Indigenous peoples in Sarawak

1While it was established that human settlements in Sarawak have existed fairly continuously since at least fifty thousand years ago, the people present at that time were likely not the ancestors of the currently dominant ethnic group of Sarawak. Upon their arrival, which is estimated to date back to four thousand years ago, this group diversified into different peoples now collectively known as the Dayaks, but whose cultures and ways of life have grown to differ from each other. Social and economic adaptations to natural conditions have pushed the peoples living along the swampy coasts to live from fishing and swamp sago,1 while the peoples of the interior have turned to forest sago and prioritised swidden agriculture of root crops (Colchester, 193, 161). Among them, the Kelabit, the Lun Bawang and the Penan have been recognised as the first peoples to dwell in the Ulu Baram area of Sarawak. The Kelabit and Lun Bawang adopted shifting agriculture techniques for hill rice cultivation, complemented by hunting and gathering, whereas the nomadic Penan relied exclusively on hunting and gathering forestry products. While very much defined by their self-sufficiency and independence, these tribes engaged with each other in rare contexts of inter-marriage and much more frequent occurrences of trade, head-hunting, and war (Colchester, 1993, 161). These indigenous peoples also engaged with the external world as commerce developed between the Malay aristocracy of western Borneo and Chinese traders. In this context, Dayak peoples were subjected to economic oppression by the Malays, to whom they had to surrender possessions and pay exorbitant prices to purchase goods (Porter, 1967). In parallel, and subsequent to the spread of Islam in the archipelago, the sultanate of Brunei extended its influence on the coast, seemingly not interfering with upland tribes.

Categories of knowing

2In more recent times, peoples such as the Kenyah, Iban, Kayan, Bidayuh and Saban peoples migrated from the eastern Borneo Indonesian region of Kalimantan into the Ulu Baram area and spread extensively in Sarawak, where they now form about 40 per cent of the population. These latter groups, commonly referred to as ‘longhouse’ people or ‘Orang Ulu’2, are sedentary farmers who also consider themselves Dayak people, along with the aforementioned Penan, Kelabit and Lun Bawang people, as well as other smaller groups. While historically understood in Malaysian Borneo as referring exclusively to the Iban – formerly known as the Sea Dayak – and the Bidayuh – formerly known as the Land Dayak – the term Dayak now broadly encompasses all of the non-Muslim indigenous peoples3 (Britannica, 2021).

3The Orang Ulu developed asymmetric relationships with the Penan. As the Penan began exchanging forestry products with Orang Ulu peoples, they were subjected to usurious rates due to their unfamiliarity with market prices. Asymmetric and highly paternalistic relationships were established between the Penan who became indebted to longhouse groups for ‘benevolently’ connecting them with the outside world (Brosius, 1997a). To Penan, benevolence was defined by the word ‘tagung’ or being taken care of by the Orang Ulu aristocrats, for whom they did not hesitate to move great distance should a longhouse have moved (Brosius, 1997a, 484). If dissatisfied with their treatment, the Penan could also evaluate negative relationships and severe them. It is into these dynamics that British colonial settlers inserted themselves, voicing concerns about Penan exploitation and ill treatment by other groups (Brosius, 1997a).

4The first British settlers to reach Sarawak were the White Rajahs, who arrived in the second half of the nineteenth century, attracted by the tales of high biodiversity reported by different explorers and researchers. Among them, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) wrote about orangutans, Malay bears, durian fruit, tree leopards, wild bananas, and thousands of new animal and plant species unheard of in Europe at the time. Additionally, Charles Hose (1863-1929), along with ‘discovering’ a wide array of species from the animal kingdom of the Sarawak rainforest, was the first to compile an anthropological report on the indigenous peoples inhabiting Borneo. Employed as a civil servant for the second White Rajah of Sarawak, Hose spent nearly twenty-five years in the region, mostly in the Ulu Baram area.

