Smelling the Difference

Between December 1996 and February 1997, a large-scale conflict between indigenous Dayaks and transmigrant ¹ Madurese settlers took place in West Kalimantan, a province of the Indonesian part of Borneo. A minor quarrel between a small group of Madurese and Dayaks in Sanggau Ledo (a town in Sambas district not far from the Malaysian border), precipitated the sizable conflict that spread to other regencies in West Kalimantan province and did not end until late February 1997. The conflict left behind tens of thousands of Madurese refugees and up to two thousand dead, most of whom were also Madurese (cf. Hawkins 2005, 180). Most of my Dayak interlocutors claimed this outcome of the violence to be a “success” as they felt that they had “won the war.” Local discourses following the violent events focused partly on the fact that during the conflicts some Dayaks were said to have developed an extraordinary and supernatural sense of smell that helped them to identify fleeing Madurese “enemies” by their ethnically specific body odor and, thus, to strategically target them.