Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Kelabit attitude to the Penan: Forever children

1996; Issue: 34 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1480175

2283-6160

Monica Janowski,

Cultural and Religious Practices in Indonesia

The Kelabit homeland at the headwaters of the Baram river is one dominated by forest.A human enclave has been carved out of the primeval forest through agriculture, which has tamed and controlled a small piece of the natural environment.Nevertheless, Kelabit agriculturalists in this environment traditionally relied heavily on the forest as the source of much of their food, building materials and materials for handicrafts.Rice is the focus of Kelabit agriculture.There appears always to have been a distinction between the type of rice agriculture practised in the area now known as Bario in the north of the Kelabit Highlands'and probably, in the past, in other sites south-west of Barioon the one hand and that practised in other parts of the Highlands.In the Bario area only wet rice fields (late baa) were made, in conjunction with gardens (ira) in which other crops were grown.In other parts of the Kelabit Highlands dry rice fields (late luun) were made, in which other crops were planted together with the rice.Both late luun and late baa were impermanent fields; they were shifted regularly from place to place.Everywhere in the Highlands, there appears to have been a similar reliance on the forest as the source of a large proportion of vegetables eaten with rice at the rice meal, of fruit, and of protein food.The fact that there was no permanent agricultural area in the past must have heightened the sense of dependance on the forest.In the early and mid 1960's there was a resettlement of a large proportion of the Kelabit population to Bario.This occurred at the time of the 'Confrontation' with Indonesia.It was linked to a shift to