The Kubu Tribe in Jambi

HISTORY

The Myth and Legend Life Cycle ceremonies The Kubu

The Kubu

Kubu (or Anak Dalam) is the name of an isolated tribe whose members are still little touched by the influences of modernity. About 900 to 1,000 of them live scattered inside the Biosfier Park and on the Bukit Duabelas hillside, a number that has remained practically unchanged over the past decades because the mortality and birth rates are more or less balanced. The Kubu are mostly hunters, although they also grow edible tuberous plants. They also collect rattan to be exchanged in barter with hunting tools. The people still lead a nomadic life and move to a new site whenever there is something wrong in their current place, or someone dies.

Other isolated tribes in Jambi are the Talang Mamak, Laut, Bajau and Talang. However, the Kubu are not capable to top the ever closing farmers, bulldozers and chainsaws, they still succeeded to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. They have some agriculture right now, against their original way of life. They deforest small pieces of forest for growing rice, corn or different kinds of carrots. Above all these cultivations attract animals, so they can hunt more effective.

Most Kubu nowadays have close contacts with the farmers in the environment without being village inhabitants themselves, or want that to be. They settle themselves on locations where they are free to hunt, and they often work as worker; they help with the harvest and they create new agricultural soil in the near environment. They also gather and trade products from the forest like honey, rattan and various kind of harsh. There is an increasing demand for their handicrafts: baskets and fishing equipment. In trade the Kubu receive rice, tobacco, salt, iron products, medication and cotton cloths. Flashlights, guns, radio's and other products get an ever-increasing importance, and debris is a witness from their increasing contacts with the outside world. Besides the common teeth, shells and bones of wild animals, there are batteries, tin cans, bottles and plastic mess as well. Because of this changes living environment, some kind of economical symbiosis was created between the Kubu and the farmers, however they are still distant from each other for what social status is concerned. The villagers often-strong Moslems which have the feeling being a part of the new Indonesia in development - show little respect for the 'half naked, all eating, uncivilized Kubu' which maintain their old and irregular way of life.

The Kubu, on their turn, still reject living in villages. The heavy work on the soil, the small moving freedom and many oblige which the villagers have to do, like education, developmental and political activities and 'gotong royong' (communal exchange of labor) are fearful to the Kubu. That's why they are constantly in opposition against the pressure and temptations from the outside world who wants to force them to become villagers. This explains why the Kubu never accepted houses in areas with transmigration projects and why they didn't hold on long in villages what were built for their 'development and civilization'. They choose for freedom of living in the forests, living on the edge of civilization as a loose worker. Only when this only possibility is taken away, they show themselves more openly: as beggars in wood chop camps, at bus terminals and along the roads. Maybe people can see this as their adaptation to the modernized form of hunting and collecting where money, food and cigarettes are the aim, but it's a living habit that has not been chosen by the Kubu selves. It's not only needed that their environment is protected and saved, but also a severe reconsideration of the future of the Kubu is needed.