Did the Nunuk Ragang people come from Tuaran?

By Raymond Tombung

After reading Tan Sri Dr. Herman Luping’s’s piece on “Nunuk Ragang legend and Huguan Siou” in his column last Sunday, I can’t help but respond again to his unusual understanding of the Kinoringan legend. I had argued with his earlier take on the same matter but it appears what I said needs repeating for re-clarification.

Contrary to what Luping believes, according to the legend, Kinoringan was NOT our ancestor. He was the minamangun (creator) of the world and all humanity.

The two beings that came out of a giant rock (pampang) weren’t him and his wife but the first humans – our version of Adam and Eve. These two humans then begat humanity. This is confirmed by I.H.N. Evans in his book The Religion of the Tempasuk Dusuns of North Borneo (1953). 

To say that Kinoringan was born out of a rock raises the question of who created the rock. Luping explained this by saying the rock came from and explosion of Mt. Kinabalu “thousands of years ago, causing rocks and boulders spewing out from an erupting volcano…. We are told after all by scientists that Mt. Kinabalu [is] a dormant volcano.” But that again raises the regressive question of who created the volcano. But that aside, Luping is very much mistaken about the mountain being a dormant volcano, because it never was one. Wikipedia quotes sources saying that “It was pushed up from the earth’s crust as molten rock millions of years ago.” But it was later formed (shaped) by glaciations. “Kinabalu was born only 1.5 million years ago; when a mass of granite rock that had been cooling and hardening under the surface of several million years began to rise and break through the overlying crusts of softer rocks. Erosion by heavy rains and later, by ice and glaciers shaped the new mountain” (http://mmadventure.com/kinabalu/index.htm). The mountain may have been a result of tectonic activities, but it was never a volcano.

Whatever the strange ‘logic’ or theology of this Kinoringan legend may be, we mustn’t write as if it is a factual event because it is just that – a legend through and through. Our forefathers may have looked upon it as the truth, but we must now admit it is purely a folktale and it never happened, and Kinoringan, for Christ’s sake, never existed! The first Kadazandusun’s Adam and Eve also never came out of any rock, nor such magical rock ever existed, and we are definitely NOT children of Kinoringan! We need to stop these nonsensical talks about the Kadazandusun pantheon as if it is an actual part of our history. Some years ago I was with some Christian organizers of the state-level Unduk Ngadau who were talking earnestly, even very solemnly, about Huminodun  resurrecting after her sacrifice, in the form of a spirit which until today continues to wander about, blessing the Kadazanduns and the successive Unduk Ngadaus. I interjected, “Err, excuse me, please, can we keep in mind that this story is not true? It is only a legend and it never happened!” That caused a lot of sour faces, but I thought truth must prevail. We must all escape from this cultural illusion, this powerful Kinoringan delusion. We must recondition our mindsets to understand that Kinoringan, Umunsumundu, Huminodun, and Ponompulan, either physically or spiritually, never existed! Period!

As to the historical facts of the origin of the Kadazandusuns, I admit it sounds very romantic, seems anthropologically and culturally meaningful as well as politically appealing to keep hammering into our common consciousness that we all came from Nunuk Ragang. And Luping is adamant in his insistence that we are all children of Kinoringan who himself was born from a rock in the area. But is this the truth? Are we not being over-emotional in rewriting history by blending anthropology and folktale so easily? What about the hundreds, maybe thousands, of other creation stories from all over the world? And what about the biblical story of creation revealed as truth in the book of Genesis? Is it alright for Christians to pretend that the Kinoringan story is factual and to set aside the biblical revelations when we are dealing with culture just for the sake of politics? I think not. And by the way, Tan Sri, I must reiterate that the Muruts can’t be included as “descendants of Kinoringan” because they have their own traditional god called Aki Kapunoh!

The fact is, the ancestors of the Kadazandusuns came from a lot further back in time, and they were not gods nor Kadazandusuns! Let me quote from my paper, “Whither the Lotuds?” which I presented at the first Lotud Dialogue in Tuaran in November last year.

