The Penan:
Community In The Rainforest
The Penan have been living at peace
- with themselves and with the Borneo rainforest -
for thousands of years
by Wade Davis
One of the articles in Living Together (IC#29)
Summer 1991, Page 48
Copyright (c)1991, 1996 by Context Institute
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In the language of Borneo's Penan tribe, there are forty words for sago
palm, and no words for goodbye, or thank you - or thief. The Penan are a
nomadic people who view the entire rainforest as their home. They are an
"eco-village" on the move, one with a history many thousands of
years old. If we all knew and loved the natural world with the intimacy
of the Penan, we would not be destroying it willfully.
But the Penan way of life - and the incomparable knowledge they have
amassed about how to live in community with the forest and with each other
- may soon disappear. In the time it takes to read a paragraph of this text,
another three hectares of the Borneo rainforest will have been cut down
(as late as 1983, Malaysian logging provided 58% of all tropical log exports
on the world market).
The following is excerpted from the book Penan: Voice for the
Borneo Rainforest, published by the Western Canada Wilderness Committee,
20 Water Street, Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 1A4 (US $24.95 postpaid). The
Penan have been listed on the Committee's new Endangered Peoples List; contact
the Committee for information about their programs to help this ancient
culture survive. Wade Davis is an ethnobotanist and author of The Serpent
and the Rainbow. The photographs are by Thom Henley.
[For an updated version of the book, see...]
In Sarawak, the wisdom of an entire people is waiting to be heard. Numbering
some 7,600, of whom perhaps a thousand remain deep in the forest following
their ancient way of life, the Penan are one of the few truly nomadic rainforest
societies of the earth. Related in spirit to the Mbuti pygmies of Zaire
and the wandering Maku of the Northwest Amazon, the Penan never practiced
agriculture and depended instead on wild populations of sago palm for their
basic carbohydrate supply. As hunters and gatherers they traditionally moved
through the immense and remote forested uplands that give rise to the myriad
affluents of the Baram River in Sarawak's Fourth Division; isolated populations
ranged east across the frontier into Indonesian Kalimantan and north into
Brunei.
Like most nomadic peoples of the rainforest, the Penan are egalitarian
and nonhierarchical. Their social structure is based on an extended network
of obligations, mediated by a host of kin ties and a complex naming system
that links the generations even as it aligns the living with the dead. In
the absence of social stratification, there are no specialists. Although
certain individuals may be more talented than others at specific tasks,
the hunting and gathering adaptation demands self-sufficiency, and each
person must be capable of participating in every societal activity.
For the Penan the forest is alive, pulsing, responsive in a thousand
ways to their physical needs and their spiritual readiness. The products
of the forest include roots that cleanse, leaves that cure, edible fruits
and seeds, and magical plants that empower hunting dogs and dispel the forces
of darkness. There are plants that yield glue to trap birds, toxic latex
for poison darts, rare resins and gums for trade, twine for baskets, leaves
for shelter and sandpaper, wood to make blowpipes, boats, tools, and musical
instruments. For the Penan all of these plants are sacred, possessed by
souls and born of the same earth that gave birth to the people.
Identifying both psychologically and cosmologically with the rainforest
and depending on it for all their diet and technology, it is not surprising
that the Penan are exceptionally skilled naturalists. When a Penan enters
a stretch of unknown forest he or she must mal cun uk, or "follow
our feelings," a process which defies analysis but which allow the
Penan to accomplish phenomenal feats of orienteering. As the Penan explain:
"The earthworm can go hungry and the mouse deer become lost in the
forest, but never we Penan."
But it is the sophistication of their interpretation of biological relationships
that is astounding. Not only do they recognize such conceptually complex
phenomena as pollination and dispersal, they understand and accurately predict
animal behavior, anticipate the flowering and fruiting cycles of the edible
forest plants, know the preferred foods of most forest animals, and may
even explain where any animal prefers to pass the night. A recent and cursory
examination of their plant lore suggested that the Penan recognize over
100 fruiting trees, some 50 medicinal plants, 8 dart poisons, and 10 plant
toxins used to kill fish. These numbers probably represent but a fraction
of their botanical knowledge.
