Daniel Banai: The Iban Keep Their Traditions Alive in the Heart of Borneo

Daniel Banai, elder of the Iban Dsa community and founder of the Sekolah Adat Dayak - Dayak Iban Traditional School in Sintang, West Kalimantan, a living guardian of indigenous wisdom where visitors can learn directly about Iban culture, rituals, and values.

 Deep in the upper reaches of the Ketungau River, in the interior of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, the Iban people continue to live by values their ancestors laid down centuries ago — cooperation, reverence for nature, and harmony with unseen spirits. 

Among the Dayak Ibanic subgroups, traditions are not just memories of the past. They are lived practices, guiding how people work, celebrate, and communicate with the spirit world.

The Iban worldview rests on a belief that human life is inseparable from both nature and the supernatural realm. Every act — whether planting rice, building a longhouse, or performing a ritual — carries meaning that links the physical and spiritual worlds. Two practices embody this duality: Beduruk and Bedara’k. The first celebrates social cooperation and communal labor; the second reflects the Iban’s relationship with the Petara, the divine spirits who protect the land and its people.

At the center of these traditions stands Daniel Banai, an elder of the Iban Dsa community in Sintang, West Kalimantan. He is the founder and caretaker of the Dayak Iban Traditional School, an indigenous learning center where young people are taught language, oral history, weaving, and ritual songs — knowledge once passed down only through oral tradition. His school has also become a destination for ethno-tourism, attracting travelers, researchers, and students eager to learn directly from community elders about Iban philosophy and its deep ecological wisdom. Visitors come not to watch as outsiders, but to participate — to listen, plant, chant, and reflect.

“Here, culture is not performed,” Banai says. “It’s lived every day — in work, in prayer, in how we treat the forest.” 

Beduruk: The Power of Collective Work

For the Iban, Beduruk represents more than teamwork; it is the moral backbone of their society. Practiced widely among the Iban, Mualang, Dessa, and Seberuang peoples across Ketungau, Beduruk refers to a form of communal labor rooted in mutual obligation. When a family opens new farmland, plants rice, or prepares for a community feast, neighbors join in. Later, the favor is returned.

The system functions like a social contract — one not written on paper, but inscribed in trust and reciprocity. Those who join a Beduruk group are bound not by law, but by honor. Helping others today ensures that help will come when your turn arrives. In this sense, Beduruk serves as both a social safety net and a form of cultural insurance, preserving cooperation in a world where individualism is on the rise.

Sometimes, a Beduruk begins with a short prayer or offering to the Petara Umai, the guardian spirit of the fields, asking for protection and a good harvest. This act reveals how, in Iban life, economic activity cannot be separated from spiritual duty. The hands that till the soil are the same hands that honor the earth. 

Bedara’k: Feeding the Spirits

If Beduruk strengthens ties among humans, Bedara’k renews the covenant between people and the divine. Derived from the Iban word dara’k — meaning “to feed” or “to offer” — Bedara’k is a ritual of giving food to the spirits. During this ceremony, food such as rice, pork, or chicken is thrown or placed in specific spots as an offering to the Petara.

The ritual is led by a lemambang — a ritual poet and priest who chants ancient invocations, bridging the human world and the spiritual one. Every movement, every song, carries symbolic weight: the feeding of the spirits represents gratitude, humility, and renewal. It is the Iban way of keeping the cosmic balance intact.

To the outsider, Bedara’k may appear as a simple act of tossing food. But to the Iban, it is a dialogue with the unseen — a recognition that the forest, the river, and the spirits within them are not objects to be exploited but living entities with dignity and soul. In their cosmology, humanity’s well-being depends on maintaining harmony with these forces. 

Where Culture Meets the World

Through Daniel Banai’s leadership, these practices are finding new life — not in museums or academic archives, but in the community itself. His Traditional School has drawn attention from anthropologists, cultural travelers, and documentary filmmakers. Visitors to Sintang can join Beduruk workdays, witness a Bedara’k ceremony, or learn how to weave ikat textiles and carve ritual motifs.

Such programs reflect a growing movement toward community-based ethno-tourism, where learning replaces sightseeing, and respect replaces curiosity. “Tourism,” Banai notes, “should never extract from us — it should connect us.”

In a time when many indigenous traditions are disappearing, the Iban of Sintang offer a different story — one of continuity and reinvention. By opening their doors to the world, they are not losing their culture; they are teaching it. And in doing so, they remind us that cooperation, respect, and reverence for life are not just traditional values — they are universal ones.

by: Masri Sareb Putra