“As a people, we are the descendants of the first peoples that occupied the island of Borneo, ever since the Stone Age. The history of Borneo's population is long and complex. It is probable that Borneo was occupied in the middle Pleistocene epoch (500,000 to 150,000 years ago) by the genus Pithecantropus, of the family Hominidae. This ‘early man’ population was probably succeeded by several ‘modern,’ that is Homo sapiens, populations beginning sometime 50,000 years or more ago. It has been speculated that the earliest sapiens in Borneo were Austroloid in appearance.”

I quoted from Encyclopedia Americana: “Sometimes after 14,000 years ago, there were frequent migrations of Mongoloid populations to and from Borneo. These people were probably from mainland Asia. These migrations resulted in the regular intermixture of the earlier Australoid and the later Mongoloid Homo sapiens groups. About 10,000 to 12,000 years ago a food-gathering (non-agricultural) populations of Mongoloids appears to have moved into Borneo, probably competing with as well as living among the earlier Austroloid peoples. It is possible that the modern Borneo population of Mongoloid-appearing forest nomads, termed variously Punan, Basap, Bukit, or Bukitan, represents one of the earlier mongoloid population migrations to the island. Recent archaeological and linguistic research indicates that there were subsequently at least three successive movements of food-raising (agricultural) Mongoloid populations into Borneo. These people are probably the ancestral groups from which the other contemporary native populations of Borneo are descended, including Bahau (Kayan, Kenya), Iban (sea Dayak), Klamantan (Dusun, Kalabit, Murut ), Land Dayak (Landak, Tayan) and Ngadju (Biadju, Katingan, Lawangan, Maanyan, Ot Danom).”

“The period 10,000 to 12,000 years ago was during the last Ice Age in which much sea water was frozen at the north and South Poles, causing the sea levels to be so low that it exposed the continental shelf creating a land mass called Sundaland which included  the Malay Peninsular, Borneo, Sumatra and Java. This facilitated the migration of peoples to and from Borneo.”

Fast forward to some several centuries ago. A village in Tuaran, which is still called Indai today, was inhabited by a non-Lotud Dusuns who got into trouble with the Dusuns of Bangawan (today’s Bongawan in Papar). Having been cheated of a very valuable communal treasure by two people from Indai, the people of Bangawan sent a series of attacks by way of very powerful black magic to Indai, killing a great many of the people. Eventually this forced the surviving villagers to decide that the only way they could escape total decimation was to abandon the village. They decided to break into four groups, one went to the Kadamaian, one to the Keningau plain, one to Tambunan, and one – now get this! – to Nunuk Ragang! In an article about this which was published in a local paper many years ago, I presented the hard conclusion that this story, which is not a legend, proves that Nunuk Ragang was NOT our place of origin. Why? Because the fact that the Tuaran group went there meant that, either (1) the Tuaran group started the Nunuk Ragang community, or (2) the Tuaran group went to Nunuk Ragang to join the inhabitants who were already occupying the area, just like they went to join the groups who (perhaps) were already inhabiting Keningau, Tambunan and the Kadamaian. There are no other possibilities other than these two scenarios. And this story indicates quite clearly that while Nunuk Ragang was already inhabited, there were also many other areas in what is now Sabah which were already occupied by Kadazandusuns! Other stories which happened during the time of Indai tell us that our people were occupying settlements in Kindu and Lumawang in Tuaran, and of course Bongawan. If that was the case, then where is the logic in claiming that we all originated from Nunuk Ragang? As far as the Tuaran people are concerned, the people of Nunuk Ragang may have very well originated from Tuaran and not the other way round!

The article I published which contained the legend and this conclusion infuriated a lot of people, especially my political bosses who, at that time, were earnestly promoting Nunuk Ragang as our place of origin.  One Lotud even asked angrily, “What does this man really want?” I later told him I simply wanted to tell what I knew. I was and am concerned about us limiting our stories to something which may be wrong. Why not explore other stories so we can reach certain conclusions which are more realistic, regardless of how politically irritating they may be? I may be the spoil sport, the so-called history nut who looks like he is destroying the beautiful and romantic Nunuk Ragang ‘history’ but I am also trying to say, “Folks, what about the Tuaran story!” And what about the fact that people in the Interior have little or no knowledge of Nunuk Ragang? And why else is the Indai story so wellknown in Keningau, although slightly modified?

Next week I will present the story of the one-sided war between Bangawan and Indai.