Of the same root, of one cluster

Why this work exists

Indigenous food knowledge is one of the most fragile things any culture holds. It lives in seasonal practice, in spoken instruction, in the hands of elders and in each community’s relationship with the forest that feeds it. Once it lapses, it cannot be rebuilt. We founded Serumpun to stop that loss as partners, working over years with Sarawak’s peoples, its scientific and cultural institutions, and a kitchen that treats heritage as something still alive.

How this work began

Serumpun Sarawak began as my personal vision. It entered the formal structure of the Sarawak State through a series of introductions, which I record here with gratitude.

Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz, Malaysia’s Minister of International Trade and Industry from 1987 to 2008 and Chairman of MATRADE from 1991, made the introduction that brought me to the attention of Tun Pehin Sri Dr. Haji Wan Junaidi bin Tuanku Jaafar, the Yang di-Pertua Negeri (Governor) of Sarawak, who took office as the eighth Governor on 26 January 2024. The Governor recommended that the Chairman of the Sarawak Tourism Board, Dato Dennis Ngau, contact me about working together.

The first meeting with the Sarawak State leadership team, before the project was approved. Photograph by the State of Sarawak official photographer.

The project started with me. The cooking, the mentee development and the work with government agencies and ministries are now shared across all the partners. I remain its main voice and face.

Communities and trust

The work begins with consent and continues with reciprocity. The communities lead the fieldwork themselves. We record knowledge with their permission and give it back to them in a form they can use: recipes returned to households, ingredients mapped to forest plots, spoken material archived in their own languages. The studio is a tool, and the communities are the authors. That order governs every decision the project makes.

Listening before cooking, so that the cuisine can honour what it learns without flattening it. Photograph by Atlas Collective.

The full record of the fieldwork, in photographs and films from the expeditions, is in the Serumpun Archive.

The methodological framework

The work follows a set framework. Three lenses (culture, experience and cuisine) are applied to each community’s life. Under each lens we map eleven themes: craft, economy, culture, festivals, legends, heroes, symbols, landmarks, literature, sound and music, and nature.

Each community is placed in its ecological setting, whether forest, highlands, river, sea, coast or city, and looked at from five angles. How people live day to day. How they produce and make things. How they deal with the natural world. How their cultural traditions adapt to modern use. And what the community itself finds beautiful and inspiring.

This framework is how we listen before we cook. It lets the cuisine honour a community without flattening it, and lets a foreign technique arrive as a guest instead of a coloniser.

The temporary custodian

A conservation movement that ends with its founder has failed. From the start, Serumpun Sarawak has measured its success by one thing, and it is not international recognition or praise from critics. It is the day I am no longer needed.

My role in this programme is temporary by design. I am a guide, an interim custodian trusted by the people of Borneo and their leaders to light a fire that others will tend with more right, deeper knowledge and a longer tenure than I could ever have.

Serumpun Sarawak has never been my movement. It belongs to the forest, to the elders who taught us its language, to the communities who shared their most intimate knowledge with patience and grace, and to the young chefs who will one day teach what they have learned to the generation after them.

The world stage and continuity

In August 2025, Serumpun Sarawak made its international debut at Seaside Studio CASO in Osaka, during Sarawak Week at World Expo Osaka. In March 2026, UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Kuching formally endorsed the movement for its contribution to conserving Sarawak’s indigenous gastronomy, food culture, and edible medicinal flora and seeds. Continuity rests on four stages, build, train, transfer and assure continuity, carried out through the mentorship programme, the adoption at Sarawak Cultural Village, the national tour with the Sarawak Tourism Board, media training for the mentees, and Serumpun In Motion. This is a commitment for a generation, well beyond a single event.

Serumpun Sarawak now lives inside the oldest living institution of Sarawakian culture. It will not fade, and it will not be shut away in an archive. It will be cooked, tasted, shared and passed on every day by the people it was always meant to serve.

What carries forward

The Kuching Finale closed the founding year, and the movement goes on. After April 2026, Serumpun enters its second year. The In Motion mentee programme continues, and so do the partnerships with the institutions and with UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Kuching. The cultural-diplomacy standard we set in the founding year is still the one we work to.

Over the founding year I learned that the cuisine could travel and could come home. The years ahead will test what that year proved.