent, peace is rare, fragile, and short-lived. Now, let's examine the procedures of conflict prevention and resolution. And back to *adat*. Adat is a very important concept in Borneo, which covers all aspects of social life: religion, morality, ethics, and law, and even etiquette, the rules of proper social behavior. It is the language of customary law, covering the legal and ritual fields, as an idiom common to different ethno-cultural groups, which both allows and governs their relationships. This word *adat*, however, is of Arabic origin (as are *hukum* and *agama/ugama*) and derived from coastal societies. Hinterland Dayak groups
had their own specific traditions and different names in their languages to refer to their own
"custom", as an equivalent to the term *adat*.

The language of *adat* came to also govern relations of Dayak people with Malay kingdoms, and it is through the mechanisms of *adat*, which are derived from Malay customs, that procedures of conflict prevention and resolution later functioned among Dayak groups. The colonial states adopted and adapted these procedures to deal and interfere with war and peace among Dayak.

First, let's look at the situation in the most remote highlands of Borneo, such as among Kayan, Kenyah, Kelabit, Lundaye, the free, independent groups, which had long remained impervious to the influence of coastal states' *adat*. They display original practices of conflict prevention and resolution, as a set of variations around common bodies of beliefs and social rules. For example:

In stratified groups, Kayan and Kenyah, high nobility from different groups intermarried and sustained a network of marriage alliances at the regional level, which relieved disputes. Among the many Kenyah subgroups, which often quarreled, an image of a rhinoceros hornbill symbolized the restored peace and the harmonious union of allies (*petotong, meliwa totong*). This alliance was periodically renewed by a blood pact, with sacrifice of pigs and chicken.

Among these groups, blood pacts between chiefs were binding, personally and on behalf of their entire community, for which they were accountable. They took various forms, quite creatively: e.g., the arm of each chief was rubbed with the other chief's blood; or each chief licked the blood flowing from the other chief's hand; or the blood of the two chiefs was mixed, and both drank it; or tobacco was dipped in the mixture of the bloods, and the two chiefs smoked it together.

Blood brotherhood rituals included the sacrifice of a pig, jointly performed, and sometimes, the sprinkling of pig blood, or the waving of a chicken's wings over the assistance. Collective rituals consisted in rubbing pig blood on the hands or arms of all participants to purify them.

The two parties involved also exchanged symbolic objects, such as weapons (sword, spear, shield, war coat), or sacred objects (mandau, gong, ceramic jar). Even better, they exchanged women (sisters, daughters), as intermarriage always is the best political instrument.

More coercing was swearing, or taking an oath on sacred objects. In 1905, a Dutch controller tried to establish peaceful relations among quarrelling Kenyah groups of the Bahau River and he exchanged blood with their chiefs, but they kept carrying on with headhunting. In 1907, Captain Fischer and his squad gathered all the chiefs of nine Kenyah groups to take an oath on a tiger fang, a most powerful object, and the chiefs swore, for themselves, their descendants, and their people, that they would stop war, while, ritual experts were uttering imprecations threatening potential offenders with dreadful supernatural punishment. Soon, all the Kenyah came down from their fortified hilltop villages and resettled along the main river's banks – the tiger's power.

So, the same traditional methods were used for both conflict prevention and conflict resolution: rituals of alliance, friendship, and exchange were commonly set into action when it came to putting an end to an ongoing conflict. Their aim was to conciliate and restore harmony between social groups, and the harmony of the cosmos. The terms used then refer to the notion of “to heal”, “to repair”, “to mend”, and to the notion of “cool” or “cooling”.

In Dayak folk stories, a hero fights the villain chief one on one (duel), after a long battle of words – did this happen in real life? Possibly, each party selected the best warrior as a champion
to represent the group, and the issue of the fight settled the conflict. This familiar method is
certainly a clever way to prevent or terminate warfare with minimal loss of life.

Authors mention among Iban a form of combat with wooden clubs (*betempoh*) between the champions of two communities fighting for land, with possibly the mediation of a third party to lead negotiations towards a peace agreement (sources diverge on its meaning, and some also mention *bepalu(h)*). Among southern Borneo groups (Ngaju-Benuaq-Tunjung), major festivals feature ritualized combats with rattan canes and plaited bamboo shields (*behempas*). This, however, is reminiscent of wrestling contests among other groups, i.e., of sports or games, rather than real peace-meeting fights.

