Dayak Ngaju Cultural Experience Hub for Healing Tourism

Abstract

The Dayak Ngaju (Biaju) tribe is the largest Dayak sub-ethnic group that inhabits Central Kalimantan province, especially in the Kapuas, Barito, Kahayan, Rungan Manuhing and Katingan river basins. Known as a tribe with a wealth of arts and culture, as well as prominent spiritual abilities, the Ngaju Dayak Tribe still maintains and lives the customs and culture passed down orally from generation to generation, until now. This can be a very potential social asset to be explored and developed into a business innovation related to “healing tourism”. The term “healing tourism” refers to hospitality services that emerged after the Covid pandemic, and is considered a potential theme for future tourism trends. This paper focuses on exploring the potential of the Central Kalimantan region which is currently a coal mining location, where the concession will end in 2040. The research used a descriptive qualitative method, with an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach. Primary and secondary data sources were obtained from in-depth interviews with stakeholders, observations and literature studies. The ABCD approach was used to identify the potential and capacity of the community to be developed, including human capital, social capital, physical/infrastructure capital, financial capital and environmental/natural resource capital. The results showed that Ngaju Dayak art and culture are the most prominent human and social capitals to be explored. Meanwhile, mining companies, which have played a role in supporting efforts to preserve art and culture, are the region's financial capital. With the existence of large rivers as one of the means of transportation, environmental capital/natural resources have the potential to be explored more optimally to support the concept of healing tourism-themed business innovation. The physical capital/infrastructure available in Central Kalimantan has the potential to be utilized and developed further. Therefore, the area is possible to be used as a Dayak Ngaju cultural experience hub for healing tourism-themed business innovation