Museum, Community and Objects: An Ethnography of Sarawak indigenous blades in a temporal and spatial milieu

The traditional parang-making in Sarawak is declining and there is a need to document the knowledge before it is disappearing. This research documents the technological aspect of parang-making practices among the Bidayuh indigenous of Sarawak. The research focus on detailed documentation of the tools: how they were made, the raw materials and their sources, their forms and motifs, and their uses. The research involved three fieldsites: Nyegol village, Semban in the Bengoh resettlement, and Min Lee workshop in the Serian town. The fieldwork also took place at the Sarawak Museum, documenting the physical collections of indigenous blades and tracing the research gap. The information was then used to form the interview questions for the parang makers. In addition, the documentation also involved a focus group interview with the Kejaman, and the Bungan ritual, an event performed by the Punan Ba for their klirieng burial pole in the Sarawak Museum collection. Filming is the primary research method for the videos made available through the EMKP Digital Repository of the British Museum, the funder of this research. Outcomes include videos, audios, annotations, photographs, drone videos and images, interview texts, and three short video-documentaries and three edited videos of a complete parang-making process. The production of the videos and translations were assisted by the communities and the Sarawak Museum ethnology curator and staff. The research progress was supervised by Professor Paul Sillitoe and Professor Thomas Yarrow of the Anthropology Department, Durham University.