Friends of The Penan

The aim of this website is to promote awareness of the Penan’s way of life and their struggle to survive, thereby motivating people to take effective action to help them.
We hope to set up regular video updates direct from the jungles of Sarawak with the Penan Diaries Project following the tribe for 12 months with exclusive images and video sent back via satellite link as Mick learns how to be at one with the forest.

The Penan are an ethnic group of Borneo. Out of the 10,000 Penan it is estimated that only 200 are still living their traditional nomadic hunter-gatherer existence in Malaysian state of Sarawak, Borneo.

They are the Stewards of the rain forest. A title encapsulated by the concept of molong the concept defines both a conservation ethic and a notion of resource ownership. To molong a resource is to harvest it with care, insuring that it will regenerate. Whenever the Penan molong a tree they place a sign on it, a marker or machete cut. It denotes ownership and a public statement that the natural product is to be preserved for harvesting at a later time. These rights are passed down through the generations. Similar to a private property sign that reads “please share wisely” rather than “no trespassing.”

In the Penan language there are forty words for sago palm, and no words for goodbye, or thank you - or thief. The Penan view the entire rainforest as their home. One that is under severe threat as commercial logging continues to destroy the forest around them.
Groups of up to forty move around a landscape of steep valleys and dense dipterocarp forest interlaced with numerous tributaries of the large rivers draining the islands interior to find stands of the wild sago palm. It is sago which allows the Penan to survive using only the resources they find in the forest, without participating in any agriculture, as it provides most of their carbohydrate needs, the remainder coming from forest fruits. 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.

A gentle and softly spoken people with a highly egalitarian society and little gender division, their most pronounced cultural trait is one of meticulous shearing. With few laws the most serious transgression in Penan society is see hun, a term that translates roughly as “a failure to share.”

Logging

Since the late 70’s selective logging has had devastating effects on the Penan’s forest territories. Removal of large trees and the destruction caused by the machinery used to extract the logs allows light usually trapped by the upper canopy to reach the forest flor where it promotes rapid secondary growth. This upsets the delicate equilibrium of this ecosystem making game, sago, fruit trees and rattan scarcer, and the jungle hotter, harder to negotiate and sight prey through.
Penan groups have taken various actions against the logging - erecting blockades and sometimes being arrested. A media led by Bruno Manser (who has been missing since crossing the Indonesian border into Sarawak during 2001) meant that their tragic plight was raised at the UN General Assembly and the Rio Earth summit. Whilst this effected some abatement in the logging as the media interest declined the logging increased.
They have also mounted legal actions where Penan are fighting to establish native customary rights (NCR) to land. One action filed in 1998 is still pending. Despite this unresolved dispute the area has still been logged. The Bruno Manser Fonds is, amongst other projects, working with the Penan to map their territories to aid these legal battles.

Palm Oil

Large areas of depleted, and therefore unproductive, forest are being assigned for acacia and palm oil plantation. Malaysia produces 50% of the world’s palm oil, a trade bringing billions to Malaysia. The government hopes to double palm oil plantations in Sarawak over the next three years. These plantations are a monoculture which sustains little life and ensures that the forest is gone for good.