Bisaya (Borneo)

The Bisaya or Bisayah, sometimes described as Besaya, are an indigenous ethnic group of the Malay Archipelago. They refer to themselves as tangah - tangah ( people of the middle), jilama bawah or jilama sungai ( river people ). Its main distribution is in Sabah within the district Beaufort and along the Sungai Padas and northern Sarawak along the Limbang River.

Settlement areas

The traditional territories of the Bisaya are in the middle reaches and lower reaches of those rivers in northern Sarawak and the west coast of Sabah, which flow into the Bay of Brunei.

Brunei

The Bisaya here include the closely related groups of the Orang Bukit, Dusun and Tutong Dusun who live along the Sungai Tutong.

Sarawak

Bisaya in Sarawak traditionally settled mainly along the tributaries of Sungai Baram, especially at Sungai Linai and Sungai Tutoh, and at the headwaters of Sungai Belait.

Sabah

In Sabah are among the Bisaya mostly Muslim, wet rice -growing inhabitants of the lower reaches of the Sungai Padas and Sungai Klias; also groups in the area of Bundu and Kuala Penyu. The Bisaya live within other ethnic groups, so that pure Bisaya settlements are difficult to identify.

Demography

The census in 2010 ( Census 2010 ) shows a population of 39,960 Bisaya in Sabah and Sarawak in 7195. [Note 1] Bisaya in other states are without statistical significance.

Ethnological demarcation

Connections to the living in the Philippines ethnicity of Visaya be affirmed of ethnology. Nevertheless, these are managed as a separate ethnic group.

Language

The language spoken by the ethnic Bisaya heard along with the other indigenous languages ​​of Sabah to Idahan language family, which in turn belongs to the Malayo - Polynesian languages ​​West. [Note 2] The language is divided Bisaya (ISO -639 -3 code bsb ) and Sabah Bisaya (ISO -639 -3 code bsy ) in the variants Brunei.

Culture

The advocacy of the Bisaya is perceived by the cultural community KDCA ( Kadazan - Dusun Cultural Association ).