What emotions is this person feeling?
Kelabit Woman
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Bright emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Quiet emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Heavy emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Sombre emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Kelabit Woman
Date
2009
Description
Creator of the image: Paul James
Date of the image creation: 2009
Medium of the image: Photograph
Person depicted: Kelabit woman in the Kaum Ibu women’s group
The woman in the photograph meets with others to discuss a forthcoming festival. Feasting festivals, including most importantly feasts organized around initiation ceremonies and funerals, were central to customary relations in Bario where the photo was taken. Pesta Nukenen Bario was first established in 2005, managed under the e-Bario project for the first two years and more recently passed over to the Kaum Ibu women’s group, with the first festival opened in 2006 by the Governor of Sarawak. The festival celebrates the landscape, cultural knowledge and wild and locally-grown foods of the area. It brings local people together around food production and built upon a 2003 ‘Slow Food’ presidium award to Bario rice.
Bario is a series of scattered houses and villages located in the remote Merariu river basin in the highlands of Sarawak, close to the border with Kalimantan. Bario includes the villages of Pa’Ramapuh Benah, Pa’Ramapuh Dita, Pa’Derung, Bued Main Beruh, Padang Pasir, Kampung Baru, Arur Layun, Bario Asal and Arur Dalan as part of group of fourteen villages.
The highlands are the home to the indigenous Kelabit people, who maintain customary ways of life while actively embracing both a traditional charismatic Christianity and modern developmentalism — in particular, modern communications and transport systems. Customary relations of constantly renegotiated honour and prestige have been translated into an avid interest in ‘progress’ and ‘change’. This translation began long before the profound remoteness of the settlement was mitigated. Nevertheless, until just before the photo was taken, apart from walking for weeks from the coast, the only effective way into Bario was by small plane run by MASwings out of Miri or by helicopter. There was then a border-patrol regiment serviced by helicopter and some of the logging companies used helicopters for retrieving felled logs from remote areas. Apart from tracks, the first traversable road for vehicles only made it to Bario in mid-2009.
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