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by ancestors. In material culture, links can be found in such things as styles of house, dance,
and food. For example, the traditional house was called batang in Gamkonora and hifualamo
in Pagu (hifua meant home and lumo meant great). Formerly, the New Order government
eliminated local customs and one of them was the hifualamo, the traditional house. After
the fall of the New Order government, 10 hoana groups (indigenous communities) namely
Modole, Pagu, Line, Towliine, Boeng, Huboto, Mumulati, Gura, Morodina, and Morodai
re-established hifualamo in downtown Tobelo on April 19, 2007. Meanwhile, ten hoana
still maintained their traditional homes. In Galela, there was bangsaha whose name was
similar to a traditional house of inland Tobaru which was different from the coast Tobaru
speakers term that called it hoana morodai. There were many types of custom homes such
as batang, sasahu, hifualamo, bangsaha, hoana morodai and many more. The traditional
houses owned by Oirata were not only found in North Maluku, Southeast Maluku, Kisar
Island, but also in Alor (owned by Kafoa, Hamap and Kui) in Timor Island especially Atambua
(owned by Kemak, Dawan, Bunaq and Tetun) in Papua and Melanesia territory. A wide
variety of traditional houses seemed to have a similar basic form; round or rectangular; and
a thatched roof (Kleden-Probonegoro, 2013a: 54).
Fourth, the acceptance of cultural change with the advent of new words scattered
throughout the region and functioning as a meeting place for traditional meeting in our
country also indicates the relationship between the North Maluku and Melanesia. The
word ‘sawah’, for example, is not found in the Gamkonora dictionary. They recognize the
term ‘bida’ which means rice (raw rice) which could also mean rice (cooked rice). (Raw) rice
and (cooked) rice are known in Gamkonora culture whereas the word ‘sawah’ is not known
because the rice planted in Gamkonora is a type of dry land rice. But after the Agricultural
Agency of West Halmahera District, Mahardi Rappang introduced a system that used
paddy irrigation supplied by mangrove land water in 2007, hence the word ‘sawah’ entered
the Gamkonora lexicon.
These examples show a a connection between the languages of non-Austronesian
speakers in North Maluku and languages and speakers of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian.
The Gamkonora language as one of North Maluku language groups can represent
Melanesia in the sense of being a mixture between Austronesian and non-Austronesian
and the existence of borrowed vocabulary for cultural phenomena.
The mixture of linguistic features of non-Austronesian and Austronesian languages
and certain similarities in physical culture in North Maluku are not enough to conclude
that the language and local culture were isolated from outside influence, but rather

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