Cultural centers to be neighbours in Tuaran

THE ground breaking ceremony for the cultural center of the Persatuan Bajau Sama Sabah (PBSS) or the Sabah Bajau Sama Association which was officiated by Chief Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Musa Hj Aman yesterday, adds another badge on the cap of Datuk Seri Panglima Hajiji Hj Noor, the founding president of PBSS.

Being also the assemblyman for Sulaman and Minister of Local Government and Housing, Hajiji had thought rather cautiously about founding the association fearing that he wouldn’t be able to give justice to the responsibilities of being its president.

“After all, I already had quite a handful of things to look after, besides the need to give more attention to my family,” he told this writer. “But the appeal from the community was too strong and persistent for me to ignore. Now that the association is here with all its positive developments, I am looking forward to serving my community even more in the cultural front, even after I retire from politics one day.”

The cultural center, which will also function as the headquarters of the association, has been designed to feature strong Bajau Sama architecture and murals. What is also interesting is that the 1.4-hectare site is in Lok Batik, Tuaran, and not in Kota Belud, the heartland of the Bajau people. However, this is easy to understand because Hajiji would want his association’s hub to be in his own constituency. Also, Tuaran also has a sizable Bajau population spread over many villages such as Penimbawan, Serusup (Hajiji’s home village), Lok Batik, Bolong, Kota, Termenung, Simpangan, Tambalang, Tajau, Dalit, Mengkabong, Sabandar and many more.

But the fact that it is in Tuaran poses an interesting reminder that Tuaran is also the intended location of the cultural center for the United Sabah Dusun Association (USDA), currently led by Datuk Ewon Ebin as the president and Datuk Kalakau Untol as the deputy president. The state government has already allocated a piece of land for USDA’s headquarters site. Because of the difficulty of finding anymore available land, USDA has eventually been given an area also in Lok Batik, and only 0.5 km from PBSS’s site.

Junaidi Tun Hamdan, who is an USDA vice president, sees the development for PBSS as a motivation and challenge for USDA to pull up its socks and work to speed up the building of its own long-overdue cultural center. As an USDA senior leader who happens to be the special functions officer at Hajiji’s ministry, he has intimate knowledge of the many details of the development of PBSS, as well as the progress in the realization of the PBSS headquarters.

“USDA is one of the oldest associations in Sabah. My father was its founding patron when it was formed in the 1950s until after its official registration in the 60s under the leadership of many leaders, most importantly Gabriel Tanggar as the first president and Ahmad I. Onggohon as the first secretary general,” he said. “So USDA should have progressed with a cultural center since many decades ago.”

With the forthcoming presence of the Dusun and Bajau Sama centers practically in close proximity in the near future -- if USDA gets to build its own soon enough -- that situation should be seen as very symbolic of the cohesiveness between the Lotuds and Bajau Samas in Tuaran which has existed for many generations. However, at this point in time, USDA needs to beef up and get its house in order to meet the challenges posed by the more aggressive progression by other associations. From this writer’s observation the leaders are not responsive enough, because, for the record, I, as USDA’s ordinary member, have sent messages to both the president and the deputy president to offer my services to prepare a proper proposal paper in order to seek the multimillion ringgit funding for the global-scale research project to determine the origin of the Dusun people. There was absolutely no response, not even an acknowledgment, from them.

Let’s hope that the announcement in October 2015 by USDA to undertake the ambitious project won’t end up being forgotten. Interestingly, USDA’s biggest voice was sounded out recently only when it went vehemently against the use of ‘Momogun’ as the collective name for all the indigenous peoples of Sabah. I still feel it was a negative reaction to something very positive for a universal unity of the indigenous peoples in our small piece of land at the top of Borneo.

As I see it, with the building of the PBSS and USDA’s cultural centers in Tuaran, it will contribute even more to the already burgeoning tourism attraction of the district. But what is also heartening is the exposition of the Bajas Sama culture more aggressively, in a more organized way. Under the able and pro-active leadership of Hajiji, we can expect the Bajau Sama cultural heritages to take a more visible and developed phase.