The Penan people from the jungles of Sarawak are threatened by rampant commercial logging and palm oil plantations for bio-fuel, a Malaysian government report said. European and North American demand for “green” bio-fuels made from palm oil means rainforests across the region are being replaced with plantations writes the Telegraph:
For 20 years the Penan people from the jungles of Serawak have mounted a peaceful campaign to protect their ancestral lands, only to be driven back by soldiers, police and contractors.
Earlier this year, as police firing shots in the air tore down the latest blockades of bamboo tied with grass, Penan leaders said that if the loggers were not stopped their jungle would be entirely destroyed within two years.
Now at last they have received some official backing. “Claims made [by Penans] on ancestral land are often not considered by the relevant authorities and those who clear the forest areas and commence logging and oil palm activities,” said the report, recommending that the land code be reviewed to include customary rights.
It may already be too late for the Penan. The rainforests of Serawak are millions of years old but have been decimated by the Malaysian logging companies which, campaigners say, have felled trees at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world.
>> read the whole story in the Telegraph
The Penan leaders also met with officials from the Sarawak state government to demand that it recognise their rights to their land and stop issuing logging and plantation licences on their land. Groups of Penan have set up blockades on roads through their forest to stop loggers destroying their homes according to Survival International.
>> more Penan-news by Survival International
This story reminds me of the article Eco-junk by George Monbiot. Ecological of ethical shopping is not the solution, but less shopping.
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But We Are Still Native People” - Tad McIlwraith’s dissertation is online
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This entry was posted by admin and filed under indigenous people / minorities, Asia, ecology nature. 
Not only the people in Penan are in serious trouble being exploited for natural resources. There has been a several-years’ ongoing struggle in the forests of Orissa, India and nearby similar eco-zones, between indigenous people–like the Dongria Kondhs near Orissa’s Niyamgiri mountain–and multinational mining companies. The enemy for the Kondhs is the Vedanta bauxite mining corporation, trying to take over with local government collusion their sacred mountain and in the process destroying their environment and local economies–from juma to village agriculture.
Some good news arriving today from Survival-International: Plans by Vedanta Resources to mine on Dongria Kondh land in eastern India ‘threaten the survival’ of the tribe, according to an official government investigation whose report has just been released.
In a devastating report, a committee set up by India’s Environment Minister has ruled that Vedanta has acted illegally and with ‘total contempt for the law’; that local officials have ‘colluded’ in the company’s illegal activity and falsified documents; that ‘it is established beyond any doubt that the [mining] area is the cultural, religious and economic habitat of the Dongria Kondh ’; and that to allow Vedanta’s mine would be ‘illegal’.
Read more in the report on SI’s website.
Joanna Kirkpatrick, PhD
Anthropologist
Film review editor, Visual Anthropology