A Borneo Healing Romance: Ritual Storytelling and the Sugi Sakit, A Saribas Iban Rite of Healing by Clifford Sather (review)

Abstract

a nationalist leader who dared to challenge the West. He made Indonesians proud (p. 441). In terms of historical figure research, the cases provided in this book are thought-provoking. Jose Rizal, a significant historical figure in the history of the Philippines, is an awkward person in the scholarship of Malaysian and Indonesian studies. On the one hand, Filipino scholars are clear that one dimension of his nationalist identity is ‘Malay’. On the other hand, many studies on Malayness in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore, intentionally or unintentionally ignore the case of the Philippines. Rommel A. Curaming’s study of Rizal enriches our understanding of Malayness: an image of a non-Muslim, Christian Malay leader. Ramon Guillermo elaborated Tan Malaka’s account of Andreas Bonifacio, another Filipino leader, recognised as a proletarian leader and ‘pure Indonesian’ (p. 424). From Thum Ping Tjin’s in-depth study of Lim Chin Siong, we have a good reference for academic researchers to study leftist political leaders. Thum’s penetration through several sources of historical material and his articulation of Lim's political ideas sheds light in dealing with the ideological development of the left-wing political parties and leaders in Singapore and Malaya. Teo Lee Ken discussed Usman Awang’s poems in the context of Malaysian politics. While the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) leadership advocated Malay political primacy and Malay economic privilege as a notion of justice, Usman Awang’s poetry has repeatedly highlighted that justice should instead be based on political equality (p. 236). Southeast Asia has attracted much attention as a region worthy of study in recent years. The geographical scope of Nusantara mentioned in this book is Peninsular Malaya, Borneo, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. Brunei is absent while there is only one article related to Sarawak. What the book does is to re-examine the linkages of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines in the context of the historical consciousness of the 1950s and 1960s, bringing to light aspects which have been neglected in history left-wing history, anti-colonialist struggles and ethnic tensions in the new nation-states.