PEOPLES OF SUMATRA

A Melange of Ethnic Groups and Religions

More than 40 million people live in Sumatra-one-fifth of Indonesia’s huge population-making this the second most populous island in the archipelago, after Java. Four large ethnic groups-the Malay, the Minangkabau, the Acehnese and the Batak-form the vast majority of the island’s indigenous population, but over a dozen smaller ethnic groups are also represented, each speaking a difference language and processing a distinct history and culture.

            In recent centuries, there has been a significant influx of outsiders to Sumatra as well. The Japanese, who came by the thousand as plantation workers at the beginning of this century, continue to arrive through Indonesia’s ambitious transmigration program. The Chinese, who first came as debt-bonded plantation coolie and tin miners in the 29^th century, now dominate the wholesale and merchandising sectors of all major Sumatran towns. And a smattering of peoples from others island of Indonesia and abroad now live work in the booming oil industry.

           

Islamic strongholds

Sumatra is among the most thoroughly Islamic regions the archipelago. History states that Islam first came to Southeast Asia at a town on Sumatra’s northeast coast, variously referred to as Samudra or Pasai. From here, the religion spread around both coasts of Sumatra and across to neighboring islands and the Malay Peninsula-largely through an Islamic trading network established by Malay merchants oat Malacca in the 15^th century. For many centuries the term “Malay” was indeed synonymous throughout Indonesia with “Muslim”.

            The Malays have a long and illustrious history dating back to the days when the Buddhist Malay kingdom of Sriwijaya dominated the straits from a base at what is now Palembang, in South Sumatra, from the late 7^th until the 11^th centuries. For many centuries thereafter, the figure of the Malay raja embodied the highest cultural ideals of gentility, grace, eloquence, learning and Muslim piety throughout the Malay World. While fishermen and farmers could never match the raja’s refinement, they modeled their best behavior on the ideals he represented.

            Today the Malays are Sumatra’s largest ethnic group, numbering more than 13 million people and inhabiting most of the southern and eatern coasts and lowlands of the main island, as well as the smaller island offshore. Another 8 million people in neighboring Malaysia also consider themselves to be Malay-though many are descendasts of Minangkabau, Cham and Javanese migrants. Even in Sumatra itself, many people of Batak descent call themselves “Malay,” so that in fact a tremendous linguistic and cultural variety is encompassed by this ethnonym.

            The second largest ethnic group in Sumatra, and the one most closely related to the Malays in terms of language and culture, are the Minangkabau of the western central hinglands. They now number about 5  million, and are known as staunch Muslims, while at the same time retaining vestiges of an unusual matrilineal kinship system that predates their conversion to Islam. This means that the traditional Minangkabau longhouses, fertile rositions ricelands, and positons of  leadership within the clan are all transmitted to the next generation through women. While men hold public positions of leadership, they inherit these through their mothers-and when they retire they are replaced by their sister’s sons.

            A third major Islamic group inhabits Sumatra’s strategic northern coast. The Acehnese, who number about 3 million today, also speak a language related to Malay, and are best known for their fierce resistence against the Dutch during a 30-year jihad (holy war) from 1873 to 1903.long before this, in the 17^th century, Aceh was in fact the most powerful Islamic kingdom in the region. Today, Islam still rules the hearts of the Acehnese, and on Fridays the faithful fill Banda Aceh’s stately Grand Mosque while the town’s shops are shuttered tight. Just as among the Minangkabau, and despite Islam’s favoring of males, Acehnese village life revolves around women. Upon marriage, a man usually moves to his wife’s village, where her family provides them a house.

            In the highlands of central Aceh live the Gay, all of woman are Muslim. Their language, like that of the Acehnese, is remarkable for its many borrowings from Mon Khmer, a language group of mainland Southeast Asia. Unlike the Acehnese, however, the Gayo are patrilineal, and in the majority of cases, a bride moves to her hudband’s village. Gayo who live around the edges of Lake Tawar harvest carp and a minnow-like fist called depik  from the lake; coffee and tea are other major products from this region.

            The Gayo fight with words. Poetic duels, didong, were once performed at weddings between pairs of speakers representing the families of bride and groom. Later, didong helped defuse hostilities between villages, and more recently men have turned this verbal art into a completion between clubs or teams composed of lead singers supported by an encircling chorus.

Christian convert

While the coastal and urban areas of the island are predominantly Muslim, large areas of Sumatra are now mainly Christian, and in fact more Christian live on this island than any other in Indonesia. German Lutheran missionaries working with the Toba Batak enjoyed early and widespread success. Today, the Toba Batak church is the largest Christian body in Indonesia.

