Indigenous spirits and ethnic politics in West Kalimantan
Akhiong sits on the edge of a wooden bench in front of the main altar in his small house temple. His head is bent down, eyes closed as he inhales deeply, filling his lungs with thick smoke from the burning kemenyan, a Benzoin resin found in the tropical jungle. Kemenyan is used as a ritual offering for local indigenous spirits known as Datuk. Akhiong continues breathing deeply and then, after a few minutes, he jerks, legs raising up then smashing to the ground. His body then bolts upright into a standing position. The spirit of Datuk Sungkung, a Dayak mountain spirit, has arrived, taking over his body, ready to animate the space and communicate across the boundary of worlds between the living and the dead.
An assistant quickly helps to wrap a white cloth adorned with two long pheasant feathers around Akhiong’s forehead, ties a yellow belt around his waist, and then fixes red strips of cloth strung with bells around his upper arms. With a look of intense focus, Akhiong takes up a mandau, a traditional Dayak knife, and begins to walk out to the courtyard to begin the annual sacrificial ritual.
A crowd of loyal followers, many of whom have returned to their hometown from Jakarta specifically for this event, gather closely around him. Akhiong begins to mutter, and with bold, exaggerated movements, he gathers the equipment needed for the ritual from around the courtyard: a ceramic vessel hung on the outside wall of the temple; a live chicken with one foot tied to a small table; bowls of spices; cigarettes and pipes of tobacco; and stalks of daun juang (palm lily) and burai pinang (the flowering head of betel nut palm). Each year the malicious spirits that are contained inside a large ceramic urn are appeased in this ritual which uses the blood of a sacrificed chicken and a black dog, as well as coloured rice, turmeric root and other spices as offerings.
Akhiong is what is known in Hakka (the local Chinese language) as a tathung, or a Chinese Indonesian spirit-medium, in the city of Singkawang, West Kalimantan. He has had the ability to channel gods and spirits since he was seventeen years old. Akhiong’s primary patron deity is a Chinese marshal named Het Lui Ciong Kiun. However, three other spirits regularly enter him during his mediumship, including Datuk Sungkung who is ethnically Dayak and Datuk Pulai Aji who is ethnically Malay
A senior and well-respected medium, Akhiong is only one of hundreds of other tathung, who also have multiple patron deities, permeating Singkawang with spiritual presence and religious transfusion. Spirit-medium healing and divination are a central aspect of Chinese Indonesian social life in this city of roughly 250,000 people, which is appropriately nicknamed the “City of a Thousand Chinese Temples”.
Datuk worship in Chinese folk religion
Chinese Folk Religion is known for its propensity to incorporate auspicious foreign elements into worship and practice, particularly in overseas communities in Southeast Asia. Most notable is the Keramat or Datuk Gong worship of Malaysia and Singapore, in which Malay Datuk (an honorific title) are venerated at Chinese temples, and at smaller street-side altars, in recognition of their morally upstanding character, particularly in Penang (Goh, 2005) and in Sarawak, West Malaysia (Chai, 2018).
These Datuk also have a presence in spirit-medium practice (DeBernardi, 2006). Similarly, Hindu gods and gurus such as Sai Baba have been incorporated into Chinese Folk Religion in a form of religion hybridisation that functions harmoniously and without generating internal theological contradiction. These elements are recognised to have intrinsic sacred potency, known as shen in Mandarin (Elliott, 1955; Lee, 1986), and are incorporated into altars, temples, pantheons and religious imaginaries of spiritual strength, which worshippers access through their personal devotional practices.
Latok veneration, politics and belonging
Over the past two decades, the city of Singkawang, has experienced a major proliferation of a new class of spirits. These are indigenous Dayak Datuk spirits, which are increasingly being incorporated into existing Chinese Indonesian spirit-medium traditions. Known locally in the Hakka dialect as latok, the veneration of these indigenous spirits resembles worship of Muslim Malay saints in Malaysia, except that latok are ethnically Dayak and possibly come from keharingan (the Indonesian term for indigenous animistic religious traditions in Kalimantan). They usually emerge from natural locations like forests, mountains or caves, and are considered wise elders with prominent social positions. These Dayak Datuk constitute a potent source of magical and spiritual strength.
