Long before factories, industries, agriculture, aquaculture, and all of that of our recent consciousness, we were all once hunter-gatherers. It was sort of our original occupation in order to survive. Hunting of wild animals using various tools, and foraging for edible wild plants using knowledge passed down. Subsisting from day to day.
The bodies we inherited from our ancestors are adapted to the hunting and gathering way of life—walking, running, jumping, climbing—it was built for endurance, tenacity, accuracy, while being highly attuned to the environment and viewing nature as a parent that provides the basic necessities to live.
Based on Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore’s 1968 seminal volume ‘Man the Hunter’, early hunter-gatherers are generally characterised in the following ways 1.
1. They live in small groups
2. They move around a lot
3. Being nomadic, they keep little personal property
4. Therefore, they don’t maintain or control an area
5. And are not strongly attached to any single area
6. They have a small resource base (supply of food, etc) therefore groups are kept small
7. Thus, food surpluses are rare to none
8. They are strongly egalitarian
Although the life of a hunter-gatherer may appear simple, achieving affluence by desiring little and meeting needs with what is immediately available to them - as put forth by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his ‘original affluent society’ theory - to achieve so required societies or traditions that are highly complex and organised, and with rich local knowledge in order to make meaning of and navigate their world.
Owning Nothing, Sharing Everything
At central Peninsular Malaysia are the Chewong tribe - living in villages at the Krau Wildlife Reserve, and at Raub, Temerloh, and Jerantut districts of Pahang. They make up a small population of the Orang Asli (indigenous) people in Peninsular Malaysia, grouped under the Senoi branch.
Chewong are traditionally hunter-gatherers. When anthropologist Signe Howell first started working with the Chewong in the late 70s, they lived in small impermanent scattered swiddens at remote parts of the forest. At that time, they were still practising their traditional way of life.
She stated that the Chewong conformed to Shahlins’ ‘original affluent society’ as well as Woodburn’s ‘immediate return society’. In the latter, such a society is egalitarian, non-competitive, and follows an ethos that encourages sharing of commonly held resources while discouraging the accumulation/ownership of property. 2.
Within the Chewong’s cosmological rules (or cosmo-rules as Howell puts it), the people view the forest and everything in it as everyone’s. The forest and what it holds are commonly held resources, therefore belonging to everyone.
When they go hunting or foraging, whatever that is taken from the forest must be shared equally among the villagers and eaten together. This is known as the punén cosmo-rule, which demonstrates Chewong's egalitarianism. By having impermanent swiddens, the Chewong in turn do not have the notion of private ownership of land—tying back to their view of the forest and its resources.
However, with the introduction of cash economy, cash crops, and their relocation from the interiors to the fringe of the forest, the Chewong have faced a breakdown of their cosmology and social life since the 1980s. For instance, cash does not fall within the punén cosmo-rule therefore challenging the injunction of sharing; and the move towards rubber and oil palm plantations means an individual looks after and ‘owns’ that plot of land. Today, as with the other Orang Asli tribes, the Chewong faces an efface to their way of life, culture and identity.
‘Talking’ in the Forest
In the vast rainforest of Borneo, the forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers have a unique way of communicating—by using sticks to announce, inform or convey messages. In his article, P.A. Borough explores and illustrates the versatile message-stick communication system used by various Dusun and Murut groups in Sabah. 3
While the Penan of Sarawak are more famously known for their message-stick sign language, known as Oroo’, these groups in Sabah also employ the same medium of communication. To the Dusun and Murut groups, the signs are known as Tatanda or Tatanduk.
The Tatanda or Tatanduk is made of a vertical stick at a length of 1 to 3 metres, which is stuck into the ground where it’s visible to the passers-by along the forest track. On the stick are a variety of symbols made from carved twigs or leaves, held in place by clefts cut in the stick. These symbols represent an event, name or object, and thus transmit meaning and information such as hunting successes, land claims and boundary rights, warning of hazards, announcing feasts and weddings, and to communicate with spirits on graves and altars.
For the Penans, the Oroo’ signs are used to communicate with family members as they venture into the forest for food.4 This journey is called Toro, starting from the Lamin Toto (a house in the village) to the Lamin Toro (a temporary hut in the forest). The young and physically strong family members would lead the journey and build the Lamin Toro, and as they journey through the forest, they make Oroo’ signs to inform the following group of elders and children on location of the Lamin Toro, path and directions of group movement, and the number of individuals in the group.
As these groups become increasingly sedentary, changing their way of life from nomadic to semi-permanent or permanent settlement, the need for message-stick communication decreases. The move away from depending on the forest as a food source spells the loss of their rich cultural, botanical knowledge, and traditional knowledge of communicating with one another.
Re-Navigating Knowledges
The loss of indigenous knowledge that links to the loss of traditional territory and way of life is not unique to the tribes in Malaysia. Across the globe, the cultural life, language, knowledge, and so on of indigenous tribes as well as minority groups are facing a threat of extinction as an increasing number of the tribespeople, especially the younger generation, become increasingly dispossessed and disconnected from the ways of their ancestors.
For instance, in Taiwan, the Bunun tribe were moved from the highlands to the lowlands around the 70s when the Kuomintang government began developing the forestry industry and constructing new trails for large-scale logging. Since then, many indigenous people in Taiwan (not just the Bunun) have experienced dramatic changes—in the landscape as landslides scarred the earth, as well as the disintegration of connection between the people and the forest.
Listen to the podcast here: Episode 1: Navigation to hear from the Bunun themselves about their knowledge and what has been done to preserve it. As you do, you will notice that there are a lot of similarities and connections between the Taiwanese and Malaysian tribes, showing the universality of indigenous knowledge and ways of making meaning of where they lived
Contributed by : Wendi Sia
Reference:
1.Ames K.M. (2014) Complex Hunter-Gatherers. In: Smith C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_964
2. Howell, S. (2016). Continuity through Change: Three Decades of Engaging with Chewong: Some Issues Raised by Multitemporal Fieldwork. In K. Endicott (Ed.), Malaysia’s Original People: Past, Present and Future of the Orang Asli (pp. 57–78). NUS Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1qv35n.7
3. BURROUGH, P. A. (1975). MESSAGE STICKS USED BY MURUT AND DUSUN PEOPLE IN SABAH. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 48(2 (228)), 119–123. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41492116
4. Tariq Zaman, Alvin W. Yeo, Geran Jengan, "Designing Digital Solutions for Preserving Penan Sign Language: A Reflective Study", Advances in Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 2016, Article ID 4174795, 9 pages, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/4174795