A CULTURE OF SHARING
Such figures, impressive as they are, speak little of the spirit of the
people. This one must sense in quiet moments, in gesture and repartee, and
in dozens of representative actions that become symbols of the space through
which these people live and die. To witness a headman distributing a gift
of tobacco, the grace with which a hunter stalks his prey, the patience
of children who know in the fiber of their being that all the gifts of the
forest are to be shared - these moments tell you something of what it means
to be Penan.
The greatest transgression in Penan society is see hun, a term
that translates roughly as "a failure to share." Dependent on
the forest for life, and each other for survival, the Penan have, in effect,
institutionalized individual generosity as a means of insulating the group
as a whole from the inevitable uncertainties inherent in a hunting and gathering
way of life.
In Penan society proper social behavior is learned by example rather
than by rigorous discipline, and the importance of sharing is instilled
in children from the earliest age. Young boys mastering the use of the blowpipe,
for example, are encouraged to carefully divide the cooked meat from the
smallest of prey, allotting equal portions to all the other children. In
one instance, a young Penan youth who had gone hungry for several days killed
a tele, the world's smallest squirrel, which he cooked and consumed
alone. His failure to share provoked not anger but laughter on the part
of the adults. They simply bestowed on the boy the name tele, so
that he would never forget his transgression.
For all Dayak peoples of Borneo, the concept of private ownership of
land did not exist. In the agricultural societies customary law dictated
that the community as a whole controlled the resource base. Individual proprietary
rights were automatically granted to those who worked the land, provided
they fulfilled the incumbent ritual and ecological obligations. This principle
of land stewardship is enshrined in the traditional law or adat,
a concept that has moral, legal, and religious implications. The subversion
of this philosophy, the imposition of a foreign notion of land tenure, and
the wresting of control of the land from the indigenous peoples are three
dominant themes that have molded Sarawak history since the time of the British.
The Penan believe that the rainforest and its bounty were given to them
by the Creator, the God Balei Nge Butun. Their biological adaptation,
together with their spiritual beliefs, demands that they exploit the forest
in a sustainable manner. Central to their worldview is a sacred obligation
to bequeath to the following generations a healthy forest fully capable
of providing life to its human inhabitants. As a Penan elder explains, "The
land is sacred; it belongs to the countless numbers who are dead, the few
who are living, and the multitudes of those yet to be born. How can the
government say that all untitled land 'belongs to itself,' when there had
been people using the land even before the government itself existed?"
Far from being "wild nomads moving through a trackless wilderness,"
the Penan view the forest as a homeland, an intricate and living network
of economically and culturally significant places linking past, present,
and future generations. Imposed from their imagination and experience is
a geography of the spirit that delineates time-honored territories and ancient
routes which resonate with the place names of rivers and mountains, caves,
boulders, and trees. A sense of stewardship permeates the Penan culture,
dictating consistently the manner in which the Penan utilize and share their
environment.
This Penan notion of stewardship is encapsulated in molong, a
concept that defines both a conservation ethic and a notion of resource
ownership. To molong a sago palm is to harvest the trunk with care,
insuring that the tree will sucker up from the roots. Molong is climbing
a tree to gather fruit, rather than cutting it down, or harvesting only
the largest fronds of the rattan, leaving the smaller shoots so that they
may reach proper size in another year. Whenever the Penan molong
a fruit tree, they place an identifying sign on it, a wooden marker or a
cut of a machete. It is a notice of effective ownership and a public statement
that the natural product is to be preserved for harvesting at a later time.
These are considered by the Penan to be familial rights that pass down through
the generations. In many cases the identifying mark on a particular tree
takes the form of two parallel sticks - a sign that acknowledges ownership
while inviting the wayfarer to share at the proper time in the bounty of
the resource. It is the equivalent of a private property sign that reads
"please share wisely" rather than "no trespassing."
Now, driven from their homeland by logging, the Penan face "no trespassing"
signs on their own rainforests. Relocated Penan now live in squalid government
resettlements and drink from polluted waters.
For any nomadic people, settlement implies the sacrifice of culture.
At the core of the relocation effort now under way is an explicit attempt
to absorb the Penan into the mainstream of Malaysian society. Prime Minister
Datuk Mahathir Mohamad has described this goal directly: "We are asking
them to give up their unhealthy living conditions and backwardness for better
amenities and a longer and healthier lifestyle." Minister of the Environment
and Tourism James Wong - who both owns and regulates logging rights in Sarawak
- has reiterated the government's position: "We don't want them running
around like animals. They have to settle down; otherwise, they have no rights."
