The Iban of West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Much recent work in Southeast Asia has demonstrated the value of environmental history. It has contributed to our understanding of how natural resource use changes over time and under diverse local, national, and colonial conditions. In my research at the IIAS, I am building one such history on the Iban in West Kalimantan, using a combination of Iban oral accounts and Dutch colonial reports. By Reed L. Wadley In West Kalimantan, there is a small Iban population, around 13,000-14,000 people. Most of them live in four districts in the Kapuas Hulu regency along the international border with Sarawak, Malaysia. The Dutch colonial presence in this area extended from the 1850s to the early 1940s. Iban oral accounts cover a much wider period, but I am emphasizing those narratives that take place within the colonial years, making use of the extensive oral histories I collected during my previous fieldwork in the same area. My earlier fieldwork, thirty months in 1992-94 and one month in 1996, concentrated on the longhouse communities in one district. The research was ethnographic, but with a special focus on circular labour migration, rice agriculture, and forest resource management.Several topics are prominent in both sources and provide the focus for this research - population change, warfare, natural resource use (particularly swidden farming, forest product trade, and cash cropping), the influence of Kapuas and other sultanates, and Dutch colonial policy and practice aimed at the region. These topics intersect with issues of political economy and ecology as well as issues revolving around the international border.
Native oral histories tend to focus on the dramatic, such as prominent leaders and important battles, but they also provide valuable information on the movements of people and their reaction to Dutch colonial policy. Conversely, colonial accounts provide valuable clues concerning Iban use of natural resources, particularly related to agricultural practices, trade in forest products, and rubber cultivation. They give some historical depth to older practices such as rice farming and furnish insight into the origin of more recent resources such as cash cropping. Both sources, however, have their own unique weaknesses and biases, and I must take these into account as well. The following section outlines a few topics I am covering in this research.
Rice, Rubber and Forest Products
Colonial and subsequently national governments have long branded the Iban as prodigal farmers who overuse land for growing rice, forcing them to make frequent moves in search of better farmland and cutting down old forests in the process. This notion stems in part from colonial biases against and misunderstandings of swidden cultivation. But the Iban might also have been moving frequently as a result of the instability and uncertainty produced by warfare, which in turn was exacerbated by the colonial situation. We know from other ethnographic research that at least some Iban of past and present were settled cultivators who farm their available forest land in a long fallow cycle. We also know that Iban manage forest resources in specially preserved areas. A study of native and colonial accounts can tell us more about past Iban land use practices, how those practices have changed, and what influenced colonial perceptions.
Dutch colonial policy and practice were aimed at controlling native trading patterns. Colonial authorities sought to curb what they regarded as smuggling of trade goods, including forest products. But for the Iban, they were continuing trade along what were long-established native routes. One such route was across the international border which the Dutch and British established between Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo. The colonial and native accounts may reveal further information about native trade in forest products, how it was affected by Dutch efforts to control it, and how the border became significant in the lives of the people it partitioned.
The Dutch also imposed taxes on the local population. In the Iban case it was generally paid in the form of goods and services such as processing ironwood shingles and lumber for colonial buildings. There are Iban accounts of leaders being arrested by the authorities for not paying taxes or refusing to stop raiding. They were brought to regional headquarters and forced to plant rubber as punishment, probably acquiring some essential knowledge about rubber cultivation in the process. In addition, despite Dutch efforts to control the spread of rubber cultivation to smallholders, the Iban quickly adopted rubber after its introduction into the area in the 1920-1930s. The native and colonial sources may tell us more about the Iban reaction to taxes, their adoption of rubber, and their reaction to Dutch attempts to control rubber planting.
Iban have made seasonal use of the extensive lakes within the area, probably for centuries, along with Melayu and other Dayak groups. Iban have also settled temporarily and permanently within or around the lakes from at least the late 1800s, in part as a result of colonial policy. Today these lakes are designated as Danau Sentarum Wildlife Reserve (DSWR) and face many critical challenges including problems of over-fishing, loss of traditional access to lake resources, and conflict between communities and ethnic groups over such access. The colonial records and native accounts may tell us more about how local people used these lakes in the past and how competition over lake resources was structured.
This research presents a rare opportunity to link colonial documents with already-collected oral histories. With additional fieldwork planned, it will further clarify the environmental history created from these two sources. The findings will have important implications for how and why the local landscape has changed over time. This in turn will provide lessons for conservation and development in the area, particularly in connection with the management of DSWR. This research is very urgent as well, because the Iban elders who know the oral history best are now growing older and dying. The window of opportunity for further data collection and clarification is closing fast.
Dr Reed L. Wadley is an anthropologist and an individual research fellow at the IIAS. He can be reached at rwadley@let.leidenuniv.nl, or through his web page at http://www.iias.nl/iias/research/wadley/.