5As one of the last remaining unexplored spaces by European colonisers, Baram was thought to be inhabited by headhunters. With the aim of enlightening colonial masters about their subjects, Hose studied the longhouse peoples and found peculiar interest in those he called the ‘Punan’, a term which caused major ethnographic confusion but which was intended to designate the Penan.4 He described these discreet hunters as timid, honest, unselfish, and ‘wonderfully expert in the use of the blowpipe’ (Hose, 1894, 158). There was born the innovative yet fixed concept of the ‘noble savages’, echoing Rousseau’s ideas of a ‘natural man’. Dr Rodney Needham (1923-2006) lived for several months with nomadic Penan groups and made the important contribution of making the distinction between Eastern Penan, or Penan Selungo (located east of the Baram River), and Western Penan, or Penan Silat, inhabiting the other riverbank. Hose had met Eastern Penan, who remained nomads for the longest, and eventually engaged in civil disobedience against deforestation. In contrast, Western Penan were already mostly sedentarised in the 1950s, and their lifestyles resembled those of other indigenous groups of the area. The Penan that we met during our fieldwork are Eastern Penan, who began settling in large numbers in the 1960s (Brosius, 1997a).

6Classifications created by anthropologists such as Hose laid the basis for colonial policies which would effectively ‘pacify’, ‘civilise’, or ‘develop’ their subjects. Due to lack of financial, military or administrative means to subdue these indigenous groups, categorisation permitted the Brookes to pit them against each other. For example, the Kenyah and Kayan were depicted by Hose as intelligent and obedient, while the Iban were portrayed as aggressive and brutal. Consequently, the latter were recruited into the army and used to clear other groups (Cleary, 1996, 17 in Aeberli, 2020, p. 28).

7Colonisation consists, in the first place, of a repression of modes of knowing, of beliefs, ideas, modes of expression, images, symbols, and in the imposition of the ruler’s own patterns and beliefs (Mignolo, 2018). More than anything, it was based on social categories of race as key structuring elements between the colonised and colonisers, mutated into biological and structural inferiority and superiority. Through the gaze of terra nullius, a legal categorisation, European colonisation erased indigenous peoples and ruptured their cosmological relationships to land (Simpson, 2007).

8As theorised by Anibal Quijano, the paradigm of modernity/rationality produced by Europeans was established as a universal paradigm of knowledge (Quijano, 2007). European culture alone could contain rational ‘subjects’, while the others were inferior by nature and thus could only be ‘objects’ of domination and/or of knowledge practices. By definition, it is the other (non-Western) cultures that are the ‘object’ of study. In the relation of externality between ‘subject’ and ‘object’, no relation of communication or interchange of knowledge was possible, and the colonial order as a totality was made invisible. Europe thus asserted itself as the ‘desired outcome’ on an evolutionary continuum from primitive to civilised, from savage to rational, from traditional to modern. Knowledge is a site of conquest and extension of coloniality, and anthropology emerged in colonial contexts as a means to know indigenous peoples and better govern them. Anthropological modalities of knowing such as categorisation and ethnographic comparison, have enabled the justification of dispossession as it allowed for ranking, classifying, and controlling ethnically defined territorial spaces. This discipline’s historical interaction with indigenous peoples is characterised by fetishised, essentialised and canonical portraits of timelessness that have serious present implications. These accounts have erased indigenous voices and disabled future claims over territory (Simpson, 2007, 97).

Imposition of governance structures (1841-1946)

9Encouraged by these tales of biodiversity and noble savages, and eager to carve themselves a spot into the South China Sea trade routes, Europeans progressively took control over various ports in the area in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The Portuguese, followed and challenged by the Spanish, Dutch, British and French, all established themselves and secured their own trading networks, effectively disrupting previous regional trade patterns. Their arrival, along with the eclipse of Islamic sultanates, favoured the emergence of an era of piracy. Initially owned by the Sultan of Brunei and feared by European sailors on account of Iban pirates, the territory of today’s Sarawak was soon governed by British adventurer James Brooke (1803-1868) in 1841. The son of a British colonial officer, Brooke had purchased a vessel and successfully repelled an uprising against the Sultan, who agreed to grant him governmental power over the territory. Brooke settled in Sarawak, along with the help of a few British officials, to create a privately owned colony, marking the beginning of the White Rajah rule under his own laws and code of justice (Colchester, 1993). Concerned with ‘developing trade, combating piracy, and abolishing the head hunting that was still rife at the time amongst the indigenous peoples of Borneo, especially the Iban‘, James Brooke gained independence from Brunei and was knighted by Queen Victoria in the 1840s (Straumann, 2014, 67). Supported by the Royal Navy and encouraged by the British Crown, the ruler encountered resistance from the Iban pirates and people, against which he waged a brutal war.

