Hunting and Gathering in S-E. A.

(from Wilder and King)


As rainforests have been cleared and gov'ts aim to (re?)settle and modernise forest nomads, this form of ecological adjustment to the environment has been placed under severe pressure. Many nomads have, in contact with neighbouring farmers, settled down and adopted horticulture or rice agriculture, or have been resettled in gov't land schemes. So forest-based activities dependent on hunting, gathering and fishing are not as widespread to day as they were, say, 30 years ago.

Once agriculture or horticulture was introduced, a vital characteristic of those who remained as hunter-gatherers was that they have never been isolated populations, but have always lived in contact with agriculturalists with whom they have long-standing trade relations and are culturally related (Eder; King). Traditionally nomads were largely self-sufficient but through trade acquired such items as rice, cloth, iron, copper wire, salt, tobacco, beads, necklaces and bracelets, metal earrings, tattooing needles, ceramic jars and brass gongs. In return the hunter-gatherers supplied rattan, resins, wild rubber, medicinalplants, hornbail casques and feathers, beeswax, birds' nests, honey, bezoar stones, gold, antler horns, clouded leaopard skins and rinoceros horns, many of them for a wider Asian market.

Indeed, Hoffman argued that the explanation for nomadic life in Borneo lay in the specialisation in the commercial collecting and hunting of forest products. He went further by proposing that nomadic society arose specifically to service the Chinese market with luxury tropical goods, and to do so hunter-gatherers entered into relations with agriculturalists who served as intermediaries. For Hoffman trade was essential to the nomadic way of life. However, this rather one-sided view has been criticised by Rousseau and Sellato, who contend that, tho nomads trade, so do so more than others and they do not depend on agriculturalists for anything of importance. It was often difficult for the intermediaries to persuade nomads to collect produce because they were often too preoccupied with meeting their own subsistence needs.

Several recent studies have documented the process of sedentarization. Eder (1996), for example, in his work on the Batak, a foraging community of central Palawan in the Philippines, finds that they "no longer earn their subsistence exclusively by hunting and gathering. Rather, trade, shift cultivation, and wage labor have come to be important sources of cash and subsistence, reflecting growing articulation with lowland Philippine economy and society over the past one hundred years." Nevertheless, hunting-gathering still comprised a significant part of Batak economic activity in the 1980s, undertaken on a seasonal basis as other activities, particularly rice agriculture, permitted. For some part of the year the Batak resided in forest camps, tho their main residence was closer to their rice-field; the camps were also smaller in size and much more temporary than in the hunting-gathering past and the range of fauna and flora utilised much reduced. In this transitional phase from hunting-gathering to settled agriculture in which the Batak spread their energies over several activities, Eder argues that their part-time foraging 'is not as remunerative or successful as it once was'.

Borneo nomads traditionally occupied primary forest and formed settlements in caves, lean-tos and raised farm-houses near sources of drinking water. There were also variations in the degree of permanence of camps and settlements. Generally, population densities were very low and nomads were organised in bands from 30-40 people up to 15 or 200. These roamed separately over recognised territories, tho they did not move at random but in a cyclical fashion around a base-camp. From time to time nomads also migrated long distances to new territories.

Nomadic economy in Borneo was based on the felling of the inland sago palm and extracting flour from the edible pith which is eaten with sago and other palm shoots; it is calculated that a band of 25 people needed 20 palms per week for a normal diet, and that, given that a palm stand usually comprises 50 to 100 trees, of which about half are mature, bands would have to move to a new stand every week or two weeks. Other food comprised forest vegetables such as yams and mushrooms, ferns, honey, vegetable tallow, wild fruits like durian and rambutan, and animal protein from wild boar, deer, macaques, civets, squirrels, reptiles, jungle fowl and birds, as well as from fish, molluscs and crustaceans. Hunting of ground animals was undertaken by men using spears and dogs, or traps, while tree-dwelling creatures and birds were killed with poisoned darts from the blowpipe. Women usually gathered forest products near the camp.