SUSTAINING BORNEO HIGHLAND'S CULTURAL HERITAGE THROUGH MUSIC
From Sunday Tribune (Sarawak)
The annual Rainforest World Music Festival held at the Sarawak Cultural Village is now in full swing with festival goers flocking to the Sarawak cultural village. Many are here to enjoy not only the music and workshops but also to visit the various exhibition booths scattered around the village.
One of the booths features Central Borneo's indiginoeu cultural traiditions with the participation of FORMADAT (Forum Masyarakat Adat Dataran Tinggi Borneo or Forum of the Indigenous Peoples of the Highlands of Borneo) a grass-roots, cross-border, organisation representing the Indigenouus Peoples of the Highlands, in the Heart of Borneo (HoB).
FORMADAT is a transboundary community forum established by the main ethnic groups in the area-the Lun Dayeh/Lun Bawang, Sa'ban and Kelabit. They number around 25,000 people of whom 75 percent are on the Indonesian side of the border. The highlands of Borneo, which comprise the sub districts of Krayan Selatan and Krayan in East Kalimantan, indonesia, Bario, Ba' Kelalan and Long Semado in Sarawak, aand Long Pasia in Sabah, constitute one geographic, environmental and cultural land inhabited by people who share a common origin.