The Bimanese or Mbojo are an
Austronesian ethnic group
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...
native to the eastern part of
Sumbawa Island in
West Nusa Tenggara
West Nusa Tenggara ( – NTB) is a provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia. It comprises the western portion of the Lesser Sunda Islands, with the exception of Bali which is its own province. The area of this province is which consists of ...
province of
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
. With a population approaching a million people, they are the second largest ethnic group in West Nusa Tenggara.
Society
The Bimanese live in the villages of the
Bima and
Dompu Regencies, and in the city of
Bima. The main occupations of the rural population are
wet rice farming,
animal husbandry
Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, animal fiber, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, management, production, nutrition, selective breeding, and the raising ...
and
fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment (Freshwater ecosystem, freshwater or Marine ecosystem, marine), but may also be caught from Fish stocking, stocked Body of water, ...
.
Swidden
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. Th ...
farming is still found among highland communities. Urban Bimanese practice a wide range of professions, including trade and local administration. Tourism also increasingly plays an important role due to the proximity of the
Komodo National Park. Among entrepreneurs there are many descendants from intermarriages with members of historical immigrant communities (especially Arabs, but also Chinese).
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any Succession to Muhammad, successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr ...
is the predominant religion of the Bimanese. Lowlanders are known as fervent adherents of Islam, while among the mountain communities of the ''Dou Donggo''(meaning mountain people) and ''Dou Wawo'', indigenous folk beliefs still play a strong role in everyday life, since they were able to fend off the Muslim invaders, due to the mountain regions of Bima which they occupied, as well as their being fierce warriors. They were therefore granted a semi-autonomous stats within the Sultanate of Bima. The ''Dou Donggo'' were thereby able to avoid their culture from being subverted by Islam, whilst retaining certain political privileges, as well as their indigenous practices. Some ''Dou Donggo'' communities converted to
Catholicism
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
in the mid-20th century. Although most of the ''Dou Donggo'' adopted either Christianity or Islam, this was but for a tacit adoption, for as a Catholic priest put it: "The people are 70% Muslim, 30% Catholic, and 90% kaffir
agan, implying that, in reality, people retained their indigenous religious beliefs.
In the 1980s, the Dou Donggo people's economy was undergoing great change, due to rapid population growth, caused by the introduction medicine, which made swidden farming untenable. This was because swidden farming relied on the ability of the fertility of the land being regenerated, something that required 1-2 years at least. However, with the increasing population density, too much stress has been put on the land, not allowing it to fully regenerate. The Dou Donggo peoples therefore needed to change from relying on the subsistent farming of swidden rice, millet and maize, towards the cultivation of wet rice in terraced paddy fields and the cultivation of cash crops such as peanuts and soybean, which were to be sold in the lowlands of Bima island.
History
Before the spread of Islam to most coastal regions in the
Malay Archipelago
The Malay Archipelago is the archipelago between Mainland Southeast Asia and Australia, and is also called Insulindia or the Indo-Australian Archipelago. The name was taken from the 19th-century European concept of a Malay race, later based ...
, several small polities in the Bima area belonged to the influence sphere of the
Majapahit Empire
Majapahit (; (eastern and central dialect) or (western dialect)), also known as Wilwatikta (; ), was a Javanese Hindu-Buddhist thalassocratic empire in Southeast Asia based on the island of Java (in modern-day Indonesia). At its greatest ...
, and later had close cultural and political ties with the
Kingdom of Gowa in
Sulawesi
Sulawesi ( ), also known as Celebes ( ), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the List of islands by area, world's 11th-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Min ...
. Introduction of Islam is attributed in local traditions to the
Malay merchants. The
Sultanate of Bima was established in the early seventeenth century under the influence of the
Sultanate of Gowa
The Sultanate of Gowa was one of the great kingdoms in the history of Indonesia and the most successful kingdom in the South Sulawesi region. People of this kingdom come from the Makassar tribe who lived in the south end and the west coast of ...
.
Language
The Bimanese (including the highland groups) speak the
Bimanese language, which belongs to the
Austronesian language family
The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...
. It is closely related to the languages of
Flores
Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Administratively, it forms the largest island in the East Nusa Tenggara Province. The area is 14,250 km2. Including Komodo and Rinca islands ...
and
Sumba
Sumba (; ), natively also spelt as Humba, Hubba, Suba, or Zuba (in Sumba languages) is an Indonesian island (part of the Lesser Sunda Archipelago group) located in the Eastern Indonesia and administratively part of the East Nusa Tenggara pro ...
further to the east, and only distantly to the
Sumbawa language that is spoken on the western half of Sumbawa island.
Gallery
File:A house of the Dou Donggo peoples.png, A house of the Dou Donggo peoples
References
Bibliography
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Ethnic groups in Indonesia
Sumbawa
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