Kahayan River
Kahayan River The Kahayan river, or Great Dyak, is the largest river in Central Kalimantan, a province of Indonesia in Kalimantan - the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. The provincial capital Palangkaraya lies on the river. The main inhabitants are Dyaks, who practice slash-and-burn rice cultivation and pan for gold on the upper reaches. The lower Kayahan flows through a rich and unusual environment of peat swamp forests, which has been severely degraded by an unsuccessful program to convert a large part of the area into rice paddies, compounded by legal and illegal forestry. The Dayak tribes are the dominant people in the Kahayan river region. An Austronesian people, they have preserved some of their original culture and Kaharingan religion. They speak languages of the Barito family, related to the Malagasy language spoken in Madagascar. The Kaharingan religion combines ancestor worship, animism and dynamism. It is now considered a form of Hinduism. The main Dayak tribes are...