BIDAYUH CULTURE1
. What I like the most about being a Bidayuh is that our tradition is unique,especially the traditional food that not everyone outside of Sarawak likes. For example, ‘kasuem ikien’ which means preserved fish and ‘dowon bandung poh’which translates to pounded tapioca leaves. Also, for your information, Bidayuh hasits own distinctive colours for the traditional outfit which are red, black, gold or yellow and silver. In addition, we are the second major ethnic in Sarawak after Iban.
2
. In this case, I don’t think I have difficulty as a Bidayuh. However, from my pointof view, my friend has faced one of the hurdles since she is a Bidayuh too. Last year,when all students were required to fill the UPU system for their choices in degree, it isoutrageous that she could not get any of the offers out of all 12 university options. If we were to talk about her achievements, she is smarter than I am and she is veryactive in school plus she is a dean student. She lost her hope of becoming a doctor which is her passion since childhood. Thus, I always think that the discriminationtoward Bidayuh people still exist.
3
. I want to give advice to the youngsters that no matter who we are, what ethnic weare, we should never give up hope and our passion. Never let anything or anyone bring you down. We live in a country which has a diversity of ethics and cultures.Discrimination is only going to break us. Therefore, change our negative mindset tocreate a better world.
4
. From what I considered disrespectful in my culture is how people look down on us just because we are minorities. Besides that, some people who are not exposed to our culture tend to mock and make fun of how we practised our tradition like ‘pinjak’ and‘nguguah’. These traditions, ‘pinjak’ and ‘nguguah’ are traditions that we practisedduring harvesting season just like Kaamatan but we called the season as Gawai. It islike saying thankful and praying to our ancestors for bringing luck during theharvesting season.
5
. There are a lot of taboos in my community. One of them is when we go into aforest, especially the forest that we never visited before, Bidayuh people tend to putsoil from the forest on their forehead to familiarise themselves with the surrounding.This is because they believe that there are other spirits in the forest and they need torespect them. Next, when someone passes away in Bidayuh culture, the belongings of the dead need to be buried with them. If they fail to do so, and still keep the belonging, the dead will haunt them. Lastly, to refrain yourself from doing it we haveto follow the rule. But, since most of bidayuh have converted to Christian, Muslimand so on, they leave their old belief which was pagan.