BLOWPIPES AGAINST BULLDOZERS

It was like one of those nightmare existential questions from Philosophy 101: “Your entire family—though you’ve never met them—is on a train careening toward a cliff. What, if anything, can you do to try to save them from certain death?” In the summer of 1989, that question was beyond classroom quandary. It was a literal nightmare of existence for the tribal peoples of the rainforests of Sarawak, the western state of Malaysian Borneo.

Four thousand kilometres to the north, the Japanese economy was booming. By 1989, its annual imports of tropical timber hit close to 115 million cubic metres, feeding a construction explosion unseen since postwar reconstruction. The majority of this timber (used as cast concrete forms) originated in the pristine rainforests of Sarawak.

Timber was cheap because it was effectively stolen from the communities and peoples who had lived there for 40,000 years. Although customary land rights had been acknowledged by the British Raj, neither the federal nor