Kelabit, Sarawak

About Kelabit

Kelabit is a tribe in Sarawak. They are a component of the group of indigenous people collectively known as Orang Ulu. As a subtribe, they are closely related to the Lun Bawang.

There are only about 5,000 Kelabits in Sarawak today, the majority having migrated to the big towns in Sarawak, leaving only about 1,200 in their homeland, which is the remote Kelabit Highlands near the Kalimantan border. Their villages are often located at an elevation of 1200 meters or more.

Kelabits cultivate wet paddy as well as hill rice, maize, tapioca and vegetables. Domesticated buffaloes are prized, and are used as dowry in marriage transactions. Their exposure to Westerners, who visited them first in the form of soldiers during World War II, and later on as scholars and missionaries, resulted in the majority of the Kelabits converting to Christianity. Before that, they were animists who erect megaliths in honour of important people of the tribe.

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Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.