Dusun

The Dusun are the largest indigenous people of northern Borneo, scattered across the hills and upland valleys of Sabah. The name is foreign to them: Bruneian Malays ruling the coast called these farming villagers Orang Dusun, or “people of the orchards”, while they traditionally called themselves tulun tindal, and under Brunei's sultans they paid a river tax in rice and forest produce.

They are not one tribe but an assemblage of over thirty sub-groups speaking Dusunic and Paitanic languages. They were the chief rice producers of North Borneo, living in longhouses, brewing rice wine and carrying rice and damar resin to coastal markets for salt and salted fish.

Their traditional religion, Momolianism, centred on rice spirits, female shamans and the Kaamatan harvest festival. Thomas Forrest's British account of 1774 described them as the agricultural people of the northern mountains.