A Borneo Healing Romance: Ritual Storytelling and the Sugi Sakit, A Saribas Iban Rite of Healing by Clifford Sather (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Borneo Healing Romance: Ritual Storytelling and the Sugi Sakit, A Saribas Iban Rite of Healing by Clifford Sather Kamal Solhaimi Fadzil A Borneo Healing Romance: Ritual Storytelling and the Sugi Sakit, A Saribas Iban Rite of Healing. By CLIFFORD SATHER. The Tun Jugah Foundation and Borneo Research Council, 2017. 530 pp. ISBN: 978-967-14454-1-9. A Borneo Healing Romance: Ritual Storytelling and the Sugi Sakit, A Saribas Iban Rite of Healing reminds us that it is in many ways, the culmination of Professor Sather's work with the Saribas Iban stretching over four decades. It is a labour of love in which those closest to him, the people whose ways he so deeply admired, had been [End Page 236] memorialized. It is also an example of the discipline of anthropology moving away from the author as authority and somewhat 'above' to drawing on the recognition that the 'anthropology project' is both an intimate and collaborative exercise. It is a book I would encourage readers to start at the very beginning, with a careful reading of the preface where the author explores the dilemma anthropologists face, of either being there too late, or being there but not being able to fully appreciate what is experienced. To resolve the dilemma, he applies Lévi-Strauss aptly, that memory and time reconciles, bringing the different worlds together in communion. The book thus, makes the best of what is given albeit almost four decades later, and draws the anthropologist as central to this 'remembering'. Sather attended the ritual performance of the Sugi Sakit in 1977 when it was performed as a healing ritual and in 2003, set in motion the timely collaboration with Tun Jugah Foundation, a significant Iban cultural centre to document the last living Bard Priest of the Sugi Sakit. The process during which key individuals to the production have passed on. Reading the preface, one cannot but sense the weight of memory the pages carry. It is an immensely important work for what it documents as well as what it informs the discipline on 'how to do anthropology'. The author explicitly recognizes the authority of the Iban culture specialists from within the Iban community with the anthropologist as mere interlocutor. But it is also an intimate work which draws on the theme of the visitor, love and beauty which also sits at the heart of the story which is the Sugi Sakit. As the Bard Priest plays the dual role of narrator or storyteller and actor bridging the invisible world of Orang Paggau and the Iban in the act of healing the sick, the anthropologist plays a role bridging the 'worlds' past and present, and in so doing brings the world of Iban past to the present reader. The author informs that at each step of the project to document the Sugi Sakit, copies were made and deposited with the Iban ritual specialists and the Tun Jugah Foundation. The practice to work collaboratively with communities, and to respect ownership of intellectual property is not something new. However, the practice of it, in this case diligently carried out by the author is something to be exemplified for future anthropologists working with indigenous communities in documenting their knowledge, particularly in Malaysia. The book may well attain the status of a classic in time and should be made more accessible to a wider public. In its current form, it is written principally for a scholarly audience or a student of Iban culture. It painstakingly contextualizes the ritual healing in the Saribas Iban community and offers insightful analysis to the ritual. The book serves well as a record, documenting a ritual which is no longer practiced. It also does well in weaving into the discussion perennial questions of time, memory, and social relations to ethnography. It concludes with a highly original analysis of the key themes—Love, Beauty and Healing—in Iban culture and healing practices, with reflections from both the emic or insider perspective and those from the theoretical perspective. A question posed in the final chapter on the apparent effectiveness of the ritual is answered with deep reflection, All of this makes sense if we consider that the...