The Kadazan People of Borneo

The title of this particular blog "Kadazan Homeland: The Kadazan People of Borneo" is to show to the world at large where the Kadazan people are to be found. After all, they are not to be found in any significant number anywhere else. Nowhere else but in the Island of Borneo!

What name the ancestors of the Kadazans called themselves is unknown. It had been explained that the name "Kadazan" meant 'people'. Some had ventured to say that the name comes from the word 'kedai' which is a Malay word for shop. One can only guess as their real motives. Was it intended to drive a wedge between the natives who call themselves 'Kadazans' and those who prefer the name 'Dusuns' the name coined by the Brunieans and adopted by British colonial businessmen? Or were there other motives?

The name 'Kadazan' was in use long before any one of these people came to live near any town or shop. Richard Tunggolou had written an article on this. Owen Rutter wrote in the 1920s that these natives did not call themselves 'Dusun' but preferred to call themselves 'Kadazans.' The Christian missionaries who came to this land in the 1880s referred to a language they called "the Putatan Language." This is the language spoken by the Tangaah (Tangaa') which is very similar to the language spoken by the Kadazan of the Kimanis-Papar plains.

One P.S.Shim theorised that the Kadazans migrated from Baram and settled at Kimanis-Papar around 1200. Some 600 years later, some migrated northwards and settled in the Putatan-Penampang plains.

Soon after, they called themselves 'Tangaa' which indicate that they settled somewhere between their brethren at Papar and the tribe of Lotud at Tuaran. Now, they prefer the name 'Kadazan' to demonstrate that they were the original inhabitants of this land. This is necessary as other people whose ancestors did not originate from Borneo claim that they were settlers in the land before the Kadazans and other native tribes of Borneo.

There are writings that say that the Chinese came here a long time ago and that the natives here are their descendants. They support their arguments by explaining names like 'Kinabalu' and 'Kinabatangan' as Chinese in origin. Some of these are mere conjectures! That the distant ancestors of the natives of Borneo may have come from Yunnan may hold some truth. But these migrated long before the end of the second ice age. For example, the 'Deep Skull' of a homo sapien found in Niah Caves was some 37,000 years old. This had started a debate that migrations to many parts of Southeast Asia originated from Borneo.

P.S.Shim wrote that the Visayans of the Philippines were of the same tribal stock as the Bisaya of Sabah. They also migrated from Baram, according to Shim. The Visayans became Christians under Spanish rule while the Bisaya became Muslims since their forebears lived near Brunei which was a powerful kingdom then.

There is nothing that points to the Kadazans (and the Dusuns) came from any other place other than Borneo.