My intention, my wish, is to extirpate piracy by attacking and breaking up the pirate towns; not only pirates direct, but pirates indirect... I wish to correct the native character, to gain and hold an influence in Borneo proper, to introduce gradually a better system of government, to open the interior, to encourage the poor natives, to remove the clogs on trade, to develop new sources. I wish to make Borneo a second Java (James Brooke quoted in Payne, 1960, p. 59).

10His superior armaments and the occasional support from the East India Company allowed Brooke to dominate the indigenous group, as well as crush a Chinese rebellion in 1857 and annex the Rajang in 1861. His political and military manoeuvres did not make up for his administrative and economic deficiencies, which left his successor an impoverished and poorly structured state. Upon James Brooke’s death in 1868, his nephew Charles Brooke took over the rule of Sarawak. Charles Brooke (1829-1917) consolidated the new state, which he expanded by annexing Baram in 1882, Trusan in 1884, Limbang in 1890 and Lawas in 1904, and made a protectorate of the British Crown in 1888 (Colchester, 1993). Opposed to exploitative imperialism, Brooke favoured local traders and businessmen instead of foreign trading companies; and was widely perceived as progressive for he denounced the atrocities committed in Congo under Leopold II. The Third White Rajah, Charles Vyner Brooke, took over after his father’s death in 1917, continuing his policy of isolation both economically and politically. Perhaps surprisingly, the Brookes are still greatly recognised today for the balance they are seen to have struck between their own interests and that of local peoples. Among Penan people, a great deal of melancholy can be sensed when evoking the Rajah whom they feel were respectful of their territory and culture (Straumann, 2014).

11While they did not engage in unhampered deforestation as did many other colonial administrations in the region, such as the Dutch in Indonesia, the Spanish and the Americans in the Philippines, and the British in Sabah and Malaya, the Rajahs did extend their control all the way to indigenous communities. As opposed to the rather egalitarian Dayak societies, the Brookes adopted, reinforced and extended a structure at the image of the highly stratified social order of the Malays. Genealogically defined ranks and honorific titles such as ‘temenggong’ (paramount indigenous leader), ‘penghulu’ (sub-regional indigenous chief), ‘tua kampung’ or ‘tuai rumah’ (village headmen) were given for these mediators to implement government policy and the tax system in exchange for a share of the fines (Colchester, 1993, 166). Conversely, senior administrators were recruited from Britain and became ‘District Officers’ and ‘regional residents’, who were to intervene in native affairs when deemed necessary, and whose duty was to administer the introduced Western systems of justice, land ownership, education, health and labour (Colchester, 1993, 166). In implementing this dual system, which is still in place today, the Brooke administrations aimed to strengthen the government beyond measure and effectively divided native peoples who were deprived from political representation, authority and engagement in decision-making processes.

12Various scholars argue that this introduced system of chieftaincies partly explains the ‘passive way in which the natives have accepted the progressive takeover of their lands and resources in the post-colonial era’ (Colchester, 1993, 166). Between the self-interested native elite and the government-appointed representatives, indigenous entitlement to their ancestral land was swiftly taken out of their hands and entrusted to the government. Under the First White Rajah, in 1863, laws were put in place which declared ‘unoccupied land’ as government land. His successor was perceived as being more supportive of the interest of Sarawak’s indigenous peoples, despite his restriction of shifting techniques of cultivation in favour of the promotion of permanent agriculture. It is under the Third White Rajah that ‘Native Customary Rights’ (NCR), which are still used today, were first introduced (Majid Cooke, 2006, 27). Although recognised, these were only rights to the use or lease of State lands. During their reign, the Brookes asserted their personal ownership over the territory of Sarawak, which was subsequently passed to the Crown and later to the State. Various of the current regulations relating to land matters date back to the colonial era.

