Whose Heritage is Being Represented? The Regatta Lepa in Sabah, Malaysia

Abstract (English)

This presentation adopts a cultural politics perspective for analysis of the festival entitled the Regatta Lepa, enacted annually on the east coast of Sabah in Malaysia. While the Regatta Lepa is usually advertised as representing the past maritime culture of the now sedentarised local Bajau (Bajau Tempatan or Bajau Kubang), found along the coasts and islands of Darvel Bay (Teluk Lahad Datu) and beyond, it renders invisible the still semi-sedentary Sea Bajau (Bajau Laut) who continue to live part of the year in their houseboats (lepa). The presentation foregrounds the relations between these communities, particularly focusing on the contrast between the citizenship of the Bajau Tempatan and the statelessness of most of the Bajau Laut, but also considering how various Bajau Tempatan subgroups, such as the Bajau Ubian, are situated with respect to the festival. As a marine festival now recognised as part of national heritage, the Regatta Lepa foregrounds the participation of Malaysian citizens, while the very nature of the festival as an event authorised by the state and national governments entails the nonparticipation and invisibility of the non-citizen Bajau Laut. The analysis also considers how the casting of marine heritage into a nostalgically remembered and recreated past by the Bajau Tempatan neglects how this orientation remains a part of living culture of the Bajau Laut. Besides focusing on the festival as an authorised cultural event, the presentation also considers how various elements of the festival have been subject to contestations regarding their origins from either primarily settled Bajau or sea Bajau. Such contested cultural objects include not only the lepa itself as both a functional object – the houseboat of the Bajau Laut – and an aestheticised object – the lepa cantik or beautiful lepa of the Bajau Tempatan – but also the igal-igal dance and sambulayang banners deemed iconic of Sama-Bajau culture in general. The paper thus demonstrates how the process of heritagisation, in this case the conversion of the marine orientation of Bajau culture into a festival, can not only legitimise the status of some ethnic groups within the wider ethnoscape of Sabah and Malaysia, but also further marginalise others who do not fulfil the parameters of participation in the festival.