Talk on how to preserve Kelabit highlands

http://www.easterntimes.com.my/index.php?news_id=1&news_content=6518

Talk on how to preserve Kelabit highlands

By Paula Chang
4/4/08

KUCHING: A talk entitled “The Living Landscape - Documenting and Preserving The Cultural Sites of The Kelabit Highlands”, jointly organized by Angkatan Zaman Mansang (AZAM) Sarawak, the Museum Department and the Sarawak Heritage Society, was presented by Sarah Hitchner at the Tun Abdul Razak Hall yesterday.

Sarah is in Sarawak for a reason. “I plan to become an applied anthropologist specializing in local, national, and international forest resource policy,” she said.

As stated in her published article for ‘Ecological and Environmental Ecology’, an open-access sholarly journal, she picked Kelabit Highlands for her research plainly because of its location which suited her interest in transboundary conservation as Pulong Tau National Park borders the Kayan Menterang National Park in Indonesian Kalimantan.

She shared with the public her research methods, the threats to the sites and suggestions to better preserve them.

With her grant money, she had purchased 7 GPS units for the villages there. Together with training and the GPS units, Sarah hoped that the Kelabit people would be able to continue to document their findings after she left.

She showed pictures of a Kelabit burial site which was destroyed by the vehicles from a logging company.

According to Sarah, “the villagers pleaded to these people to not to proceed but they (the drivers of the vehicles) proceeded anyway.”

Other threats to these sites included natural phenomena, archaeological excavations, local use of megalithic materials, local collection of cultural artifacts (such as beads), looting or vandalism by outsiders and development.

“Although the Kelabit people there want some development, they are afraid that it will be too commercialized.” She said.

“They have told me that they do not want Bario to be the next Mulu,” She added.
As for the villagers who had collected these artefacts, a lot of them said that they had to do it before these get destroyed, she told the audience.

Regarding the preservation of the sites, she said that sometimes the Kelabits were criticized for neglecting the sites. But she found out that they left the sites the way they were in order to preserve them.

The current efforts for protecting the sites include the International Timber Trade Organisation’s (ITTO) sponsored expansion of the Pulong Tau National Park and local initiatives taken by the villagers and guides. The local JKKKs have also resubmitted their proposals to the US Embassy to fence up these sites.

“I’m hoping to just get things started,” Sarah said, adding that much more work would need to be done to fully conserve the Kelabit highlands.

Johnny Lagang, a member of the Kelabit community, had intended to attend this talk but had missed it entirely due to other commitments. He told Eastern Times that he was interested in the talk as he believed that “Bario is getting worse because of logging.” He, however, managed to have Sarah’s email address so that he could keep himself updated on her findings.

As a doctoral student in the University of Georgia, USA, Sarah is currently attached to the Institute of East Asian Studies in Unimas. While in the village of Pa’ Lungan, she stayed with her adopted mother, Sinah Nabun, and adopted father, Nabun Aran. She was also given a beaded necklace by Sinah besides various Kelabit beaded bracelets.

Since the start of her research in the Kelabit highlands, she had submitted the following preliminary reports on her work to the Institute of East Asian Studies, UNIMAS and the Sarawak Museum - ‘The Role of Fruit Trees in Kelabit Agroforestry’, ‘The Living Kelabit Landscape’ and ‘Mapping The Living Landscape’.
Also present at the talk was Ipoi Datan, the assistant director of the Sarawak Museum Department who has been keeping abreast with her works.