by June Rubis
The Malaysian Insider
Sep 10, 2012

SEPT 10 ― It must have been a beautiful day for an outdoor tea party in West Kalimantan. It is the early 1980s when Borneo’s forests are still comparatively lush although the forests would have to struggle to survive an onslaught of slash-&-burn for commercial rubber plantations and wide-scale logging.

In the meantime, all is serene along the banks of the Kapuas River where the Javanese and Sumatran wives of managers of a rubber plantation wait for their guests to arrive.

The guests were the wives of local Dayak tribesmen, who upon arrival, gathered up all the food, and left, leaving their shocked hostesses in their wake.

The managers dismissed this as part of the “strange and difficult culture” of the Dayaks, while ignoring the fact that this behaviour was aberrant in Dayak culture and thus was a political statement of conflicting economic and political interests.

The Dayaks of the area were facing the loss of their forests and subsequently source of food, due to the appropriation of traditional lands for the rubber plantation. There were reports that the Dayaks were unhappy with the compensation received.

An eye for an eye, albeit a small victory of appropriating the plantation’s food, in protest of unfair appropriation of their native lands, one might say. Read the rest of this entry »