Reframing and reforming land tenure (1946-1963)

13Charles Vyner Brooke’s interest in governing Sarawak progressively faded away and the Third White Rajah easily ceded Sarawak to the British Crown in the 1940s. As a constitution was introduced to end the Brookes’ autocratic rule in 1941, Japanese troops invaded the territory and put an abrupt end to the Rajah’s reign. Motivated by oil and geopolitics, the United Kingdom concluded the purchase of Sarawak as a colony in 1946 upon the reconquest of Sarawak by the Allies. Under the Crown, Christianization attained the most remote corners of Sarawak rainforests. Land administration and legislation were guided by the expectation that land tenure would eventually evolve towards the Western individual land ownership system and be rendered productive. Among Sarawak peoples, land tenure took – and still takes – the shape of an extensive communal land area to be shared by the entire community for shifting agriculture, fishing, hunting, collecting wild produce, and as a reserve for future swidden sites. Within this land, certain communities also establish exclusive usufructuary rights to each family, attributing them certain plots for their own farming, which however do not suggest a superiority of the autonomy of families over the sharing of game between the entire community. As denoted above, swidden agriculture has developed as a customary, ancient and communal way of valuing land (Colchester, 1993, 167). In discord with Dayak peoples’ conceptions of land tenure, legislation was designed under British rule to promote ‘modern’, ‘rational’, and ‘productive’ forestry. Considered wasteful, shifting cultivation was disapproved by legislation which attempted to discourage its extension through emphasis on individual rights or all-encompassing communal areas controlled by the government. The 1953 Forest Ordinance had the explicit aim of curtailing swidden agriculture and instead reserving forest for settled farming and timber extraction. Large areas were established as ‘Permanent Forest’, effectively extinguishing pre-existing native rights. ‘Forest Reserves’ were reserved to state forestry and thus saw all native rights to cultivate, hunt, fish, etc. prohibited, while in ‘Protected Forests’, cultivation was disallowed but the rest could be allowed with a special permit granted by the Forest Department (Colchester, 1993, 167). The aims of the various land legislations of the time were to encourage changes in agricultural practices towards settled, individual farming, with the complementary effect of depriving customary land rights of legal force.

14A few years later, the 1958 Land Code, which currently remains the principal land law in the state, established a clear classification of land categories. ‘Interior Area Land’, representing almost 69 per cent of the area, corresponded to state-owned land, to which was added over 15 per cent of the area designated as ‘Reserved Land’, set aside by the state for specific purposes such as forestry. Individually owned land corresponded to a little over 15 per cent of the remaining land, divided between ‘Native Area Land’, owned by natives, and ‘Mixed Zone Land’, owned by both natives and non-natives. Additionally, the Code allowed the establishment of ‘Native Reserves’, that is, communal holdings, in any of the four types of lands except for ‘Reserved Lands’. These reserves correspond to legally leased land by the State to the native peoples for up to 99 years. Although it is officially recognised that the natives thus may enjoy Native Customary Rights in areas of State land, it took no clear steps to define which these might be. The ambiguities of this system have made it increasingly possible for the State to prosecute natives for ‘encroachment on State lands,’ and to lease out these same areas for timber logging or the establishment of plantations (Colchester, 1993, pp. 167-168). To this day, Sarawak land laws only recognise native land rights if the areas were cleared and cultivated before 1958. This poses issues to communities such as the Penan, whose presence on their ancestral land cannot be documented due to their nomadic lifestyle and non-involvement in cultivation. Only the darts of blowpipes left on trees can be used to identify Penan presence, meanwhile land rights recognition requires for a clear mark to be left from before 1958.

15These regulations and classifications of the land by British rulers, which are still highly relevant today, corroborate Scott’s conception of high modernism as an authoritarian ideology which favours rational engineering and pervasive planning and necessitates an increasing control over nature (Scott, 1998, 89). Among the initial examples of Scott’s high modernism is notably the effort of a state to sedentarise nomadic peoples, which he describes as an ‘attempt to make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion’ (1998, 2).

