The Last Nomadic Penans

"I know there are other spirits, but I do not belong to them anymore. Every living thing has a spirit, and humans can harness it. The hornbill spirit can make people walk very fast. Normally what takes two, three days to walk, they do it in one. The leopard spirit is even more powerful."

Borneo's epic rainforests are being cleared at a faster rate per acre than the Amazon's. This might seem like a minor concern, since the island accounts for only 1 percent of the earth's land. But according to the World Wildlife Fund, Borneo's forests hold 6 percent of the planet's plant and animal species. Many are now being driven toward extinction, or being extinguished before they can even be identified — all because of consumer demands around the world.

The Penan are a nomadic indigenous people living mainly in Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo, and are one of the last such peoples remaining as hunters and gatherers. They are noted for their practice of molong — never taking more than necessary. They eat plants, which are also used as medicines, and animals, using the hides, skin, fur, and other parts for clothing and shelter.

Penan communities were predominantly nomadic up until the 1950s. The period from 1950 to the present has seen consistent programs by the state government and foreign Christian missionaries to settle Penan into longhouse-based villages similar to those of Sarawak's other indigenous groups. Today, the Penan number around 16,000. Only approximately 200 still live a nomadic lifestyle.

Into the Highlands of Sarawak

In 2014, I was on assignment with explorer-writer Alex Shoumatoff to meet and live with the last nomadic Penan people in the highlands of Sarawak — a feature story later published in 2016 by Smithsonian magazine and National Geographic China.

Alex and I traveled to meet the Ba Marong band. On our way, we passed through what seemed to be magical forests enveloped in vapor clouds — but taking a closer look, we noticed that all the ridges had logging roads on them. Logging had eroded gashes on the hillsides where the trees were slid down to the valley floors.

We traveled a road that sank down into valleys, passed over bridges and forked off in several directions. Each ridge took us higher until we were close to 2,500 feet. Soon, we reached a place where clothes were drying on a line between two poles. Four dirt bikes were parked nearby. We had found the Ba Marong band.

The camp was 150 yards from the road. We heard chatter and laughter floating down the steep, muddy trail. Several young men appeared and helped us carry our bags and provisions up to a flat area, where we saw four huts raised on poles lashed with strands of rotan, or rattan palm vines, from the forest. At the front of each hut's pole floor, a fire burned in an earthen hearth and pots hung over the flames, a stack of machete-split wood off to one side. The interior of the hut was for eating, sleeping, sitting and talking, and weaving baskets and bracelets.

Spirits, Beliefs and the Old Ways

One night in the Ba Marong camp, Alex asked a young man named Nelson to tell him about the old ways. "Because we are now Christian, we only believe in Lord Jesus," he said cautiously. "I know there are other spirits, but I do not belong to them anymore." He went on, though. Every living thing has a spirit, and humans can harness it. "The hornbill spirit can make people walk very fast. Normally what takes two, three days to walk, they do it in one. The leopard spirit is even more powerful."

And so my voyage went — full of ancient stories and beliefs, anxiety over the future existence of their way of life, and anger and frustration with the government and the multinational logging industry, which is robbing them of their land, their way of life and their culture.

Hunters, Gatherers, and the Art of Molong

Many Penan still rely on diets of starch from the sago palm, jungle fruits, and prey that usually includes wild boar, barking deer, mouse deer, snakes, monkeys, birds, frogs, monitor lizards, snails and even insects such as locusts. Since they practice molong, they pose little strain on the forest: they rely on it and it supplies them with all they need.

They are outstanding hunters and catch their prey using a kelepud, or blowpipe, made from the Belian Tree, carved out with unbelievable accuracy using a bone drill. The darts are made from the sago palm, tipped with poisonous latex from the Tajem tree, which can kill a human in a matter of minutes.

Everything the Penan catch is shared, for they are a highly tolerant, generous and egalitarian society — so much so that the nomadic Penan are said to have no word for 'thank you', because help is assumed and therefore doesn't require acknowledgement. However, jian kenin — meaning 'feel good' — is typically used in settled communities as a kind of equivalent.

A Forest Under Siege

The Penan's struggle began in the 1960s when the Indonesian and Malaysian governments opened up large areas of Borneo's interior to commercial logging. Since all Penan communities were and are reliant on forest produce, they were hit hard: the logging caused pollution of their water catchment areas, the loss of sago palms, a scarcity of wild boar and game, the destruction of burial sites, and the loss of rare plant and animal species — many of which are viewed as sacred, as the embodiment of powerful spirits and deities.

In the mid-1980s, when the plight of the Penan was exposed on the world stage, the Sarawak State Government began making promises in an attempt to quell international protests. As of 2013, the Penan continue to fight development aggression in their ancestral domain.

Timber companies fell the ancient trees and export their wood, mostly to other Asian nations. The palm oil industry follows closely, clearing the land for enormous plantations. Ninety percent of Borneo's primary forest cover is now gone, along with some of the tallest tropical trees in the world. In their place, much of the island is now covered with a tossing ocean of oil palm trees — their oil an essential ingredient in processed foods, cosmetics, cleaning agents, biodiesel, toothpaste, shampoo and countless other products sold across the globe.

— Varial