Jok Jau Evong truly appreciated being in Berkeley this month. After all, the Malaysian government had confiscated his passport for nearly a decade.
The soft-spoken Kayan headman of Uma Bawang, a village in the Sarawak province of Malaysian Borneo, talked thoughtfully and purposefully about how his people have turned the tools of technology and litigation in their favor to win indigenous land rights and prevent environmental depredation.
Much of the monetary support for Jok Jau’s village and other threatened areas in Sarawak comes from the Berkeley-based Earth Island Institute’s Borneo Project, which hosted a $25 per plate dinner that included a presentation and slide show by Jok Jau. (Under Mayor Loni Hancock, the City of Berkeley also established a “sister city” relationship with Uma Bawang in 1991.) In recent years, technology transfers and grassroots organizing by the Borneo Project, in conjunction with Jok Jau’s Friends of the Earth Malaysia (Sahabat Alam Malaysia, or SAM), has had great effect in this region.
The indigenous people of Sarawak — including the Kayan, Penan and Iban — have been battling against the destructive forces of logging, palm oil and tree plantations and paper mills for over two decades. They have been hindered by the inability to clearly define land boundaries; under Malay law, indigenous rights supercede all others.
“The constitution grants native people rights to land, but it didn’t map out the land,” said Joe Lamb of the Borneo Project. “There’s all this land that’s vaguely Native Customary Land (NCL), but most native peoples don’t have surveyed boundaries. The government gives logging licenses and companies come in and start poaching on areas that haven’t been clearly defined.”
The Borneo Project helped last March by purchasing satellite imagery covering all of Sarawak. The Malaysian government had played a cat-and-mouse game with natives for years, restricting access to maps, even making the surveying of land illegal. With satellite imagery, the villagers now use handheld GPS units to identify areas of significance and check boundary data.
“They do have rights to the land,” said Lamb. “But they have to go out and aggressively map it and pursue those rights.”
The maps proved useful during a key environmental battle last year. Thanks to dozens of letters, including maps of land claims, the Sarawak Ministry of Resource Planning removed Uma Bawang lands from an palm oil plantation concession.
Lamb emphasized the technological expertise that now exists locally in Borneo. “These guys have gone in seven years from making rough sketch maps to using GPS systems and computers,” he said. “They’re making very sophisticated maps and they’re teaching lots of other villages how to do it.”
The completion of a microhydro power system last year in the village of Long Lawen also demonstrated the cooperation between the Borneo Project, SAM, and several other environmental organizations. The water-driven generator replaces more expensive and polluting diesel apparatuses.
The Borneo Project also hosted a resource management workshop last May, inviting 55 persons from nine rural villages. Under a concept known as “community-based resource management,” locals are urged to battle government-driven decision making and become active in conservation strategies, business plans, watershed management and monitoring. In the five-day workshop, participants visited a reforestation site in Uma Bawang, where fast-growing illipe nut trees provide fish bait, wild boar food and valuable hard wood. Visitors from Indonesian Borneo discussed a rattan cultivation project comprising 35 communities in their country.
Jok Jau said that the destructive clear-cutting of the forests opened the door for pests to invade traditional crops like rice and fruit trees. Only now, a decade after reforestation efforts, is some progress being seen.
SAM co-led the workshop, and also successfully appealed the confiscation of Jok Jan’s passport. After a nine-year legal battle, it was returned to him last September. In addition to his freedom to travel, Jok Jau was awarded $2,500 in court costs.
Jok Jau has grown accustomed to fighting both outside and inside Malaysian court rooms. In the late 1980s he helped organize non-violent community roadblocks against logging companies. When 42 people from his village were arrested and jailed, Jok, the SAM staff and a team of lawyers got the men released and filed lawsuits demanding compensation for damages.
It is not only the people of Sarawak who are threatened by environmental destruction. Borneo is home to unique animals like the orangutan, flying fox and probiscus monkey, whose populations have dropped in the wake of logging and illegal hunting.
&Mac253;co-tourism may be a boon to both the native peoples and native species. Global Exchange is hosting a “Reality Tour” of Borneo in March, when tourists can visit national parks and ancestral lands, viewing otherworldly species like the flying lemur while®checking out master Iban craftspeople weaving mats and tapestries (Earth Island Institute helps the villagers by selling such items on their website, www.earthisland.org).
“We keep on fighting,” said Jok Jau, now SAM’s Field Coordinator. “We have been there for many generations, and this is a continuous struggle.”