The Longhouse - An Induction To Its System and Practices

Sitting at the verandah of the Longhouse while waiting for the rain to stop, we chatted with the occupants of the houses within the Longhouse and learnt a thing or two on their system and family practices. These occupants are somehow related to one another. They are nephews and nieces and cousins to each other.

The Longhouse is headed by a Tuai Rumah or Head of the house and this position is customarily inherited by the eldest son on the passing of the current Tuai Rumah. A committee is set up to assist/advise the Tuai rumah in decisions affecting every household in the Longhouse. Amongst the Tuai Rumah from several longhouses, one will be appointed the Penghulu and amongst several Penghulus, one will be appointed the Pemancar. Above the Pemancar there will be a Temenggong, the overall authority of the clan in the state. That appears to be the tier advisory system, and I was told that somehow there is a political influence somewhere in the selection of the Pemancar and most certainly the Temenggong.

In the case of Mini’s Longhouse, the current Tuai Rumah is her eldest brother. He was recently elevated to that position. When their father passed away, some 35 years ago, due to an accident, the children were very small, and since the new Tuai Rumah was still a minor then, an uncle was nominated as Tuai Rumah and when he passed away another uncle was nominated as Tuai Rumah. Recently the advisory council decided to handover and elect Mini’s brother as the Tuai Rumah. Perhaps they consider him old and matured enough now to take the lead in the Longhouse. He is, I think, in the late-forties now.

Mini’s Longhouse was started by her great grandfather who came from the Sarawak second division and traveled upriver by sail boat to the spot and decided then to establish his base there. He started the Longhouse by the riverside and the house grew as his family grew. They were involved in agricultural farming with the main crop being rice. They obtained assistance from the authorities then and were allocated vast expanse of land that they divided amongst family members to own. They were even offered pockets of large areas of land close to the river mouth but the elders then were not interested in them as they were more interested in agriculture in the hinterland. The area at the river mouth is now Bintulu town, a one and a half hours boat ride downstream from the spot where their Longhouse was built. Things may be different now had they agreed to accept the offer of the river mouth land. Anyway, the current expanse of land they own within their family and in the vicinity of the Longhouse, is big enough, much more than they need to sustain their livelihood. (The rice field and the area Mini and Shaffik are planning to develop are these inherited land I mentioned).

In this modern times, most of those living in the Longhouses are elderly people. The young ones are in the towns having regular jobs and no interest in working their land in the Longhouses. Usually manual workers are employed to work the fields for them. In the case of Mini’s Longhouse, out of the 25 family units in the Longhouse, only five are permanently occupied, a couple of units are rented to the manual workers they employed and the rest are not occupied as their owners live in the towns, returning only on public holidays and weekends. Once a year, come Gawai or harvesting festival,which is a two days public holiday in Sarawak, all will return to their Longhouses, and there will be lots of merriment, singing and dancing, eating and drinking, and so on. Most will not give this festival a miss, making every effort to return, as it is one occasion when the whole family will gather together.

Another interesting practice amongst them is the intermarriage between two different Longhouses. Marriage between two different units in the same Longhouse is a marriage between family. But intermarriage between two different Longhouses is usually a marriage between two completely different families within the clan. The difficulty here will be the decision on which of the marriage couple goes to which family. Whether the bride follows the groom for life or the groom follows the bride for life. The two families will negotiate and sometimes the negotiations come to an impasse requiring arbitration by some of the elders. That’s how closely knit their family units are that they find it difficult to let go their family members to the other family after marriage.

In a marriage it is customary for gifts to be exchanged. When a marriage fails, the party that caused the failure will have to return the gifts but doubled what was given at marriage. Hence if a man divorces his wife, he will have to return twice the amount of gifts he received at marriage and vice versa. Traditionally, marriage gifts comprise of items useful in the family, e.g. blowpipes, ancient items like musical instruments, gong and drums, vases, home items, etc.

In the case of death in the family, the family of the deceased will have to openly declare their stand on the surviving spouse. The surviving spouse may stay on with the family or return to his/her original family depending on the stand taken by the family of the deceased.

Having said all the above, I stand corrected if there are errors or omissions, as they were what I heard from the elders in Mini’s Longhouse. It is however, a system that has been in practice for generations and seemingly fair to all........??

MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Bintulu