Word: penan
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Along with Christianity have come axes, cooking pots, clothing and bedding, but nomadic Penans insist that modern goods do not threaten their way of life. Most Penan hunters still prefer blowpipes to guns, and a group of headmen insists that if Western goods disappeared, their longhouses could get along just fine so long as the forest remained. This is why after years of arrests, imprisonment and fruitless legal efforts to halt the logging, the Penans continue to blockade the timber roads. "If we die," says Nyelik, "we die in the forest. There is no other place...
When timber interests first came to Ngau's area in the state of Sarawak in 1977, several thousand natives lived entirely off the forests. But logging and settlement plans have reduced that number to fewer than 500 Penan tribesmen, who still cling to nomadic ways. Even these remaining nomadic clans are threatened by a powerful alliance of Japanese trading companies, merchants and local politicians, who continue to push logging operations ever deeper into the interior...
...Penan, an aboriginal tribe of hunters and gatherers on the island of Borneo, are a people under siege. They have watched in horror as logging companies inexorably cut down the forests that supply the tribe with food, medicines and even the poison for blowgun darts used to kill monkeys and hornbill. Outraged at seeing their way of life destroyed, the Penan have periodically blockaded roads leading into the forest in a losing effort to keep the loggers out. Says Penan headman Asik Nyelit, who has twice been arrested by Malaysian authorities for his role in the blockades: "If we just...
While the Penan are fighting the local loggers, the tribe's real antagonists are some 2,600 miles away, in Japan. Most of the trees cut in the Malaysian part of Borneo (the rest of the island is controlled by Indonesia and Brunei) are shipped to Japan, where the lumber is most often made into throwaway plywood construction forms used to mold concrete. Nor is the situation in Borneo unusual. Japan's heavy demand for wood has led to the deforestation of vast tracts in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. Last April the Japan Tropical Forest Action...
Throughout the developing nations there are encouraging stirrings of local environmental activity. In Malaysia blowgun-armed Penan tribesmen have joined forces with environmentalists in an effort to stop rampant logging. And in Brazil, which has some 500 conservation organizations, environmentalist Jose Pedro de Oliveira Costa organized a coalition of legislators, conservationists, industrialists and media barons to stir public support to preserve Brazil's remaining Atlantic forests. "The threats to the forests remain," said Costa, "but now at least there is a network in place to scream when a threat arises...