Throughout Sabah and Sarawak, the Harvest Festival or Kaamatan (in Sabah from 30 to 31 May) and Hari Gawai (in Sarawak from 1 to 2 June) are celebrated with great fanfare, with villages cooking up feasts, families organising get-togethers and the spirit of community prevailing through it all.
“Kaamatan and Hari Gawai are very important celebrations for the people of Borneo because they represent gratitude for the harvest, respect for nature, and appreciation of cultural heritage.
“Traditionally, Kaamatan was celebrated to give thanks for a good harvest and to honour the spirit of rice, which was very important to farming communities in the past because rice was their main source of life and survival,” says Pison Jaujip, a Sabahan native and advocate of traditional Sabahan food who runs the popular YouTube, TikTok and Instagram accounts Ropuhan Di Tanak Wagu, which means “bachelor’s kitchen” in Kadazandusun.
Kaamatan is celebrated throughout Sabah by various Indigenous tribes, including the Kadazandusun, Murut and Rungus.
Kaamatan also has mythological roots as according to local folklore, it was originally designed to honour the sacrifice of Huminodun, a maiden who gave her life to nourish the earth when a famine struck.
The belief is that all crops that sprouted throughout the agrarian community owe their existence to her.
Hari Gawai shares a similar sentiment and symbolises gratitude for a fruitful harvest and the beginning of a new planting cycle. It also honours traditions, ancestors and spirits (petara).
The festival also represents the unity of the Dayak people, an exonym coined to describe the indigenous inhabitants of Sarawak, comprising Iban, Bidayuh and the sub-groups under Orang Ulu, to name a few.
Food is an important part of this essence of thanksgiving, and throughout Sabah and Sarawak, villages, longhouses, village halls and family tables are laden with homemade staples, mostly made up of native ingredients that are both familiar and beloved to many East Malaysians.
Celebrating the Harvest Festival
Come the Harvest Festival, many Sabahans and Sarawakians hold firm to time-tested culinary rituals.
Munirih Jebeni, a multidisciplinary artist and professional sape player from the Dayak community, recalls how busy the week before Hari Gawai was in Simunjan, her village in Sarawak, when she was growing up.
According to her, the kitchen was abuzz with activity as her aunties and grandma busied themselves making local delicacies such as penganan jala (Munirih’s favourite Gawai traditional snack) and kuih chap (a soup noodle-based Sarawakian street food).
“During the Gawai week, latest by 30 May, everyone who lives near and far gets together to clean their homes. The best part is when the whole village works together to slaughter wild boars, chickens and ducks to be cooked for Gawai eve.
"On Gawai eve, I would often help my mum, grandma and aunties to prepare newly harvested rice wrapped with daun buan. The iconic dish of manok pansuh (chicken in bamboo) is always a mainstay on the menu.
"My father and uncles would also get together to prepare wood fires to smoke the pansuh and wild boar meat. Each family in the longhouse would then bring out the food that they had prepared and arrange it at the ruai (veranda of the longhouse) for everybody to eat together.
“This is the moment that I love the most during Gawai, where we will exchange our food and eat together.
"By midnight, the villagers offer tuak pengayu (longevity rice wine) and continue with eating, laughing, storytelling and dancing,” she recalls fondly.
Munirih also remembers miring rituals (to honour ancestors and spirits) which feature offerings made up of rice, roosters, eggs, tuak and local delicacies like penganan jala and kuih chap, which are arranged neatly on a tray and led by the tuai rumah (longhouse head) to represent blessings and protection from the spiritual world.
Pison, meanwhile, says that during Kaamatan in Sabah, he goes back to his village to spend time with family and friends and often joins in the festivities at open houses or makan-makan gatherings.
He also participates in traditional Kaamatan events like dance competitions, singing competitions and sometimes is asked to judge traditional cooking competitions as well.
“For me, the best part of Kaamatan is when everyone comes together. Many people who work or study far from their kampung will return home during this time, so the atmosphere in the kampung is lively,” he says.
According to Pison, food plays a central role in Kaamatan celebrations and typically, families and communities come together to prepare traditional dishes, with guests warmly welcomed when they visit other homes.
Part of the preparations also involves intergenerational culinary education, as the older generation typically takes it upon themselves to teach younger family members traditional recipes as well as the meanings and importance behind certain dishes.
“There are many traditional foods commonly served during Kaamatan, such as linopot, which is nasi keladi wrapped with doringin leaves; hinava, a Sabahan-style ceviche made with fresh mackerel fish mixed with ingredients like lime, ginger, and sliced bitter gourd; bosou, which is fermented fish, meat, or vegetables; pickled tuhau (wild ginger), pickled bambangan (wild Borneo mango), pinarasakan bosungan fish (a type of sardine braised with local herbs and souring agents like akob-akob); local vegetables like pakis, and traditional kuih such as hinompuka (sticky, sweet steamed cake).
