Appeasing the Forest Spirits (Sungai Lading, 2005)

Excerpts from field journal July, 2005:

filming the ritual to officially start research at Sungai Lading

Pak Ihing's father, talking to the spirits in ancient Dayak

After moving to the newly constructed Sungai Lading base camp on July 6, on July 8 we held the official ritual to ask the spirits of the forest for permission to live and work in their presence. Several friends came from Tuanan to witness this all-day ritual. Ibu Haji (my cook)  had some help from some Katunjung friends to cook the 4 chickens (2 red, 1 white, 1 black) and the cakes that would later be put into the 4 ritual houses that Pak Haji made, along with sugarcane and cigarettes. Ihing (one of my first field assistants)’s father performed the ceremony. He came dressed for the occasion, wearing a nice batik shirt and his mandau (a traditional Dayak weapon associated with headhunting).

To start the ceremony, Pak Haji (my security man) tapped each of us on the forehead with a cup filled with uncooked rice. Then Ihing’s father talked to the spirits in an old dayak dialect that only he could understand for at least 4 hours and until after the sun had set. Once it was dark, a light was put out at the edge of the forest by the ritual houses, so the spirits could find their way in the dark. It was explained to me that there are good spirits and bad spirits (the bad spirits can take the shape of dogs), and at least some of these spirits belong to the old people who enter the forest after they die…

The guests had a feast of some of the food from the ritual houses, and the rest was left for the spirits to consume. When the ritual was finally over, Pak Haji sprinkled some more uncooked rice over our heads, this time to officially end the ceremony, which I was told was necessary in order to bring the orangutans in the area to us. I think I got food poisoning from one of the cakes, but otherwise the ritual evening went over very well with everyone.

Additional notes: A few months later I made the mistake of admitting to having had a dream about meeting an Indonesian woman in the forest, who asked why we were living there. When I told her, she said that we were welcome to stay. Pak Haji had a similar dream and so decided that we ought to have another ritual. Only this one was much smaller scale and just involved some hard boiled eggs and a small ritual structure just off the boardwalk. Several years later while visiting the Tuanan field station during my post-doc, I was told that the night of the big ritual at Sungai Lading, all of the Indonesians saw “Mata Merah” (“The Red Eye”) in the sky, just above my camp. They didn’t tell me or any of my European visitors since apparently they didn’t want to alarm us, but the Red Eye is a bad omen that one person can send to another. I was told that the eye was most likely on its way down to Tuanan and was just temporarily hovering over Sungai Lading, but either way, I suppose I am glad that I was not told about this at the time of the ritual, just as I was starting research at Sungai Lading! 

Several friends came from Tuanan to attend the ritual

There was one part of the Sungai Lading forest in the southeast that the assistants would not enter when searching for orangutans because they were convinced it was evil. Although I take all of this with a very fine grain of salt, I will say that the forest in this area always seemed to get suddenly very dark and felt ominous whenever I ventured into it. I also always seemed to end up stuck for hours in deep swamp in this area and found myself at times very disoriented. However, at the time one of the few DVDs I had to watch were Seasons 1 and 2 of LOST, so there is a good chance that images from the series was coloring my imagination!