Notes

Tadau Kaamatan or Kaamatan Festival is a rice harvest festival celebrated in Sabah and the Federal Territory of Labuan . In the past, most Sabahans were agrarian and paddy farmers . This proves that the Kadazan-Dusun Murut (KDMR) have existed since time immemorial, and they have emerged as proud and courageous people with their own social order and religious belief system in which Bobohizan , Sabah's female shaman, plays the most important role. . Today, the Ka'amatan Festival is a celebration of gratitude for the KDMR people remembering the times when customs and traditions were ancient

For the agrarian -based population of rural Borneo , the paddy harvest festival, is closely linked to paddy cultivation, and to the life cycle. Paddy is Sabah's golden crop, considered the grain of life, and the Kaamatan Festival marks the end of the cultivation cycle . During the Feast of Kaamatan, people will gather in the village to thank God (Kinoingan) and the spirits for a good harvest and pray for blessings for a better harvest the following year, just like the harvest festivaland other gratitude around the world. The life of the people of Borneo, not so long ago, was basically the life of hunters, collectors and subsistence rice farmers was a difficult life. Completing the paddy fields, whether flooded like Kadazan lake, or on steep hills in the interior is a heavy task that is the responsibility of men. The work of women is also no less exciting: that is, clearing the fields and collecting firewood, weeding, caring for seedlings, planting and finally reaping the ripe crops. Apart from the period between harvest and the new planting season, the work is ongoing. But it is not only the labor -intensive nature of paddy cultivation that has led to the veneration of the grain. Not enough rice means starvation. For thousands of years of superstition and the taboo of growing rice,