Tag: indigenous knowledge

Creating Ngayau | An Iban Headhunting Zine

A few weeks ago I started putting together the first physical prototype of Ngayau, a small zine that explores Iban headhunting through drawings and short notes. At first it was just pencil drawings scattered on my desk. These drawings were of warriors and handwritten notes of research I made regarding the subject. At some point these materials began to form a real booklet. 

There’s satisfaction after seeing your own work in booklet form for the first time. A PDF on a screen may looks good but it feels temporary and obviously untouchable. But after the pages are printed and folded and cut and glued together, the work suddenly has weight. It becomes a tangible thing that you can put on a shelf, forget for years, and rediscover again.

I wanted Ngayau to feel simple and homemade. Not shiny or over-designed. The process itself was messier than I had thought. I adjusted margins repeatedly, reprinted pages after noticing tiny alignment issues, and spent hours arranging drawings beside explanatory texts. My desk gradually disappeared under graphite drawings, patterned layouts, failed prints, paper trimmings, and coffee mugs. 

Some of the drawings were made years before the zine was even in my mind. Seeing them all at once hit me more than I thought, like pieces from different times of my life had finally met. What interests me most about this subject is not violence for the sake of spectacle. I am more fascinated by the worldview surrounding it, grieving rituals, spiritual beliefs, protection, courage, sorrow, memory, and the way Iban culture interpreted the interaction between the living and the unseen world. 

Modern discussions about Iban headhunting often reduce it to a caricature. The Ibans of old are seen as savage, primitive, and brutal. But history is rarely simple. The more I explore and create, the more I see how much ritual, spirituality, and community importance were embedded in activities that outsiders typically dismiss as shock value. This zine is not an attempt to glorify the past. My goal is to see it as it is without dismissing it as barbaric, understand the reasons behind this practice, and finally pass the knowledge to others. I felt content when I had finished the prototype. It felt like coming home to something that was meant to be held and shared after sitting in my mind for months.

I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.

What is a Lemambang? The Iban Ritual Bard

The Iban lemambang is a ritual bard who recites long, sacred chants or invocations at ceremonies or rituals. These chants are the stories of ancestors, deities, and the unseen realm. They are preserved through memory and passed down from one generation to the next. 

The role of a lemambang takes years to learn. Each verse must be remembered with care and precision. During a ritual, the lemambang guides the ceremony through these chants that become part of the process that bridges the seen and the unseen. In some cases, papan turai was used as a guide. They are wooden boards carved to help the lemambang remember the sequence of their chants. These papan turai are memory aids, reinforcing what has previously been taught and internalized.

I drew this while working on a zine about Iban headhunting and its cultural origins. As I moved from one page to the next, I realized the zine was also about those who passed the knowledge forward. One of those figures was the group of people known as the lemambang. I wanted to place him (who represents this group) among the pages to acknowledge their big contribution as the guardian of Iban culture and heritage. 

This way of preserving knowledge is different from how we learn today. It depends on discipline, repetition, and memory rather than written records. It also depends on a faith and trust that what is handed down will be remembered and passed on accurately.  

Today the number of lemambang is getting smaller. The number of people who are learning to become lemambang is dwindling, and much of this knowledge is at risk of being lost with time. What remains are fragments, memories, and the efforts of those who persist in holding on to them. Writing and illustrating this page is a small way for me to honor them. 

Here’s a video of a group of lemambang chanting during Gawai Antu or Festival of the Dead.


I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.