Framework for Dayak Development

(Rangkal penemu dikena ngemansang ke kitai Dayak)
Dikarang Dr. John Brian Anthony (DMgmt)

Introduction
It is important for the Dayak to progress at similar pace with Malaysia’s national growth. This would be benchmarked against the progress made by the major races in Malaysia. The progress however needs to be focused and the target should be achievable. The result will be a sustainable Dayak development and enable them to move towards national integration in an orderly manner. The 2020 targeted dateline would be more meaningful to Dayak community.

Preambles
Since joining Malaysia in 1963, Dayak has made important progress in most fields. This progress in education, business, agriculture, technology and politic will need to be accelerated to meet the national development and globalization practices.. In globalization, all factors of production; labour, land, raw material, energy, money become available to everyone and anyone. The challenge is no more local, it becomes global. Those with influence, power and money would be able to secure resources that they need. Likewise, we should be able to react and adapt to changing times. When there are people who needs the resources and procure it and there are others who do not see the possibilities or are not able to own it, a crisis will show up. This crisis points will need to be managed to ensure fair distribution of gains among the various communities in Malaysia.

Agenda
The DAYAK AGENDA (DA) is a practical framework to approach the area of conflict. Rather than focusing on the problems, the DA try to explore the possibilities of what we can do as a community to improve ourselves by focusing on a few areas of development. This area of focus is deemed to be critical to Dayak success while recognising that there are many other important development areas. What is needed is to build programmes and targets around it. In this way, we hope to inspire Dayak to take ownership and responsibility to develop their community in collaboration with what ever support and resources that is available and provided for by the government.

The educated Dayak resources has a huge task to identify and implement “capacity building” opportunities that will lead to efficient and sustainable progress in all important areas of community development.

Education
Our focus on education should start from pre-schooling to the highest level of tertiary education. The critical success factors in education are many. At this point I proposed parenting, community values and individual discipline to be recognised as the basic foundation for Dayak. Needless to stay, educational facilities must also be in place.

Diplomas and Degrees are not the only end product we seek in education. Through education, the community thinking process will improve, giving rise to making improved quality of decision making and the ability to be adaptable to changing environment and understand better of what is needed for the well being of Dayak community.

One suggested target is to have a university that is controlled and manage by Dayak. The other target is to get at least 10 graduates from each officially recognised longhouse.

Economy
We will also be “towkay” sometime in the near future, but we must build our business knowledge systematically. This knowledge will include clear and focus objectives, opportunistic traits, strong personal value system, persistent saving and investing mentality and last but not least, detail knowledge of business processes and good networking.

We must target at getting “ONE” business person from one family. There are many opportunities, from selling agricultural produce as hawker to e- business in electronic platform.

Our choice can be the setting up of a Dayak investment arm with good network to support Dayak business. The investment will then appoint a trustee to ensure the availability of fund as capital for starting and growing Dayak business.

Technology
Interesting enough, Dayak used of technology is usually accidental. Briefly, we started with guns, introduced by the British, outboard engines, rice mill, chain saw from the logging industries and now passenger / goods vehicles as there are many more roads feeding into the rural areas.

The employment of technology should be in synergy with the types of assets that we need to develop. In land development we would need heavy land machineries (excavator), in agriculture we would need planters and harvesters, and system of irrigation and pest control.

In the marketing of these agricultural produces we need logistical and stocking and keeping technology.

In education we will need more information technology to provide access and making available relevant data and knowledge.

We need to focus on technology to be able to understand and compete with the more advance communities in Malaysia.

We must thrive to own TWO excavators for agricultural development purposes for every 10 longhouses.

Politic
The Dayak has always been united. The Dayak voters has returned Dayak candidates in Dayak seats, even when a non-Dayak is seeking election in the Dayak majority area under Dayak political organisation, the candidate is returned as winner(s).

Democracy is all about sharing the greatest goods to the greatest number of people. The Dayak leadership will need a clear road map to ensure fair distribution of these democratic goods, well defined community interest and respect the individual rights of the people as prescribe under democracy.

The effectiveness of Dayak political struggle will depend on the ability of the Dayak leaders to influence the law making body to passed laws that is enabling and non-limiting to the Dayak. The political struggle should focus on both physical and mental development of the Dayak community through active societal interaction and stakeholder consultation.

The Dayak political leaders should strive to improve Dayak community development from expecting “project award” to “self sustaining” stage of sufficiency.

Intelligence
Intelligence is created at home through daily transmission between adult and children. It is the responsibility of parents to give meaning of experience and learning to their children. Through the five senses, seeing, hearing, touching, smell and taste a human organism will collect their data, at the INPUT stage. This data or information is process or ELABORATED in the brain to be analyzed, prioritised, compared etc, usually describe as thinking skill then the human organism will conclude, perceived or summarized and communicate it as an OUTPUT. The output will need to be accurate and precise. When these cognitive functions are properly developed, then learning and understanding of new information become easier. In this way intelligence gets developed. Value systems and life principles will act as the internal reference and will dictate the manner in which we human response to a situation. Our response is observable as behaviour.

Dayak need to modify their meaning to certain experiences and learning. This modification will enhance adaptability to a new environment or situation and allow them to survive better and be more successful. Dayak will also need to create transcendence from their earlier culture and experience. In order to transcend, the faculty of exercising abstract thinking is a key requirement. In this way, Dayak will be able to understand implication and relationship better on their experience and learning.

It would then be our goal for Dayak to be able to create symbols that will act as an easily understood reference to successful living.

Culture
We can be deprived of our Dayak culture through the following means. We choose another culture and erase our cultural practice. We can also be deprived of our culture through the changing of meaning enforce upon us by a third party. Our culture can also be lost when there in not enough transmission in our home, between adult and children or by not explaining meanings of experience to the community. This is where suppression of logical reasoning becomes very dangerous. The community will lost its ability to reason out their experience and become dependent on others to lead them physically and mentality.

If we are to avoid Dayak downfall culturally, we need to focus on creating meaning, transcendence and symbolism. In this form, celebration, festival and ritual will contribute towards our cultural survival and therefore should be properly manage through community level organization and also the acquisition of such skills and knowledge.

Sustainable Development
This concept has been defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs”. The Dayak pattern of consumption has always been on “needs” basis. Large corporation seeking high profit returns from their investment would forget sustainable development easily. As Dayak, this has cause for concerns as we are dependent on natural resource to sustain us or compliment our income. We need to seek new ways to counter and manage this threat. It would be to our advantage to be able to response by effective adaptation that needs to occur across all strata within our community.

Dayak should be able to compete for community development with sustainability values: that is new economic strength, active societal involvement and high integrity environmental practices.

Challenges
In order to be adaptable, we need intelligence. The need to intensify our effort and improve our community value system on education is a priority to Dayak. That we have somewhat become dependent on others to give us meaning and direction present a clear threat to our progress. We need to stand up and be counted on our effort to improve the Dayak lot without any fear, even to our self being.

Let us take the principle of “ it is my needs, it must be achieved through my own effort” . It is “me”, it is “ours” paradigm that will lead us to take that very first step towards determining our success as Dayak.

Drivers
2020 is just 13 years away. As we reach that point, we should be almost at par if not at par with other races in Malaysia. Then we need to look ahead to 2050 as the next mile stone. Our community will need to be distinguished in our performance as the other alternative is partial extinguish. That would be a very painful legacy to leave to our future Dayak generation.

CONCLUSION - Desired Outcome
The framework design for Dayak advancement should be a collective design and therefore it becomes our combine responsibility. From then own, individual personality and organization that champion Dayak agenda would play a more important role and less disunity at leadership tier.

All the parts and label used in this article would be expanded systematically to raise the specific details. This is “the first step to a journey of a thousand miles”.