For two decades the Penan indigenous people of Sarawak in Borneo have been fighting a desperate battle to save their homelands from logging, damming and farming. They fight by blockading roads to the forest, with numerous members being arrested and even more forced to settle in marginal communities ravaged by poverty and disease.
Their nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle has been destroyed by the activities of the Malaysian government and big business. Only 300 Penan still live a traditional lifestyle on their dwindling homelands.
The Malaysian government justifies this by insisting that a traditional tribal lifestyle does not utilise the land productively, and have stated outright that the Penang can have no claim to land until they learn to settle on it in a colonial sedentary manner.
As usual, this ignores the farming techniques used by many such hunter-gatherers the world over, in which certain plants are managed in sustainable ways the colonists have so far failed to emulate. In the case of the Penan, this agriculture involves the management of plants like sago, which is an important staple food as well as providing building materials and resources used for traditional craftwork.
The Malaysian government also states that the Sarawak is being logged sustainably, even though it is recognised internationally that the forests are being destroyed at one of the fastest rates on the planet. This has also destroyed the traditional Penan economy, which is based on hunting the animals whose forest habitat is now being annihilated, and fishing in the rivers that are now being clogged with silt from clear felling.
Much of their land has been cleared for agribusiness owned by colonists – vast monocultures of oil palms that threaten biodiversity across the region. Still more is flooded to make way for massive dams, rendering many species sacred to the Penan endangered.
The Penan people’s blockading campaign has slowed the destruction of their remaining forests and allowed the remaining 300 traditional hunter-gatherers some respite to continue their customary practices on their traditional lands. But with the Malaysian government linking their land rights to the condition of settling in a sedentary lifestyle, it is uncertain whether they will be able to hold out indefinitely.
