My story starts like most Orang Ulu children — I was raised in an evangelical church set up by Australian missionaries decades before my birth. I was fed the line that Israel was our Mecca, that the modern day incarnation of the state is the same land that was promised in the Bible. But that isn’t my land: Borneo is my land, Bakun is my ancestral home. I have no ties to the Levant other than what I was told in church.
Those same evangelicals spread the word of Christ as their civilising duty to the world, to save us from our savagery and sever us from our indigeneity.I grappled with my faith for many reasons — later on in life I had come to realise that this would be one of them. Like most Malaysians, I spent most of my life believing that whatever was happening in Israel and Palestine was a matter of faith, that because I was registered a Christian at birth I must take the Zionist stance or risk betraying my community and be accused of taking the side of the conservative Malay elite who wish to systematically marginalise u
Faith Evangelical Church Orang Ulu Israel Palestine Borneo Bakun Indigeneity