What is the significance of the emergence of these latok spirits? How does possession by latok spirits by Chinese Indonesian spirit mediums contribute to processes of cultural hybridisation and Chinese Indonesian identity formation? And what does the proliferation of these indigenous spirits amongst religious specialists reveal about the broader interethnic politics of the province of West Kalimantan and the politics of belonging in the Indonesian nation-state?
In a new ethnographic research project at the Asia Research Institute, I will be investigating these questions by studying the ritual possession practices of these latok spirits in Singkawang.
This research bridges the spiritual realm with the realm of politics, asking questions that necessarily challenge the categories of sacred and secular, religion and politics. It builds on an understanding of the ways that Chinese religious rituals in Singkawang are part of a set of practices that articulate a collective, autochthonous, and locality-based Chinese Indonesian identity which is imperative for a politics of belonging in Indonesia, in which performances demonstrating indigeneity act as legitimating proofs of belonging (Hertzman, 2017).
Hybrid religious practices and healing interethnic divisions
The emergence of latok spirits coincides with a renaissance in Chinese cultural expression across Indonesia during the post-Suharto era (Sai & Hoon, 2012; Lindsey & Pausacker, 2005). Once Indonesia began its transition to democracy in 1998, institutional discrimination against ethnic Chinese citizens was also brought to an end. Mandarin language teaching and publication resumed after a 32-year prohibition (Hoon, 2009a), Chinese religious celebrations in the public sphere re-emerged (Chan, 2009; Hoon, 2009b), Chinese associations were permitted once again (Giblin, 2003) and Chinese Indonesians also began entering national and local politics (Setijadi, 2015; Hui, 2011).
The florescence of Chinese cultural expression has truly been impressive, but is not without anxieties about how new forms of cultural expression might threaten the national cultural imaginary (Hertzman, 2017). In Indonesia, the nation is imagined as a set of ethnic groups which each have their own physical place of origin in the archipelago, and a distinctive culture, language, customary laws and traditions. The Chinese in Indonesia, despite centuries of habitation, upset this imaginary by their real and imagined foreign origins.
The entry of Chinese Indonesians into politics is particularly fraught with new anxieties as the opening up of political space for Chinese Indonesian candidates has engendered local politics with increased interethnic competition (Chan, 2009; Hui, 2011; Lan, 2009). The previous three mayoral elections in Singkawang demonstrate this as Chinese candidates not only competed against each other but also attempted to make strategic decisions about their political parties and the ethnicity of their vice-mayor running mates (Hertzman, 2017; Hui, 2011; Setijadi, 2015).
Much has been written on the interethnic dimensions of political conflict during the early period of Indonesia’s democratic reforms and its shift to a highly-decentralised polity (Bubandt, 2009; Henley & Davidson, 2008; Pisani, 2014). In West Kalimantan, the transition was marked by outbreaks of serious interethnic violence (Davidson & Kammen, 2002), between Dayak, Madurese, and Malay communities in Singkawang, Pemangkat and Sambas. Since then, in spite of, or perhaps because of, these incidences of communal violence, the province has recreated its identity as a place of peace, tolerance and interethnic harmony (Hui, 2011). Three organisations were created by the local government in order to represent the community interests of the three main ethnic groups of the province, Tionghoa, Dayak and Malayu (shortened as Tidayu) (Madruese are conspicuously absent).
Signs of this ideology of tri-culturalism can be seen everywhere from artistic murals, Chidayu batik motifs, souvenirs, cultural events and the rebranding of the annual Cap Go Meh celebration in Singkawang as a regional interethnic event (Hertzman, 2017). In 2018, Singkawang was named the most tolerant city in Indonesia according to a set of criteria advanced by the SETARA Institute for Democracy and Peace.
However, as the story of Akhiong vividly illustrates, it is not merely in the public sphere that signs of interethnic peace can be located. Out of mainstream public view, at the house altars of hundreds of tathung, there are encounters between healing seekers and spirits that are also bridging interethnic divisions, and creating hybrid religious practices. These constitute important sites in which new, interethnic and interreligious practices are produced and become sustained platforms for personal and community identification.
