Bahau Erotic

The Bahau are a Dayak people of the upper Mahakam River in East Kalimantan. Their villages sit along the river deep in Borneo's interior, some of them beyond a stretch of rapids that long made the region hard to reach from the coast. What marks them out is their place among the Kayanic peoples. Their language, their social order and much of their ritual life tie them closely to their Kayan, Busang and Modang neighbors, and the lines between these groups have never been sharp. The Dutch explorer A. W. Nieuwenhuis traveled the Mahakam around the turn of the twentieth century and used Bahau as a broad label for the Kayan-related communities he met there. The name still carries some of that looseness.

Like other Kayanic peoples, the Bahau trace their origins north toward the Apo Kayan highlands. They came to the Mahakam through migrations led by their chiefs. Traditional society was ranked: a hereditary aristocracy at the top, commoners below and, in earlier times, slaves. The longhouse held everyone together. It is one long raised building with many family apartments and a shared gallery where guests were received and disputes settled. Hill rice grown in rotating swidden fields set the rhythm of the year, and in many villages it still does.

The Bahau language belongs to the Kayanic branch of the Austronesian family, alongside Busang and several Kayan varieties spoken along the river. Indonesian is the language of school, church and government. Most Bahau today are Christian, largely Roman Catholic, the result of twentieth-century mission work along the Mahakam. Conversion did not erase the older calendar. The Hudoq, a masked dance the Bahau share with the Modang, is still performed around rice planting. Dancers wear carved wooden masks and costumes of shredded banana leaves, and they stand in for spirits called on to guard the young crop and drive off pests. The dance now also turns up at regional festivals, where it doubles as a public statement of Dayak identity.

Some older Bahau women still wear heavy brass rings in stretched earlobes and have fine tattoos on their hands and legs. Younger generations have mostly let both customs go. Beadwork with hornbill and dragon motifs is still a living craft. The upper river now has its own regency, Mahakam Ulu, split off from West Kutai, and logging and new roads are drawing the region closer to the rest of Indonesia.