            In contrast, the Dutch Reformed missionaries who worked in the nearby Karo Batak region met decades of resistance. As a result, the Christian Karo have become a majority only since the 1950s, when an indigenous church emerged. The Simalungun Batak, once part of the Toba church, have separated into their own ethnic denomination.

            The hymns and the liturgy in all these ethnic Batak churches are in the vernacular languages, but just as throughout Indonesia, these ethnic churches face competition from Catholic and Pentecostal denominations which operate through the medium of Indonesian, and whose congregations are ethnically mixed.

            About 10 percent of the Angkola Batak who live to the south of the Toba are also Christian, but the majority, like the Mandailing Batak to the south in South Tapanuli, are Muslim. Other pockets of Christianity include the islands of Nias and Mentawai off the west coast, and some of the original inhabitans of the island of Enggano.

A patchwork of peoples

While most of Sumatra’s people live as farmers, small groups such as the Kubu of Jambi Province and the Sakai of the Riau Islands live mainly by fishing and hunting along swampy southern rivers. Another group, the Orang Laut literally “sea people” but often called sea gypsies or oven sea pirates__live in boats among the hundreds of small island in the Riau Archipelago.

            Lake Kerinci, surrounded by wet rice terraces in the highlands of western Jambi Province, is home to the Kerinci people. Lacustrine fishing and tea cultivation supplement a rice economy. Like the Minagkabau, the Kerinci are matrilineal and construct longhouses for matrilineally extended families, but their longhouses are unique in the archipelago for having no communal passage or gallery linking the family apartments. While a man attaches himself to his wife’s family, he retains membership in his natal family and lives partly at his own longhouse, where he helps to manage his lineage property and the affairs of his sister’s children.

            Bengkulu Province is home to the Rejang, who call themselves “We the people of Jang.” Their mythical ancestor, Jang, was reputed to be of the royal family of Java’s Majapahit kingdom. He is said to have settled in Sumatra in the 14^th century, and had four sons who became the ancestors of the four patrillineal clans that today constitute Rejang society, a people numbering around 200,000. The Rejang region spans a diserve terrain, from the coast up gentle foothills to highland peaks convered in tropical rainforest.

            Rejang was one of the last regions in Sumatra to accept Islam, so the pre-Islamic focus on ancestor spirits remains strong. Each of Rejang’s claims dominion over its own territory. The oldest village in each of these territories contains a sacred shrine associated with its founding ancestor. Villages and lineages also have their ancestral shrines, so pilgrimage to the principal clan shrine occur only for extremely important purposes.

            To the west of Palembang, near the town of Lahat, the Pasemah Highlands contain meghalitic remains dated to AD 100. This statuary, the most extensive of its kind in the archipelago,consist of many animal  and human figures as well as dplmens, menhirs and stone cist cist graves. Although the Pasemah people converted to Islam in the early 20^th century, they continue to visit these these shrines, and others on Mt. Dempo, to redeem ancestral vows. Although similar to the Rejang in their social organization and even their founding mythology, the Pasemah were bitter enemies of the Rejang, and the lowland Malays as well, in the precolonial.

            The Lampung region at Sumatra’s southern tip contains several ethnic groups with different cultural histories, including many Javanese who have migrated here in large numbers, both spontaneously and through the government’s transmigration programs. One of the most numerous indigenous peoples of this region, the Abung, say the originated in the mountains to the west where, in the 15^th century, they maintained a megalithic culture similar to that of Nias. Headhunting and human sacrifice brought them into conflict with neighboring peoples, especially lowland Malays, who finally drove them into their current setting around 1450.

            Abung society is composed of numerous patrilineal clans maintains a separate house, occupied most of the time by only a few elderly people. Villages contains as many as 3,000 people and 120 clan house, but working adults and children spend most of their time in small seasonal settlements outside the village, maintaining their swidden gardens. They return to the village for initiation ceremonies or other special events. Initiations usher men into a series of ranks that indicate their wealth, formerly, headhunting was a precondition for the highest rank, and initiates to this rank were enthroned on a dolmen of stone.

            Although the Dutch attempted to stop their headhunting and human sacrifices, the Abung continued these practices surreptitiously into the 19^th century. Like all their neighbors in the region, the Abung are now Muslims. In their modern version of initiation rites, called papadon, dancing substitutes for headhunting, and a buffalo is sacrificed instead of a human.

Into the modern world 

In the last 20 years, Sumatra’s natural resources__particularly oil and natural gas__have helped fuel Indonesia’s rapid economic growth. This growth has resulted in a new emphasis on education and on highway construction, which together with newspapers, films and television are increasingly drawing the peoples of Sumatra into a national community and into the word economy. Signs of this emphasis__from the newly-completed Trans-Sumatra Highway running the length of the island, to the puffing gas and oil refineries of Lhokseumawe and Palembang-are everywhere to be seen.