Dusun

Under the name of Dusun various indigenous groups within the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo are summarized. The members of these groups do not consider themselves Dusun. Because of the similarities in culture and language with the Kadazan the common class of the Kadazan - Dusun was created, with about 570,000 members representing the largest ethnic group of the people of Sabah.

Emergence of the concept

The classification of different ethnic groups in Sabah as " Dusun " was carried out in a historical context more of a misunderstanding than ethnological from serious research. The people living in a large area between the coast and the mountainous interior were referred to by foreign visitors Borneo as " Dusun ", without knowing the differences in the culture and traditions closer. Rutter suspected as early as 1929 that the naming was carried out by Islamic invaders. Tunggolou believed that the first white men encountered on their arrival on the west coast Malay or Bajau, for the inhabitants of the coastal dusun the name orang ( people of the orchards ) [note 1] used. The translation of the term ignorant transferred the comers the term to the inhabitants of the coastal and hill zone.

King concludes that the derived from the Malay term Dusun was applied by the coastal inhabitants on the regional agricultural population of the hinterland and that the expression Dusun a pejorative connotation inherent in because it was associated with a backward, uncouth country folk.

Definition according appeal

The newer Ethnology follows essentially that of appeal and Murdock, after which the Dusun is less of a unified community but rather a " cluster " of different communities.

During the counting of the Dusun groups were originally longhouse residents, gave some Dusun tribes this kind of dwelling on; they began in the western coastal areas and the upland plains with the wet- rice cultivation and animal husbandry in the hill regions and around Mount Kinabalu with the shifting. These originally classified as Dusun groups include some subsets such as Kadazan, Rungus, Ranau and Tambunan which differ in their social and cultural characteristics.

Historical classification at Rutter

Rutter shares the Dusun in 1922 into two groups: lowland Dusun ( Lowland Dusuns ) and Bergland- Dusun ( Hill Dusuns ). Within these two classes, it differs again in different groups and subdivisions: