"By Aeroplane to Pygmyland" Accounts of the 1926 Smithsonian-Dutch Expedition to New Guinea

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Annotations to the Journal of Matthew Stirling

Date of Note/View Entry Keyword(s) Note

April 7, 1926 Dyaks

Stirling and Hedberg both use this older English spelling for “Dayak,” a general name given to a large number of ethnic groups of interior Borneo. The term, which means “interior or inland person” in some Borneo languages, was originally used in a derogatory sense by Muslim coastal groups. Generally denoting the agricultural peoples of Borneo, it excludes the Malay or Muslim coastal groups, who were first converted to Islam in the sixteenth century. See Chapter 5: “Dayak” (pp. 146-171) in Beyond the Java Sea: Art of Indonesia’s Outer Islands by Paul Michael Taylor & Lorraine V. Aragon. (New York & Washington D.C., Harry N. Abrams & National Museum of Natural History, 1991).

 

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