To us the Sound of Bulldozers is the Sound of Death
“We yearn for the sounds of the forest. We have always heard these sounds. In the time of our grandparents long ago we heard these sounds. That is why we still yearn to hear them. In those times long ago, our lives were satisfying, our lives were fulfilled. And now it is harder for us, because we hear the sound of bulldozers. And that is what we always talk about, we women, when we get together. How will we live, how will we thrive, now that we have all these new problems. To us the sound of bulldozers is the sound of death. We feel sorrowful, we weep, when we see the forest that has been destroyed, when we see the red land.”
Lejeng Kusin, Ubong River, May 1993
In early December Professor Mikael Rothstein from the University of Southern Denmark gave a guest lecture at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, co-hosted by the Center for Sami Studies, the Department of History and Religious Studies and Forum for development cooperation with indigenous peoples. Professor Rothstein’s talk became one of these lectures all prospective students should attend: a timely and engaged portrayal of an indigenous community on the brink of cultural extinction, by a researcher not afraid to be emotionally engaged in his work.
The Penan people of Sarawak, Borneo are traditionally hunter-gatherers, a nomadic people relying on the forest to provide for all their needs. Their traditional lifestyle has minimal impact on their life-world: in the depth of the Borneo rainforests, often days away from the nearest ‘civilization’, it is only the colorful tarpaulin sheets which give away their temporary villages. The Penan move in small groups, from a few family members up to thirty people, coming together in a wider society which is highly egalitarian and with little gender division. Apart from the Sago staple diet (which Professor Rothstein humorously expressed his reservations against) the Penan are silent hunters, who with their blowpipes and poison darts find small game to complement fish and gathered forest produce. Their nomadic lifestyle is possible only in large areas of pristine forest, and thus the political and economic ‘development’ in modern-day Sarawak severely affects the situation of the Penan people. With the Penan being evicted from a forest progressively destroyed by logging, mining and plantations they lose not only their home, but also the foundation of their culture.
According to Professor Rothstein, nature is the Penan cultural environment. This notion is evident also in the Penans’ own words. One man says this: "We, the Penan, have lived peacefully in the forest since the time of our ancestors. They roamed the forest, mountains and rivers with happiness. […] Our ancestors wish for us to live happily too, and our future generations". The nomads’ interaction with – and integration into their natural environment is evident in most aspects of their lives; from hunting and gathering to healing and religion. Rothstein, professor of Religious Studies, takes a particular interest in Penan religion, and especially in discovering the close connections between Penan belief systems and their natural environment. The Penan have what we in the West see as ‘conventional’ aspects of religion, for example in the shape of Balé; spirits or gods. These exist in the same physical realm as humans, animals, and even the deceased – but in their own capacity as separate beings. According to Rothstein these are not talked about – until a trigger in the form of disease or other misfortunes appears. As spirits can enter the body and cause disease they can also assist in healing, in rituals Rothstein likens to an exorcism. But, as he states, this form of healing seems to work best for the Penan themselves, and the sick European researcher seems to need a different system of healing. However, as can be seen in the quote at the beginning of this article, in the Penan culture and belief system there is forest creatures with which they communicate much more regularly than with the spirits. In his 2007 article “Chaos in Sarawak’s Rainforest” Rothstein explains how birds have a central role in what he calls the Penan religious narrative. Bird feathers and parts are important in religious dances, and as ornamentation. However, the most significant use of birds is for divinatory purposes; as guides and roadmaps in the forest. The Penan interpret the birds’ songs and movements, and alter their own behavior accordingly. In their traditional culture the Penan have an incredibly complex system of bird behavior interpretation, and in his paper Rothstein emphasizes how bird-people communication have helped many a lost Penan.
The birds are just one example of Penan dependence on the forest, both practically and culturally. What then, Rothstein wonders, happens when the Penans’ link to their natural environment is severed? The Penan, like many indigenous peoples, have no recognized land rights in the eyes of the Sarawak state government. Therefore, out of a population of about ten thousand, only 350-500 Penan are still nomadic. The remaining tribals have given up their traditional ways and are forced to live in settled or semi-settled communities. Here they eke out a livelihood as farmers or underpaid day laborers; existences marked by extreme poverty and pressure. In his lecture as well as in several publications on the Penan, Professor Rothstein is clear on what, and who, is the direct cause of disrupting their traditional nomadic way of life and forcing them into a marginalized existence – namely a combination of international logging companies, the Sarawak government and Christian missionaries.
In conjunction with the ecological disaster of deforestation, dams and open mines, Rothstein lays the blame of the cultural death of the Penan at the feet of “…Christian missionaries that systematically aim at deconstructing their religious and intellectual heritage”. The rationale behind this, as often is the case with missionary work among indigenous peoples, is a wish to ‘civilize the primitives’. The Penan are a people with a distinct culture and remarkable spatial-cognitive abilities, but are still viewed by the missionaries and the local government as unintelligent and dirty, and their belief system as evil and devilish. According to Rothstein, the changes in the Penan world wreak havoc on their symbolic system. “The religious symbols are loosing their meaning as the physical and cultural milieu, to which they belong, is declining&rdquo, and traditional Penan religion is replaced by a collage of Christianity and facets of their old religion. The birds have declined and disappeared, leaving the Penan without guides in the forest. Evil spirits in cahoots with loggers and Christian missionaries have come and killed the good spirits, and now fear and disruption fill up the holes left in Penan cosmology. This new life-world is what Rothstein calls chaotic – a feeling which not long ago had no place in Penan vocabulary. For this tribe a new world seems to emerge, but a world that is wrong and that is bad, and which they know is killing them as a people.
Professor Rothstein’s lecture was timely indeed, as the pressure under which the Penan live keep increasing. Survival International reports that members of the tribe who for 77 days had been protesting at the Murum dam site have abandoned their protest and are now forcibly relocated to a village where none of their basic amenities are in place. The Murum Penan rely on forest produce for three quarters of their sustenance. With no land use rights and a dysfunctional living situation, given only a meager compensation of about 7000 USD per family, another group of Penan have been forced to join the civilized, Christian mainstream. Professor Rothstein says, quite clearly, that there is no hope for the Penan. The only thing he can do is try to understand a people and their traditional culture before it is too late. No wonder that Rothstein ends his 2007 article saying that:
“Ironically, the religious actors that purposely destroy the world of the Penan (the Christian missionaries), are also bearers of the only religious system available to the Penan that may explain the catastrophe of the forest people: They are sinners, and what they are experiencing is the just eradication of Satan’s habitat, the forest […] In order to survive intellectually and develop a meaningful explanation of what is going on, the Penan, therefore, are forced to acknowledge that they are primitive, ignorant and in deep need for the salvation of the loving and caring god of the Christians. How evil does it get?”
By Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen,
Historian of religion, UiT The Arctic University of Norway.