The Dusun people or simply the Dusuns is the collective name of an Austronesian ethnic group indigenous to Sabah, Malaysia. They primarily live on the West Coast, in the Interior, and in the Sandakan and Tawau divisions, primarily in the districts of Ranau, Tambunan, Kota Kinabalu, Tuaran, Kota Marudu, Kota Belud, Beaufort, Kuala Penyu, Telupid, Keningau, and Beluran (Labuk-Sugut), as well as in the Federal Territory of Labuan.
The Dusuns form the largest collective ethnic group in the region with rich traditional heritage, distinct dress, language and customs based on different sub-groups, with an estimated 555,647 (mixed with the Kadazans) spread across the state, where they further jointly form the larger Kadazan-Dusuns. They have been internationally recognised as an indigenous group in the northern part of the island of Borneo since 2004 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Etymology
thumb|left|Dusuns tribe sign at the [[Mari Mari Cultural Village in Inanam, Kota Kinabalu District]]
The term "Dusun people" (), which carries the meaning "people of the orchards", was early coined by Bruneian Malays and Chinese overlords throughout the Sultanate of Brunei administration to refer to the agricultural populations of northern Borneo. Within the vocabulary of Dusunic languages, there is no "Dusun" word, and the indigenous ethnic groups referred to as Dusuns call themselves "tulun tindal" (landsman). Since most of the western coast of the northern part of Borneo was under the influence of Brunei, taxes called () (also referred to as the 'river tax' in the area southeast of northern Borneo) were collected from the Dusun people. Various descriptions of the Dusuns are available throughout the British surveys and administration, the first by Thomas Forrest in 1774. Another British navigator and explorer once described the Dusuns in 1884:
Following the establishment of the North Borneo Chartered Company (NBCC) and subsequently the state of North Borneo in 1881, the British administration categorised the linguistically similar twelve main and thirty-three sub-tribes collectively as "Dusuns". The Buludupih Sungei and Ida'an, who had converted to Islam early, had preferred to be called "Sungei" and "Ida'an", respectively, although they come from the same sub-tribes.
Ivor Hugh Norman Evans (1886–1957), a British anthropologist, ethnographer, and archaeologist who spent most of his working life in British Malaya and British Borneo, described the Dusuns as not a single tribe but an assemblage of tribes where the term "Orang Dusun" is not the name used by the indigenous to describe themselves; the people of each district or each assemblage of village communities employ a different term, but it is a name meaning "people of the orchards". "Orang" means "people", while "Dusun" carries the meaning of an orchard used by the Bruneian Malays to denote those inhabitants of the greater part of the interior of British North Borneo. Furthermore, a Dusun house is often situated within or surrounded by a variety of fruit trees like bambangan, breadfruit, cempedak, jackfruit, mango and tarap, including calamansi, bird's eye chilli and other Bornean native tree species, reflecting the deep connection to nature and agriculture. The Dusun term was popularised by the British administration as a unifying term among the various North Borneo sub-ethnics, who also borrowed the term from past Brunei administrations. The Rungus people were part of the Dusun sub-ethnic group but formed their own distinction.
Before 1960, most of the sub-ethnics of the Dusuns, including the Tangaah Kadazans, were known as Dusuns. In the population census conducted by the North Borneo authorities until 1960, the term "Dusun" was used to represent all the Dusun tribes and sub-tribes. The term "Kadazan" only began to appear in the population census conducted in Sabah in 1970 after the formation of the Malaysian federation since there had been a dispute over the use of the "Dusun" term among the Tangaah Dusun tribe of the Penampang and Papar districts, who resisted the use of "Dusun" to symbolise their sub-ethnicity due to previous issues throughout the British era, but with reconciliation and recognition of each other, the Dusuns in both districts are identified as Kadazan people.