The Story Of The Mentawai Tribe In The Novel Burung Kayu, Efforts To Maintain Culture And Tradition

Wooden Bird

A Review by: Bintang Wijaya Darma

JAKARTA - The novel Burung Kayu by Niduparas Erlang offers a beautiful story of the Mentawai tribe. This novel is included in the category of Manuscripts That Attract the Jury's Attention at the 2019 Jakarta Arts Council Novel Contest.

The novel, which was published in 2020, was published by CV publisher. New Style Teroka has 174 pages. Burung Kayu is an ethnographic novel set in the life of the Mentawai Tribe.

The Burung Kayu novel written by a writer who does not have a Mentawai ethnic background or sasareu (an outsider of the Mentawai) after conducting research for two months to get to know more about the life of the Mentawai Tribe and this has become a challenge for Niduparas Erlang while writing this novel Burung Kayu.

The language used in the novel Burung Kayu uses a lot of terms in the language of the Mentawai Tribe, but the author does not provide footnotes like other ethnographic novels. The author's goal is not to add footnotes to the Burung Kayu novel, which is anti-intellectualism and readers get new experiences in regional terms so that they can become a form of preserving culture, tradition, and regional languages in Indonesia.

The conflict in the novel Burung Kayu is set between tribes, customs, and ethnicities and religions. This novel tells the life of the Leugeumanai family with the beginning of the conflict between Leugeumanai uma and uma across the river. The dispute between the two tribes in the upper reaches ended in the death of Bagaiogok. Taksilitoni, his wife, argued that he married his son, Legeumanai, to his own sister-in-law, Saengrekerei, meaning that he wanted to pass the death penalty on to his son.

However, after the marriage, various other conflicts arose when they chose to move to barasi near the estuary, a settlement built by the government to promote the tribes in the upstream. The initial intention to take revenge has now been abandoned, because the small family has to deal with state policies, official religions, corporations and newly emerging conflicts between various tribes.

There are many cultures and traditions of the Mentawai Tribe including tattoo rituals, pako rituals, maturuk rituals, deceit rituals that make this Burung Kayu novel the first choice for readers who want to enjoy a touch of culture in writing.

The Burung Kayu novel is also very suitable if it is used as a reference material for conducting a research on culture, especially in the scope of literature. No wonder this novel became one of the interesting scripts in the 2019 Jakarta Arts Council Novel Contest and won the 2020 Kusala Sastra Khatulistiwa.

The wooden bird is a symbol or symbol of victory, this bird-shaped sculpture is usually found in an uma who is involved in customary conflicts with other uma.