Word: forest
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Manser's story is really the tale of the Penan, a people out of time, the last hunter-gatherers in Asia. Once masters of a seemingly endless rain forest that covers Borneo, almost all of the 9,000 Penan have given up the struggle against what must once have seemed a ludicrous impossibility: that loggers would sweep through all but a tiny fraction of Sarawak's forests, polluting rivers, driving animals away and bulldozing the trees and plants that for centuries have served as the Penan's medicine cabinet, toolbox and larder. There are barely 200 fully nomadic Penan left...
...Along builds a new home of wood and thatch in the forest every few weeks or months, depending on the availability of game. He dresses in traditional Penan attire, a loincloth that covers his genitalia but leaves his muscular buttocks bare. His feet are disproportionately large and splayed, never having been confined by shoes. He wears necklaces fashioned from rattan and brightly colored beads, the bezel of a gilded wristwatch glinting incongruously beneath a mass of twine bracelets. (The watch has stopped at 3:50.) When he was young, his earlobes were distended by heavy weights. They now hang...
...doesn't hold any rights to the land of his ancestors. In Malaysia, says lawyer and activist Harrison Ngau, control of land rights lies almost entirely with the state governments. In Along's case, a large swath of the land surrounding Batu Lawi was gazetted in 1997 as "protected forest," a misnomer for land that can be assigned for logging whenever the government so decides. Logging generated almost $1 billion in revenue last year in a state with only 2 million inhabitants. With such huge sums at stake, bitter disputes?and occasional bloodshed?are inevitable. In 1997, police shot...
...Melai Beluluk was a member of two of the five expeditions the Penan subsequently sent out to look for their friend. "We tracked him to the last sleeping place. We followed his machete cuts into the thick forest until the trail reached a swamp at the foot of Batu Lawi. There he disappeared. He didn't go back. We could find no trace of him in the swamp." Nor could they find any trace of anyone else coming through the area, such as possible assailants...
...Forced out of the forest and into the baking sunlight of the logging road, the confident warrior has transformed into a weak and confused old man. He has put on a purple T shirt and blue shorts to hitch a ride with his wife Iot in a pickup truck to get some medical help. Usually voluble, Along falls silent, his face clenched in anxiety as they approach town. Now and then he inquires aloud whether there is any cash to pay for the hotel and the doctor. Along has no money; he never does. That...