Whatever the method used, when peace was achieved, it was not regarded as complete before a big feast had been held: a big meal with plenty of meat, plenty of *burak* / *arak*, and much singing together. The collective joy reported at the conclusion of peace meetings shows that, despite the many wars and raids waged in the course of time, the peoples of Borneo, holders of a broad inventory of legal procedures, were partial to the prevention of war and the upkeep of peace.

As was just mentioned, a mediation by a third party could be called for in negotiations to end conflicts, whereby the two belligerent communities agree to elect a third one, reputed to be in good terms with both, and assumed to be able to remain neutral in its dealings. Coastal states historically made use of their Malay *adat* methods to impose themselves as mediators upon warring local Dayak groups. The parties were forced to agree to peace on the State's conditions and to pay compensation to each other for past casualties incurred, and they also owed the State a fee, as a ritual compensation for its efforts in restoring peace. The Malay states also imposed a special fine, *hukum mungkal* (from Arabic *mungkar*, "wrong"), on anyone who killed a member of another village without prior provocation. This was a way to prevent the start of a vendetta revenge cycle.

As peace makers and peace keepers, the states could position themselves as overlords to the Dayak who, as vassals, had to pay tribute, with a renewal of their pledge of allegiance at yearly festivals. In west Borneo, old kingdoms, such as Sanggau, which forced their arbitration upon upriver Dayak, significantly expanded their political influence and increased their trade revenue. In the eighteenth century, the sultan of Kutai, with his Tunjung allies, interfered militarily to restore peace between two enemy subgroups of Benuaq in the middle Mahakam. This forced mediation allowed Kutai to make both subgroups its vassals, which hence became tributaries. Kutai also positioned its agents at major river confluences to put pressure on the Benuaq to increase forest product collecting, and thus boost the trade downriver. Thus, Kutai forced the Benuaq into its political and economic sphere of influence, and prevented them from trading southward to Banjarmasin, as they used to do.

There were, however, limits to this exercise. West Borneo sultans tried to pull the same trick on Chinese gold-mining kongsis, with little success and serious trouble. And Kutai remained unable to bring the independent upper Mahakam groups to recognize its authority and pay tribute. As for the colonial states, they followed the very same political and economic pattern of imposing their mediation upon warring parties.

Malay *adat* became for Dayak groups a crucial cog in the negotiation procedure to lead to a peace agreement and culminate in a formal peace ceremony. Wherever Malay *adat* prevailed, or when it was made to prevail, the blood money system was used: *adat pati nyawa*, a computation of a compensation, which was the formalization of the revenge system, based on the count of
heads taken by each party from the other, with a payment in kind, standing for the balance, to the party having lost more heads. In this method, the parties could resort to a third group to act as a neutral mediator and the peace ceremony, ideally, was held in the neutral village.

The phrase *pati nyawa* refers, lit., to the “essence of life”, but it really hints at the notion of “replacing a life”, implicitly “by another life”. This method, akin in its principle to the *vendetta*, amounts to replacing a retaliation murder by a payment in kind, assumed to equate a life in value. Among Dayak, usual payments consisted in valuable imported items: bronze gongs, ceramic jars, old heirloom objects. The same valuable or heirloom objects were commonly used, not only to pay fines or bridewealth, but also to purchase a territory. In southern Borneo, the word *ulun*, lit., “person”, was used as a unit of value for fines or compensations in rituals; this suggests that, in the past, these rituals may well have involved “persons” or slaves, i.e., real human *nyawa*, eventually to be sacrificed, before becoming equivalent units for jars and gongs.

About Iban, reports diverge, probably varying with regions and subgroups. Some coastal groups had long been associated with the Malay state in actions at sea, then called “piracy”, which earned them the name of Sea Dyak. These were reported to know of no legal or ritual procedure to stop warfare. In one report, Iban are said to “lack institutionalized rituals for conflict resolution and selected strategies for conflict avoidance,” and only with the Brookes did “the administration take upon itself the authority both to intervene in disputes and to protect a threatened individual.” Meanwhile, Iban groups farther in the interior of western Sarawak were said to all practice the *adat pati nyawa*, and settle their disputes among themselves, only rarely with the mediation of Malays. The head count was established, then compensation was paid to the group which had taken fewer heads; finally, all celebrated, ate and drank, and danced together, and they all remained friends – until the next dispute.

Colonial Sarawak was established in 1841 in a small area of Borneo’s northwest corner and extended eastward through the acquisition in 1861 of the Rajang basin; the Dutch had settled in 1815 on the west coast, at Pontianak, and slowly penetrated the Kapuas basin, only reaching its sources c. 1890. A preliminary agreement on an international border was signed in 1891, but the upper Mahakam and the Apokayan area only came under actual Dutch control c. 1910. Meanwhile, along the ridge line that was not yet a true border, local people were busy fighting, as emergent colonial administrations were unable to establish peace.

