Almost anything can be turned into bosou. Sabah's favourite fermented condiment can be found in vegetable, meat and fish forms. It's a dish of survival, and a core part of indigenous identity.
Brunei's grip over Northern Borneo weakened in the 19th Century. Before long, land rights were acquired by the British North Borneo Company, kicking off a period of corporate colonialism. To survive, indigenous communities could either play along or rebel.
Dr Richard Gunting is a Murut community leader and founder of Borneo Outback Tours. His home of Nabawan is one of Sabah's poorest districts and both the environmental and Murut culture is at stake. Richard shares his efforts to use ecotourism to reverse his community's fortunes.
Resources and References
A History of Malaysia (2016), Barbara Watson Andaya, Leonard Y. Andaya
Borneo: The History of an Enigma (2026), Olivier Hein
Druce, Stephen C and Nani Suryani Haji Abu Bakar. 2023. Brunei and the World Since 1984. Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Brunei, pp. 100-117. eds. Ooi Keat Gin and Victor T. King. London: Routledge.
The Making of Sabah, 1865-1941: The Dynamics of Indigenous Society, University of Malaya Press, 2000
Titas Chakraborty, Matthias van Rossum, Slave Trade and Slavery in Asia—New Perspectives, Journal of Social History, Volume 54, Issue 1, Fall 2020, Pages 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shaa004
James Warren, The Sulu Zone 1768–1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State (Singapore, 2007)
Barbara Andaya, To Live as Brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Honolulu, 1993).
Credits
Hosted by Dr Noby Leong and Philip Gibson
Produced by Dr Noby Leong and Philip Gibson
Sound Design by Jack Barr
Satay? Okay! is produced by Kopi Productions Limited and supported by the Golden Chopsticks Scholarship, by the Oxford Cultural Collective Trust
