My Ethnicity

AYou know it's odd how life work, or at least uni life. We have this History class but the lecturer substitute only entered once; which she blabbed on how she spent three days living with Penang native people and complaining about it. It was only three days for goodness sake.

Anyway, she started the story with the usual introduction and talking about the bumiputera's  life then continued about the natives people which in my class I was the only one. It was AWKWARD but hey, I'm too cool to care. Then she talk about how proud she was to be a bumi (back in my state, if you're a native you're also considered a Bumi) and she was so freaking proud of her heritage. Whatever. So she was listing the native people from my region of Borneo and she told me to list it down then she responded saying that i also included the other state in Borneo but I obviously didn't! So she continued with her upsetting story of her living three days of hell in a bamboo house.

So this is how her story went, she said that she went to live with native people in Penang for three whole days and she complained on how she couldn't take a shower because they only had a river and the toilet is not appropriate. Well what did she expect? Anyway she came to the conclusion that bamboo house is dangerous.

Anyway let me cut it short, she came to the conclusion that natives have no religion and still believe in spiritual powers that come from surrounding like the sun.

The thing is.. She was totally wrong! You see, we actually have religion and our ethnicity has nothing to do with our religion; it's separate. Yes, we still do all these things where for example my culture celebrate Harvest festival and we hold this beauty pageant contest  to commemorate Hominodun (which has a long story to it but let's cut it short ) You see Hominodun is the village leaders daughter and she sacrifice herself for her people. This beauty pageant contest is to find a girl to represent her; beauty, intelligence and care for her people. This is another way for us not to forget our ethnicity. I know a lot of natives that couldn't speak their native tongue and somehow it's upsetting.

It's not because we don't have religion but we just keep traditions going.