Gawai Dayak: Sarawak's Harvest Festival and the Longhouse Rituals Behind It

The clock has not yet struck midnight on the last day of May, and in a longhouse somewhere along a Sarawak river the gong is waiting. The rice is in. The gallery has been swept and hung with fresh mats. A jar of tuak sits ready. When the gong finally sounds, the longhouse chief will raise a cup, and everyone down the long communal veranda will drink to the same three words: long life, health, prosperity.

That is the heart of Gawai Dayak — the harvest festival of the Dayak peoples of Sarawak, celebrated every year on 1 and 2 June.

What “Gawai Dayak” actually means

The name is two words doing two jobs.

Gawai means a festival or ritual. Dayak is a collective term for the indigenous peoples of Sarawak and, more broadly, of Borneo. It is not a single ethnic group but an umbrella covering many communities.

According to the Sarawak Tourism Board, the Dayak who keep Gawai include the Iban, Bidayuh, Kayan, Kenyah, Kelabit, Lun Bawang — and many more. The upriver groups among them — Kayan, Kenyah, Kelabit, Lun Bawang and others — are often referred to together as the Orang Ulu, meaning “upriver people”.

So Gawai Dayak is not one community’s festival that others borrowed. It is a shared harvest thanksgiving observed across a wide family of peoples, each with its own longhouse, language and variations of custom.

A festival built around the rice harvest

Gawai marks the end of the padi (rice) harvesting season. After the work of planting, tending and reaping, it is the point at which the community pauses to give thanks for what the fields yielded and to ask for the seasons ahead to be kind.

That agricultural core is why the dates matter. The festival lands at the close of the harvest cycle, and in traditional belief the thanksgiving is directed to Petara — the gods or spirits. NegaraKu.md records these as the communities’ own beliefs, described respectfully, not as assertions of fact.

The sequence of a Gawai night

Although the public holiday falls on 1 June, the observance begins the evening before. The Sarawak Tourism Board records a recognisable sequence inside the longhouse.

Stage	What happens
Muai Antu Rua (eve of 31 May)	Casting away the spirit of greed and bad luck before the celebration begins
Miring	The thanksgiving offering, opened with the beating of the gendang rayah (ritual music)
Ngalu Petara	A procession of young maidens and warriors moves up and down the ruai (longhouse gallery) seven times
Midnight toast	The gong is sounded and the chief leads a toast of Ai Pengayu — tuak for long life
Ngajat and open house	Days of dancing, food, tuak and visiting follow

The miring is the ceremonial centre. It is presided over by the Tuai Rumah, the longhouse chief, who gives thanks for the good harvest. When the gong sounds at midnight, the community shares the Ai Pengayu and wishes one another long life, health and prosperity.

The ngajat, the hornbill and the dance floor

No account of Gawai is complete without the ngajat, the traditional Dayak dance.

The male ngajat imitates the movements of a hornbill — the bird that gives Sarawak its nickname, the Land of the Hornbills — with steps meant to convey courage, heroism and strength. The women’s ngajat is the opposite in temperament: soft, graceful, with slow and very precise turns of the body.

Around the dancing sits the rest of the celebration. Tuak, a rice wine brewed for the occasion, is offered to guests. Longhouse tables carry traditional dishes, among them ayam pansuh — chicken cooked inside a length of bamboo with seasonings and tapioca leaves, a dish the Iban and Bidayuh prepare especially for Gawai. And the longhouse door is thrown open: hospitality to visitors, family and neighbours is part of the festival, not an add-on to it.

Rolling up the mat

Gawai does not simply stop at dusk on 2 June. In many communities the wider Gawai season continues through the month, and it is closed with a distinct ceremony.

That closing rite is the ngiling tikai, sometimes called ngiling bidai — literally “rolling up the mat”. By rolling away the mats used through the festivities, the community signals, in the traditional understanding, that the Gawai season has ended: it is an honourable way of informing Petara and the spirits that the celebration is over so that the longhouse may return to ordinary life. It is typically held towards the end of June.

How Gawai became a holiday

The customs are old. The public holiday is not — and its history is worth stating plainly.

The idea of a single annual festival for all the Dayak of Sarawak was aired publicly as early as 1957, when it was proposed over Radio Sarawak. Before the festival was formally recognised, the colonial administration had designated 1 June simply as “Sarawak Day”.

Gawai Dayak was gazetted as a public holiday on 25 September 1964, and it was celebrated officially for the first time on 1 June 1965. From that point it has served as a shared occasion of thanksgiving, homecoming and identity for the Dayak communities of Sarawak.

Year	Milestone
1957	The idea of a Dayak festival is proposed publicly over Radio Sarawak
25 September 1964	Gawai Dayak is gazetted as a public holiday
1 June 1965	First official Gawai Dayak celebration

Common misunderstandings

“Dayak is one ethnic group.” It is a collective term. The Iban, Bidayuh and the various Orang Ulu communities are distinct peoples with their own languages and customs who share the festival.

“Gawai is the same as Kaamatan.” Both are harvest festivals, but they are separate. Gawai Dayak belongs to the Dayak of Sarawak and falls on 1 and 2 June; Kaamatan belongs to the Kadazandusun and other communities of Sabah and falls on 30 and 31 May.

“The party is on 1 June.” The main ritual sequence starts on the evening of 31 May, and the season is not formally closed until the ngiling tikai later in June.

“It’s a tourist show.” Public celebrations and open houses do welcome visitors, but Gawai is first a family and longhouse observance — a homecoming, a thanksgiving and, for many, a return to the kampung or longhouse of their birth.

What’s next

• Read Kaamatan for Sabah’s harvest festival, its rice-spirit legend and the Unduk Ngadau pageant — the closest counterpart to Gawai across the South China Sea.
• See Sarawak for the state where Gawai Dayak is a public holiday, and the communities who keep it.
• Refer to the Sarawak Tourism Board and Tourism Malaysia records for the official account of the festival’s sequence and customs.

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This article is classified as sensitive (3R+1: race) under the NegaraKu.md editorial policy because it describes indigenous communities and their cultural and religious practices. It is written strictly descriptively — recording what the festival is, who observes it, and how, and treating traditional beliefs respectfully as the communities’ own — without evaluation or characterisation, and it remains a draft until reviewed and verified by a human reviewer.