{"id":7692,"date":"2011-09-26T19:49:48","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T23:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=7692"},"modified":"2011-09-26T19:08:01","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T23:08:01","slug":"ancestor-worshipping-village-shaman-divines-a-path-around-indonesias-religious-bureaucracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/ancestor-worshipping-village-shaman-divines-a-path-around-indonesias-religious-bureaucracy","title":{"rendered":"Ancestor-worshipping village shaman divines a path around Indonesia’s bureaucracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Kaharingan practitioner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Tumbang Saan, a village of huts built on stilts\u00a0in Borneo\u2019s\u00a0vast rainforest, village elder Udatn had a problem.<\/p>\n

He’s a spiritual leader in Kaharingan, one of a number of names for the ancestor-worshipping, spirit-divining\u00a0religion of Borneo\u2019s indigenous forest people, the Dayak.<\/p>\n

In Indonesia,\u00a0bureaucrats\u00a0cite a law that citizens\u00a0must choose\u00a0between the government’s six officially recogized religions: Islam, Roman Catholicism, Christian Protestantism, Buddhism, Confucianism\u00a0and Hinduism, reports\u00a0Aubrey Belford for the International Herald Tribune.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

So\u00a0Udatn couldn’t get government funding for local\u00a0needs unless the bureaucrats had the right entries in their paperwork.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His solution: He has\u00a0announced that his sect is a branch of Hinduism, reports Belford:<\/p>\n

Of all the people in this tiny settlement, he speaks better than any other the esoteric language of the Sangiyang, the spirits and ancestors of the upper world, known simply as \u201cAbove.\u201d His is a key role in the rituals of Kaharingan, \u201cIn the beginning, when God separated the darkness and the light, there was Kaharingan,\u201d said Mr. Udatn, as he sat smoking a wooden pipe on the floor of his stilt home. (Like many Indonesians Mr. Udatn uses only one name.)<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s most populous Muslim-majority country is no Islamic state, but it is a religious one. Every citizen must subscribe to one of six official creeds: Kaharingan, like dozens of other native faiths, does not officially exist. Even in this village, a frontier where land clearing and mining is fast erasing ancient forest, people have long seen their faith under threat from officialdom.<\/p>\n

Villagers have seized on a strategy being used by many Dayak: They are re-branding. On paper at least, most of the people of Tumbang Saan are now followers of Hinduism, the dominant religion on the distant island of Bali.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here is a video of Dayaks using their age-old tapping technique to give a visitor one of their famed tattoos:<\/p>\n