Can Dayak tradition help save forest?
Copyright 2001 The Christian Science Monitor August 27, 2001 By Dan Murphy Special to The Christian Science Monitor LAMAN SATONG, INDONESIA – As a boy, Yohanes Terong was either collecting honey, wild rubber, and rattan with his parents or speeding along after a jungle deer with a pack of dogs and a spear. If he neared a kramat – a rock or tree that his people regarded as sacred – he would slow and pay his respects. And he never, ever relieved himself against the trunk of a bungkarai tree, believed to harbor spirits of the dead. “We Dayaks really lived with the forest then,” says Mr. Terong, now in his 50s and the head of Laman Satong village on the border of Gunung Palung National Park in Indonesian Borneo. “But by 1968, that way had started to end,” he says. That’s when Jakarta-backed loggers started to come in and kick the Dayaks off the land. The culture of the Dayaks – a generic term for Borneo’s 200 native tribes – is vanishing, like so many ancient ways. Part of the reason is th