The earliest record of Iban partaking in a formal State peace meeting in Sarawak (1851, Balau vs. Skrang) reads: “once the blood price had been agreed upon and paid, the leaders of the two enemy Iban groups delivered long speeches, then exchanged ancient Chinese jars as tokens of peace. Each sacrificed a pig, and 2,000 men began to shout with all their might. A colonial officer presented each of the chiefs with a jar, a spear, and a Sarawak flag, urging them to forget their past grudges. Finally, the assistance, now allied, mixed happily.”

Later, the colonial states summoned warring groups to peace meetings, and jointly in the case of cross-border conflicts (e.g., 1887). These meetings made it possible, under the guarantee of the State, to settle blood debts, and to hold reconciliation ceremonies. For the states, they offered opportunities to promote the pacification of a region, facilitate tax collection, either by their travelling agents or through local Malay rulers, and stimulate trade.

Sarawak and the Dutch also set up a traveling circuit of justice of the peace in the larger villages, in particular the trading posts. In both territories, officers arbitrated personal and family disputes and imposed fines. This mediation, based on customary law, was well accepted by the parties.
Initially, murders were tried under the *adat pati nyawa*, and compensation was paid to the victim's family in valuable gongs and jars.

With colonial development, the situation evolved, as did the particulars of justice. Compensation was paid in brassware and metal by weight, and remitted in instalments; culprits could be kept in a jailhouse awaiting payment. In Sarawak, prison sentences were given in the 1870s, though western-style prisons were only built later (c. 1890); death sentences were also given (from c. 1883) and execution was by shooting. In Dutch Borneo, too, headhunters were tried by native courts under customary law, were only fined, and then walked. The system was changed in the 1910s: now they faced Dutch colonial courts; one headhunting team was sentenced to forced labour in New Guinea, and the raid's underwriter was hanged in Banjarmasin.

A major event occurred in Dutch Borneo in May to July 1894. The government sponsored, at Tumbang Anoi (upper Kahayan, a river flowing to the south coast), a meeting of a thousand representatives of some thirty ethnic groups, often enemies to each other, from the island's south and central regions, including Malay groups. They discussed a regional peace project, pledging the abolition of war, revenge/vendetta, headhunting, and slavery: a vast program. There were sacrifices of buffaloes and pigs, effigies of tigers and hornbill birds, blood pacts, solemn oaths, and some 300 pending legal cases were brought to adat courts. It was a brave attempt to harmonize many variations of the local custom, in view of its application throughout Borneo.

Kapit (1924) was one of the most important peace ceremonies ever held in Borneo, with some 4,000 Kayan, Kenyah, and Iban, in the presence of the third Rajah Brooke and Dutch officials. Pigs were sacrificed and horrible curses were pronounced against anyone who would violate the terms of the treaty. The details of this treaty can be found in other chapters of this volume. All these peace ceremonies were concluded by a celebration lasting several days and nights, with rice and meat served in abundance and rice beer flowing freely. With all tension gone, people sang and danced, "screaming and jumping until longhouses' floors and walls shook." All this, the participants stressed, is good for the cosmos – so, it must be good for the planet as well.

Hornbill images are known to be a cultural feature common to many Dayak groups, but what of the sacrifice of pigs? For the *Iban Encyclopedia*, it was not originally an Iban custom, but was introduced by Sarawak officers, possibly Charles Hose, though pig sacrifice was already mentioned in the 1851 report. The Dutch also used it, under the name *mantap babi*, and also the Iban, even in peace rituals among themselves. It is also found at all the great peace makings: Iban and Kayan at Kanowit (1863), Kenyah and Iban at Marudi (1899), and at Kapit (1924). Charles Hose may not have invented pig sacrifice, but he did innovate with the famous boat races, held annually on the Baram River, where ethnic communities participated in a friendly competition. This was a good way to divert testosterone surges from war and violence toward sports. Boat races are also held to this day in other regions of Borneo.

With post-colonial times, the influence of modern national legal patterns and societal practices permeated toward the hinterland and the remotest communities, in pace with schools, health centres, police stations, administrative services, and TIC. How have old-style methods of conflict prevention and resolution fared through time? Two significant points can shed some light.