Bringing indigenous peoples ‘into the mainstream’ (1963 onwards)

16The Federation of Malaya was established in 1948 in peninsular Malaysia through the Federation of Malaya Agreement, and became independent from the British in 1957. Various Malay people in Borneo, who had only recently been included into the administration as provided by the Constitution, protested the colonial authority and sparked a movement for the state’s independence. Some of the indigenous peoples of Sarawak, who observed improvements in their lives under British rule, opposed the annexation of the region into Malaysia due to fears of domination by Kuala Lumpur, and preferred to remain under British rule (Straumann, 2014, pp. 79-80). The so-called Malaysia Plan was eventually accomplished in 1963 as Sarawak, Sabah, and Singapore joined the Federation of Malaya to form the new state of Malaysia. Singapore seceded two years later to become a sovereign state. From 1963 onwards, the British remained somewhat influential in Malaysian politics, while power became concentrated in the hands of a small Bumiputera elite in the capital.

17In response to the positive discrimination favouring original Malays in the Peninsula, political parties in Sarawak emerged along ethnic lines, through the formation of coalitions between non-Bumiputera groups such as the Sarawak National Party (SNAP). Power was held by an alliance of Iban and Chinese people which played a prominent political role in the years that followed, characterised by crises and instability. Stephen Kalong Ningkan, of Iban-Chinese origin, was appointed Chief Minister5 in 1963, but was dismissed three years later during the constitutional crisis of 1966. His removal by the alliance of Malay forces across Sarawak and the Peninsula was sparked by his 1964 proposed land reform to clarify the legal titles of native landholders and open up land purchase to Chinese farmers, virtually excluded from land ownership under the British colonial administration. This initiative, aimed at satisfying all sections of the community, was strongly criticised, including by indigenous peoples who felt their rights to land would be under increased pressure.6 (Bradley, 1968, 138).

18Since 1971, the position of Chief Minister has only been occupied by members of the Malay-Melanau elite. Between 1970 and 1981 Abdul Rahman Ya’kub became Chief Minister of Sarawak before making way for his nephew, Abdul Taib Mahmud7, who eventually ruled for 33 years. Throughout these years, the family worked to unite Malaysian Muslims and were strongly criticised by the Chinese and indigenous peoples, notably for spending too much on building mosques and suraus8 while ignoring the needs of Dayak people (Dauvergne, 1995). Progressively excluded from democratic processes and representative politics, Dayak people resorted to direct action in voicing their grievances, notably in light of logging activities and deforestation. Government policy towards these communities has been directed by a modernist/developmentalist ideology and efforts to bring them into the ‘mainstream’ Malaysian society, notably by pushing the Penan to settle permanently. According to Brosius (1996), state officials attributed Penan frustration and mobilisation to the ‘confusion’ and ‘unruliness’ provoked by their lack of development and neglect from the state, or to instigation by foreign environmental activists, as will be discussed at a later stage (p. 40). Taib Mahmud has on numerous occasions evoked the state’s responsibility towards indigenous peoples, particularly the Penan; to bring them into Sarawakian society and create an equal society instead of allowing them to ‘behave like animals in the jungle’ (Silva Kumar, 1991, pp. 178-179). As a result, the overwhelming majority of Penan have settled and, along with other indigenous communities, have been provided with a certain level of government services such as increased access to healthcare through the construction of helicopter pads in the rainforest, piped water systems, corrugated roofing, and schools (Brosius, 1999 39). The more dramatic and consequential interactions of these communities with external state and corporate actors took place in the context of the advent of logging in the 1980s.

Predatory logging and timber webs (1980s onwards)

19Oil was initially discovered in 1910 off the coasts of Miri, a town in northern Sarawak, and was exhausted by the end of the Second World War. In 1968, new sources of crude oil were found off the Sarawakian shores, which fuelled yet another conflict between Kuching9 and Kuala Lumpur (Straumann, 2014). The 1974 Petroleum Development Act entailed the transfer of all of Sarawak’s oil and gas rights to the Federal Government, as well as the creation of Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) and the subsequent transferring of all rights of exploration and exploitation of oil onshore or offshore Sarawak to this corporation. Making up most of Sarawak’s exports, petroleum and oil however did not make for a lot of revenues for the state, as these were siphoned off into the Federal coffers (Kumar & Stern, 2020). By contrast, minerals and logging operations in Sarawak became a large source of revenue for the state government.

20Before World War Two, commercial timber logging only took place in swamp forests along the coast so as to float logs out to ships easily. In 1947, mechanical logging began, and access to upland forests of the interior was facilitated by machinery such as light chainsaws, winches and powerful tractors (Colchester, 1993). Deforestation in Sarawak started to accelerate with the industrialisation that characterised the period from 1980 onwards under the governance of Taib Mahmud, and the increase in income and population in developed states such as the US and Japan which consequently fuelled demand for tropical timber (Nagtzaam, 2009, 249). Ramin, meranti and belian wood, also labelled Borneo ironwood, were being exported in record quantities to a variety of countries, mainly to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (Majid Cooke, 2006, 5). Attitudes towards timber harvesting were defined by rent seizing10 and a ‘get rich quick mentality’ among businessmen, which translated to an emphasis on speed, predatory logging, complete harvesting of concessions before the expiry of licence periods and logging beyond stipulated boundaries (Majid Cooke, 2006, 6). The state of Sarawak consequently experienced one of the highest rates of deforestation, and in the 20 years that followed, the island of Borneo lost forest cover twice as fast as the rest of the world’s tropical forests (Brosius, 1999, Straumann, 2014). Along with logging, land clearing and conversion for agricultural development, an additional threat has manifested as old growth forests have been rapidly replaced with palm oil monocultures. These activities have indisputably resulted in extensive forest degradation, including damage to soil and water quality. Today, logging has greatly decreased due to the depletion of timber and the consequential move by companies onto new areas such as Papua New Guinea, Suriname and Guyana (Brosius, 1999).

21Logging activities were and still are carried out by Chinese contractors, who have the necessary technical expertise and equipment to do so (Colchester, 1993). The overwhelming majority of timber left the country unprocessed, through Archipelago Shipping, an import-export company partly owned by the State and partly owned by the Chief Minister’s family. As Sarawak exported on average ten million cubic metres of timber per year during the 1980s, Abdul Taib Mahmud and his family were enriched both by timber holdings and by this shipping monopoly (Dauvergne, 1995, 206). Timber corruption became increasingly common during the 1970s, as politicians began handing out logging concessions in exchange for bribes, notably in funding electoral campaigns. Responsibility for issuing and cancelling timber concessions was and still is primarily centralised in the hands of the Forest Department of Sarawak (FDS). This form of patronage was exposed during the 1987 elections, as a dispute arose between incumbent Abdul Taib Mahmud and his uncle and predecessor Abdul Rahman Ya’kub. Both politicians openly accused each other of using timber money and concessions for political ends.11 This incident sparked a public conflict between the two politicians and the divulgation of timber holdings held by their family members, friends, associates and clients. Together, these webs of timber possessions proved to comprise over 30 per cent of the total forest area in Sarawak, representing almost three million hectares. Having weakened his uncle’s patron-client network and gained the support of various Chinese politicians, Taib Mahmud was re-elected in a landslide victory, displaying the extensive role played by logging money in the maintenance of state power (Dauvergne, 1995, 208). Various other influential political figures were also linked directly to timber concessions, such as Datuk Wong, President of the SNAP and Minister of the Environment and Tourism at the time, who also happened to be head of Limbang Trading, a company controlling about 300,000 hectares of timber concessions in the state (Dauvergne, 1995, 209). When asked about the effects of deforestation on the climate in a 1988 interview with the President of NGO Survival International, Datuk Wong declared ‘We get too much rain in Sarawak. It stops me playing golf’ (Hanbury-Tenison, 1990, 29). Despite the link between logging profits and politicians becoming widely known among the public, little opposition took place domestically. With public opposition being muffled in the state of Sarawak, notably through the close monitoring, supervision and blacklisting of foreigners, journalists, academics and NGO leaders, it is the international condemnation of corrupt Sarawakian politicians and timber tycoons which soon appeared to constitute a threat to the government (Dauvergne, 1995, pp. 212-213).