“Traditional drinks like tapai (fermented glutinous rice drink), montoku (traditional rice spirit), bahar (coconut sap fermented with rosok bark), linutau (thick rice wine) and tumpung (fermented rice wine) are also commonly enjoyed during the celebrations.
“Different communities in Sabah will also have their own special dishes and preparation styles depending on their district, culture, and local ingredients. For me, traditional Sabahan food is very unique because the flavours are closely connected to nature – sour, salty, spicy, smoky, fermented, and fresh flavours are very common in our cuisine,” says Pison.
Rice wine in all its connotations is also a recurring theme during the Harvest Festival in both Sabah and Sarawak. Gary Lim, a Kuching, Sarawak native who now owns Sarawakian restaurant Slurrp in the Klang Valley, says that his strongest memory of Hari Gawai involved tuak (rice wine).
“When I was younger, my friends actually invited us to their rumah panjang (longhouse), so that was the very first time that I joined Hari Gawai celebrations. When we got to the longhouse, we had to pay our respects from one end of the house to the other until we got to the village head.
"So we made our way one by one and paid our respects by drinking tuak from one household to another all the way to the head of the village. There were a few versions of tuak, but we got the milkier, more diluted version because we were younger,” reminisces Lim.
Lim also remembers eating a range of dishes, like ensabi (cassava leaves) boiled and cooked with coconut milk as well as terung asam (a Borneo species of sour eggplant) cooked with smoked fish into a soup.
Even within smaller indigenous communities like Sarawak’s highland Lun Bawang community, the Harvest Festival bears a lot of importance.
Jude Benjamin Lisa is the secretary-general of the Lun Bawang Association of Sarawak and the former chairman of the Lun Bawang Festival, an annual festival that has been held for 39 years.
According to Jude, for the Lun Bawang community, most of the festivities that typically revolve around Hari Gawai are also celebrated on a larger scale during the Lun Bawang Festival (also called Irau Aco Lun Bawang). This year, the festival will be held from 2 to 5 July 2026.
“During Gawai, families get together – there is a lot of camaraderie and typically, there are always a lot of weddings and engagements during this season, because it’s school holidays and a public holiday and everyone has returned to their villages.
“So during Gawai, we have a few food staples like nuba laya, which is overcooked mashed rice wrapped in daun itip.
"The other delicacy that we have is called sinamu, which is a fermented dish made with a mixture of rice, wild boar or fish and salt, which is then left to ferment in an earthenware pot for three to four months. Later, the fermented mixture is scooped out, fried with chilli and then served with nubak layak.
“We also have vegetables like terung Iban, a yellowish nightshade that is cooked with chicken or any meat that we prefer.
"Among the Lun Bawang, we also smoke meat like wild boar. All this food is common in our culture, because in the olden days, when the tribe left home to go hunting, it was often a journey that took a couple of days, so these kinds of foods were the things that lasted for a long time,” explains Jude.
Preserving food cultures
While many East Malaysians continue to celebrate the Harvest Festival to its fullest, the recipes that buoy these festivals are just as integral to preserving the culture behind this spirit of thanksgiving.
Munirih, for instance, says that while she believes that many traditional Dayak recipes continue to stay alive, younger generations are increasingly adding their own unique twists to age-old dishes – an example of tradition moving with the times.
“Younger cooks sometimes modernise traditional dishes, for example, serving pansoh with contemporary plating or creating fusion desserts inspired by Gawai ingredients. Some traditional foods are also now featured in cafés, hotels and cultural festivals, helping to create visibility, though some people feel this can dilute authenticity,” she says.
Pison, meanwhile, says his concern is more about the effects of deforestation and the loss of the wealth of ingredients once so prevalent in Borneo cuisine than it is the actual loss of knowledge.
“I think our culinary culture is still being preserved, but at the same time we also face many challenges in keeping it alive. One of the biggest challenges is not only modernisation but also the loss of natural resources and habitats. In Sabah and many parts of Borneo, a lot of our traditional ingredients come directly from the forest, rivers, and surrounding nature.
“As forests continue to disappear due to development and environmental changes, some traditional ingredients are becoming harder to find, and this also affects the survival of certain traditional dishes as well as the cultural knowledge, stories and practices connected to them.
“Some younger generations today may never get the chance to experience certain traditional foods the same way their grandparents once did because the ingredients are no longer easily available,” says Pison.
Pison says what is heartening, though, is that he has seen a revived interest in Indigenous ingredients and traditional recipes among younger people. He thinks one of the main channels to connect with younger East Malaysians is through social media, which is why he himself started sharing classic Sabahan recipes through his platforms.
“I want to help document and preserve these foods so they can continue to be appreciated by future generations, not only in Sabah but also internationally,” he says.