*During the Confrontation, in the 1960s*, between Soekarno's Indonesia and the new Federation of Malaysia, Indonesian Kenyah and Malaysian Iban soldiers fought along the border ridge line (the Long Jawe episode, 1963; see Dave Lumenta). Post facto, this was regarded as a serious violation of the 1924 Peace. So, on the sidelines of the treaty signed between the nations, Iban
politicians from Sarawak and Kenyah headmen from Apokayan held a transnational peace ceremony to renew the 1924 alliance, and the late Vinson Sutlive wrote (1992): “The last ceremony was held in 1966, when representatives of Malaysia, led by Tun Jugah and Tan Sri Gerunsin Lembat, among others, met representatives of Indonesia at Long Nawang.”

In the late twentieth century, recurrent conflicts pitted Dayak parties against Madurese immigrants (Madura, an island east of Java). Personal disputes degenerated into community violence, leaving 500 to 1,200 dead in 1996 in West Kalimantan and 500 dead in 2001 in Central Kalimantan. These wars were motivated by economic rivalry and cultural incompatibility, rather than religious issues. Much literature, in Indonesian and English, is available on these episodes. Peace meetings, brokered by third parties – provincial governments, the military, institutions, religious leaders, NGOs – were conducted in the old fashion, with *adat* rituals. Years later, large rituals of ethnic reconciliation were held by the provincial governments, along with the erection of grand memorial monuments.

Let us finally take stock of the situation in Kalimantan in the new century. Blood brotherhood is vanishing or defunct, so are oaths and ordeals, but the council of elders remains frequently called on in villages for justice of peace matters – for murders, call the police. Chicken, pigs, and buffaloes are still commonly sacrificed in life-cycle and other religious festivals.

*Adat* elders have been busy committing to paper their community's history, and a corpus of *hukum adat* regulations and jurisprudence. Then, with the village mayor and younger elites, they drafted new *adat* rules, touching on such important issues as good classroom and football playground behavior or the proper use of smartphones.

New serious *adat* concerns developed mainly around: 1) territorial encroachment by industrial ventures (mining concessions, oilpalm plantations) and the protection of land rights; and 2) situations of legal dualism, when strangers settling in their villages challenged both *adat* and elders, leading to bitter intercultural conflicts, which old-fashioned methods could not resolve.

Although *hukum adat* was explicitly recognized in the 1945 Indonesian Constitution, traditional peoples (*masyarakat adat*) have long been ignored, their lands appropriated, and their cultures scorned and half-obliterated. The early twenty-first century witnessed a general revival of *adat*, both through national laws, with a long-expected law on *adat* communities, and in common practices, including in urban context.

**The case of one common practice,** *adat pati nyawa*, is worth examining, as it has been reactivated, along with its reconciliation rituals. It is now held for simple homicides, in a private setting, and regardless of a possible criminal conviction. It is called *bayar nyawa* (“pay the life”) in West Kalimantan, and *singer sahiring* in Central Kalimantan *adat* law. In the same logic of accounting and replacement, the procedure here is about “replacing” the victim’s organs, rather than the victim’s life as a whole. Organs are analogically listed: blood is replaced by rice beer (one 60-litre jar), bones by iron bars, and the skin by white cloth (one roll). The same procedure was found in the past among the Agabag (in North Kalimantan), who called it *hukum ambasa*, and performed it to preclude retaliation by one community against another.

In some modern forms of *pati nyawa*, intentional and unintended manslaughter are distinguished: in Putussibau, the former calls for a payment set at 307 grams of gold (24 carat, no less; over 100,000 MYR); in the latter case, it is called *setengah pati nyawa*, worth only 157 grams. Another version of *setengah pati nyawa* applies when a victim is seriously wounded, and the
offender, intentional or not, must pay for medical expenses. Debates take place in the presence of
ritual experts and the parties' lawyers. Compensation is indicated in numbers of jars, or in taels
(or tahil, a weight unit for gold dust), but is paid in cash. In these cases, more frequent in urban
than rural settings, lawyers and ritual experts are remunerated for their services. The adat
experts, now professionalized, receive a standard fee in place of a ritual payment, and photos or
videos of debating sessions are uploaded to the Internet or the social networks.

One final, important point: in the resolution of a dispute by a council of elders, the hearing and
debates are expected to lead to conciliation, and to a ruling, which both parties must find fair and
be willing to accept. I remember an Aoheng elder commenting: "Both parties should be satisfied
when leaving the council." And an adat pati nyawa settlement concludes with a reconciliation
ceremony, with both parties contented, which seems like a good concept of justice, especially if
all ends with a big collective party with singing and dancing.