Kota Kinabalu: Kaamatan must grow past its role as a harvest festival to become a living platform for global advocacy on Indigenous Peoples’ traditional food systems, cultural heritage and biodiversity.
“Kaamatan teaches us that food does not come from the market first. Food comes from the land, from the forest, from the river, from the seed, from the weather, from the hands of our people, and from the wisdom of our ancestors,” said Kaamatan International Week Chairman Andrew Ambrose.
Andrew made the call in conjunction with Kaamatan International Week and Jungle Food Labs 2026, urging the Kadazandusun community and its partners to take the festival’s message to international audiences.
“This is why we must bring the message of Kaamatan to the global stage. Our traditional food systems are not backward. They are intelligent, sustainable and deeply connected to life,” he said.
He cited his work with several international bodies, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Global Indigenous Youth Forum in Rome, the Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems, and the World Food Forum, as evidence that Borneo’s Indigenous communities hold knowledge relevant to pressing global challenges including food security, climate change and biodiversity loss.
This year’s Jungle Food Labs, held under the theme Citarasa Hutan Sunsuron, spotlights the food wisdom of the Dusun Tambunan community and the broader Indigenous food traditions of Borneo.
The event frames food not merely as cuisine, but as an interconnected system of knowledge encompassing gathering, planting, fermenting, smoking, sharing, healing and ecological respect.
Andrew said traditional food systems face serious and growing threats. These include not only changing lifestyles, but also chemical dependency, pesticide pollution, loss of customary farming lands and market or legal systems that restrict communities’ ability to protect and exchange heirloom seeds.
“When pesticides poison the soil and water, they do not only damage crops. They damage food memory. When traditional farming lands are taken away or converted, communities do not only lose land. They lose their food system, their identity and their future,” he said.
He said the protection of heirloom seeds was a matter of particular urgency, warning that Indigenous communities risk becoming strangers to the very seeds of their ancestors if seed rights become controlled solely by corporations or market systems.
“This is why we must defend the right of communities to protect, plant, exchange and pass on their traditional seeds,” he said.
The recognition of Ropuhon Kiasu Highland, champion of Jungle Food Labs Tambunan 2025, was highlighted as an example of the importance of community knowledge holders, particularly women, elders, farmers, foragers and village food practitioners who preserve knowledge rarely found in formal records.
“Our mothers, grandmothers, farmers, cooks, foragers and youth are part of the knowledge system. If we lose them, we lose more than recipes. We lose a way of understanding life,” he said.
Looking ahead, Andrew said preparations are under way to bring Borneo Indigenous voices to the World Food Forum and the Global Indigenous Youth Forum 2026 in Rome, Italy.
“We want our youth to go out into the world with confidence, not empty-handed, but carrying the knowledge of their people. They must know that their heritage is not small. Their food systems are not small. Their stories belong to the world,” he said.
He said the future of Kaamatan rested on the principle of biocentrism, placing life and nature at the centre of how communities think, celebrate and plan.
He noted this was not a foreign idea to Indigenous elders who had long understood that forests, rivers, land and seeds were not merely resources but living parts of a shared existence.
“Our challenge is not only to celebrate what our ancestors left behind. Our challenge is to protect the living conditions that allow this knowledge to continue for the next seven generations,” he said.