Clearly, nomadic rainforest dwellers do not fit the Malaysian image of a
modern, developing nation.
Wong has also stated that "no one has the ethical right to deprive
the Penan of the right to assimilation into Malaysian society," but
he ignores the historical fact that the Penan themselves have consistently
and deliberately chosen not to compromise their traditions. There has been
continuous interaction between the Penan and the outside world since the
earliest trading contacts occurred under the British. In recent months,
the contemporary Penan Association has made clear its commitment to self-determination.
"We are not opposed to all change," Penan spokesman Dawat Lupung
has said, "but we want to choose development based on our needs. A
new longhouse is fine. But it is not the house of my father, and if it is
meant to replace our forest, it means nothing."
In the past, when confronted by aggression, the Penan simply fled into
their forests. A peaceful people, they are the only indigenous people in
Borneo with no history of headhunting. Language is the filter through which
the soul of a people reaches into the material world, and there is no Penan
word for "thief" - only the word ava, which designates
one who takes another's head. Thievery, like headhunting, was an exotic
act unknown to the Penan. Today, when confronted by an assault on their
way of life unprecedented in their history, their language fails them. The
understated comment, "That's what we don't like," seems to be
their ultimate verbal expression of anger. The language of their protest
has a muted eloquence that merely hints at the depths of the injustice and
misery of their situation.
THE GIFT OF THE PENAN
Sensitivity to nature is not an innate attribute of the Penan. It is
a consequence of adaptive choices that have resulted in the development
of highly specialized perceptual skills. But those choices in turn spring
from a comprehensive view of nature and the universe in which man and woman
are perceived as but elements inextricably linked to the whole. It is this
other worldview , one in which man stands apart from nature, that now threatens
their forest and our world with devastation.
Perhaps the greatest gift of the Penan will be their contribution to
a dialogue between these two worldviews, so that folk wisdom may temper
and guide the inevitable development processes that today ride roughshod
over much of the earth.
One recalls a morning in which a group of visitors shared their "clean
food" with Asik Nyelik, a nomadic Penan from beyond the headwaters
of the Baram River. The night before, Asik had slept poorly in a bed, and
that morning at breakfast, looking rather tired, he sat uncomfortably in
a chair. He drank from a glass of water as would a deer, dipping his mouth
to the surface. Then came breakfast, a depressing offering of cold canned
beans, a sorry looking fried egg, and a slice of tinned sausage. Asik politely
looked around the table, then to his plate, then once again at the people
eating this food. He rotated his plate, hunting perhaps for an angle from
which the food might appear palatable. Backing away from the table with
a look of sincere pity, he slipped out of the building and into the forest.
An hour later smoke rose from the edge of the forest and Asik was found
hunched over a fire, slowly roasting a mouse deer that he had killed with
a blade.
Several nights later there was a full moon. It reminded Asik of a story
he had heard about some people who had travelled there and returned with
dust and rocks. He asked if the story was true. Told that it was, he asked,
after a moment of silence, "Why bother?"
A Message From The Penan
The following are excerpts from the words of Penan spokesman Dawat
Lupung. His message comprises a significant part of the book Penan:
Voice for the Borneo Rainforest.
Not long ago, we were happy.
Things were good.
Our fish were clean. Our food was pure.
Our way of life staying in the forest was good.
As things are now, we are in difficulty.
The land is being destroyed.
Many open places.
These plants are our medicines.
If we ask for medicines from the government,
they give us Panadol. It is already spoiled.
The more we take, the sicker we become.
This is what we don't like.
We are content to stay on this land,
to make our shelters in this forest.
This is a good life.
But if all these trees are gone,
there is no longer a way for us to stay here.
Trees that are cut down were once
the shelter of hornbill,
the home of gibbons,
the home of langur,
the home of every single kind of animal
that lives up high.
Where is their home now?
Gone. Finished!
I wanted to talk with the police about land to save for us to stay alive.
They don't want to talk. They arrest me.
People who go to talk, go to jail.
The government says we are animals,
- like animals in the forest.
We are not animals in the forest.
We are Penan. Humans.
I myself know I am human.
We want to see the land preserved - a very large area.
Up to how many acres? Up to how many acres?
Up to how many acres?
To enable hornbill,
to enable deer,
to enable pig,
- so they will have a way to stay.
- Dawat Lupung
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1996 by Context Institute
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