ABSTRACT
Gusti Suriansyah, the customary ruler of Landak in West Kalimantan, has an M.A. in political science from Indonesia’s prestigious Gadjah Mada University. He teaches the same subject at Pontianak’s Tanjungpura University. The palace (kraton) in Ngabang had been empty since the early 1970s. In the late 1990s a militant Dayak ethnic movement began to apply Dayak customary law to right the wrongs it saw. Malays in Landak approached the royal family in 1999 asking for the kraton to be revived. ‘Do Malays have no customary law of their own?’ they asked rhetorically. The prince, bearing the title panembahan, was installed the following year. Gusti Suriansyah hardly knows anyone in Ngabang, having become a city person. But he now feels the responsibility to go there when he can and help refurbish the decaying building.2
