Sabah don riled over ‘political’ meddling

Joe Fernandez

An associate professor believes the Kadazandusun Chair at UMS cannot be dictated to by politicians who may have their own agendas.

KOTA KINABALU: Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) associate professor, Jacqueline Pugh-Kitingan, is not amused by recent “political” attempts to belittle, among others, the contributions of the Kadazandusun Chair at the state’s only public-owned institution of higher learning.

Jacqueline, an Australian national, has headed the Kadazandusun Chair (KDC) at UMS since its inception in 2003.

She’s also taken aback by accusations that the KDC has done “nothing” for the promotion of the Kadazandusun language, the standard speech form based on the Bundu and Liwan, two Dusun dialects.

This (doing nothing) has been attributed by some critics to the fact that she’s not native although married to one and holding Malaysian permanent residence. One related criticism is that her appointment was “an insult to Kadazandusun academicians”.

The lack of publicity on the work of the KDC has also emerged as a sore point with critics.

“The KDC was not formed to study the Kadazandusun language,” explained Jacqueline. “It was formed under university regulations to research the cultural heritage of the Kadazandusun and other indigenous peoples in Sabah.”

An academic chair, being a university appointment, “is not something that seeks or needs publicity”, according to her.

Jacqueline was elaborating on her remarks in the media over the weekend on critics directing pot-shots from time to time at the KDC in general and at her work in particular.

A lot of money

Most of the criticisms have come from former Sabah attorney-general Herman Luping and United PasokMomogun KadazanDusunMurut (Upko) president Bernard Giluk Dompok.

Luping, in particular, opined that “people say that this chair is given a lot of money but it is being used for other purpose like Customary Law and so on”.

Again, she stressed, the Kadazandusun language is not the primary purpose of the KDC and neither was Customary Law which is the domain of the Sabah Museum. The one exception, she conceded, was her ethnographic research in Tambunan not so long ago on marriage and death adat (custom).

The KDC, she said, was supposed to be an Ethnographic or Anthropological Chair, like the Chair of Dayak Studies at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas).

It was set up with a one-off RM2 million grant from the Sabah government, she added, and the money was held in trust and only the accrued interest used to pay for some of the activities of the KDC like holding conferences and publishing books.

“People can deal with change when they know that their past was a valuable experience in preparation for the future, when their past is viewed in such positive terms as a foundation for dealing with change,” said Jacqueline.

On the other hand, when the past and heritage is devalued, when it is lost and not available for reference in history books, in ethnographies, in museums, she said, “people become lost”.

The result is that people become apathetic with their loss of roots, she noted, or they can become normless without any guideposts to help them deal with the future. Apparently, this paves the way for sexual excess, excess of alcohol and mindless entertainment, among others.

Indigenous languages

Jacqueline cautioned that the KDC should not duplicate the work of other institutions, three in particular, on the work of promoting the Kadazandusun and other indigenous languages.

She pointed out that SIL International, the Kadazandusun Language Foundation (KLF) and the Pusat Penataran Ilmu and Bahasa (PPIB) at UMS were already working on the Kadazandusun and other indigenous languages.

“Nevertheless, the KDC has supported the promotion of local indigenous languages through its various seminars and conferences,” said Jacqueline.

She cited the International Fieldworks Software Workshop which was jointly organised last March in Kota Kinabalu by the KDC together with SIL and PPIB. The workshop sponsored members of various indigenous communities to learn the software for the purpose of documenting their languages and cultures.

Besides various Dusun communities, the workshop included members of the Murut, Bajau and Iranun communities.

There will be a follow-up workshop later this year tentatively set for August.

Academic merit

On Luping’s belated criticism of her heading the KDC, Jacqueline explained that academic chairs are appointed based solely on academic merit, not on ethnic group affiliation or any similar bias.

This meant that many chairs at local universities are held by experts in various fields from overseas. However, in her case, she had the added advantage of being a “local” and begged to differ with the label that she was a “foreigner”.

“Laurentius (her husband), a Dusun from Tambunan, and I have been married 34 years. I have lived in Sabah for so long and raised my family here,” she said in establishing her local credentials. “I find Luping’s statements especially very hurtful, insulting, unprofessional, very un-Kadazandusun and very un-Malaysian.”
She assured that none of her Dusun, Bajau, Brunei, Orang Ulu and other indigenous colleagues felt “insulted” by her appointment.

Apparently referring to Luping and Dompok, Jacqueline said that politicians are not the only ones to be considered “leaders of the community”. Instead, she said they should be considered as “leaders of sorts within their own spheres of influence”.

The real community leaders, she opined, were the village headmen, native chiefs, the chairperson of the village security and development committees, traditional priestesses, indigenous church pastors and others like them.

“The KDC cannot be dictated to by politicians who may have their own agendas,” said Jacqueline and pledged to continue serving the community irrespective of whether she’s head of the KDC or otherwise.
She’s currently working, among others, on a book entitled “The Kadazandusun”.