INDONESIA
Hunting for the Market in West Kalimantan
The Iban of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, hunt primarily for their own subsistence needs. Occasionally, however, when the opportunity arises, hunters augment their cash incomes by selling captured animals, either alive or dead. Chinese merchants buy the more profitable parts of certain animals, which are made into medicines to be sold elsewhere.
By REED L. WADLEY
Although rice cultivation in upland and swamp swiddens provides most of the Iban's food, numerous forest products supplement and broaden the daily diet, including animal meat obtained by adult male hunters. The Iban value the meat of the bearded pig (Sus barbatus) over all other game, but they hunt other animals such as barking deer (Muntiacus muntjac) or sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) if there are no bearded pigs. Boys hunt small animals like birds and squirrels which they will often cook up on the spot as impromptu snacks. In addition to the meat, Iban use other animal parts. The leg and arm bones of certain primates make good knife handles, the dried skins of others become drum heads, and the antlers of deer are hung on the longhouse walls. In association with appropriate dreams, some oddly shaped antlers may become religious amulets.Hunting especially for the market is infrequent. In a year-long study of the hunting patterns in an Iban longhouse, I recorded only one instance of a hunter taking pig meat to the nearby market town, and that was because he had killed two pigs at the same time. He divided the first with the other community members as is required by local custom (Wadley, Colfer, and Hood 1997). However, there are other cases of market hunting beyond this study. In a good example of market awareness, an Iban man from another longhouse caught a deer alive in a trap. Rather than kill the animal outright and then try to sell the meat, he went to the nearby logging camp and enlisted the help of a Muslim qualified to slaughter the animal in the ritually appropriate manner. The meat then fetched a higher price among local Muslims than it would have among local Christian Dayaks.
Iban hunters have long been aware of the market for animal parts other than meat. In the past, men journeyed to the interior of Borneo in search of valuable forest products and to hunt Sumatran rhinoceros for their horns. The horns would eventually end up in Chinese herbal medicines. Today the rhino is virtually extinct (Caldecott 1988), but other animals have taken their place in the market. The Iban know Chinese merchants (mainly across the international border in Sarawak, Malaysia) will pay good prices for certain animal parts, and they know those parts are most often used in Chinese medicines. For example, a potion made from the foetuses of pregnant deer (including barking deer and mousedeer) is supposed to help women in childbirth. (However, I have seen hunters discard such foetuses during butchering because of the prohibitive distance to potential buyers.)
Other medicines are made from pangolin (scaly anteater) scales (for back pain), deer forelegs and antlers (for children to become strong and for long life respectively), and python faeces (for stamina). An ancient animal product is the bezoar stone found in the gall bladders of bears, porcupines and certain monkeys. It is used as a medicine against various ailments, an antidote against poisons, and supernatural protection against evil spirits. (Archaeologists found one such stone weighing 433 grams and ringed with gold in a 1715 Spanish shipwreck off the Florida coast; see http://www.melfisher.com/artifact.html.) The gall bladder of the Malayan sun bear is prized for the gall it contains, but merchants insist that it be accompanied by the feet of the animal as assurance of its authenticity. (Bear paws are also an ingredient in medicines and soups.) Despite their knowledge of what the Chinese do with these animal parts, the Iban in this area tend not make or use those medicines themselves although urban Iban in Sarawak often do so. Non-medicinal trade in animal parts occurs as well, but to a lesser extent. In one case, two Melayu men visited a number of Iban longhouses wanting to purchase deer antlers. They apparently cut up smaller antlers and then made fake ones with numerous tines or points to sell to rich people in Pontianak.
Publicity stunt
Trade in animals captured alive is another facet of the Iban's involvement with market hunting. As with animal parts, this ranges in both profit and legality. The occasional infant macaque monkey caught accidentally in a trap or an infant palm civet captured while farming may be sold locally as pets. More tragically, hunters may shoot orangutan or gibbon mothers to capture their infants alive, although sometimes the infants are wounded or killed in the attempt. They sell captured infants to merchants across the border in Malaysia or down the river to Pontianak. Those merchants then sell the animals through various connections to Singapore, Taiwan or elsewhere. One unfortunate captive orangutan even found itself used as a publicity stunt during the recent political campaign in Indonesia (Jakarta Post 1999).
Although not strictly hunting, both subsistence and market fishing deserves some mention given the important fisheries within the nearby Danau Sentarum National Park (formerly a wildlife reserve). Most likely for centuries, native people (both Dayak and Melayu) have fished in the extensive lakes during the dry seasons when the water levels were low and the fish congregated in the remaining pools. Fishing for home consumption among the Iban continues, but has been increasingly surpassed by market fishing. Melayu fishermen derive most of their incomes from selling dried and smoked fish within Indonesia, and a small number of Iban and other Dayak merchants have grown comparatively wealthy from selling fish and turtles across the border to Malaysia. In one transaction I witnessed, a local merchant bought 111 large hard-shelled lake turtles and nine large soft-shelled turtles from some Iban men. All were alive but would eventually be killed and eaten; they were mainly sold to other Iban without access to the lakes, but could fetch five times the local price if sold alive in Sarawak.
One consequence of market hunting and fishing has been an apparent decline in game and fish populations. Local prices for fish have risen, and fish are increasingly unavailable in local markets, having been sent elsewhere for sale. The Asian arowana (Scleropages formosus), a large ornamental fish valued by Chinese, is close to local extinction as a result of over-fishing. Both game and 'medicinally-important' animals face habitat disruption from logging, oil palm plantations (with one project slated at 47,000 hectares), and agriculture as the human population grows. The expanding road network cuts off breeding populations of gibbons and orangutans and provides hunters with easier access to game (Wadley, Colfer, and Hood 1997; Caldecott 1988). The continuing economic downturn may also mean more market hunting as local men, who would be otherwise employed in Malaysia or Indonesia, seek avenues to earn much needed cash. *
References
Caldecott, J.
Hunting and Wildlife Management in Sarawak
Gland and Cambridge: IUCN, 1988
Jakarta Post
Upset Orangutan Upsets Campaign
The Jakarta Post Online, 31 May 1999.
Wadley, R.L., C.J.P. Colfer, and I.G. Hood
Hunting Primates And Managing Forests; The Case Of Iban Farmers In West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Human Ecology 25: 243-271, 1997.
Dr Reed L. Wadley, an anthropologist, is a research fellow at the IIAS. He can be reached at rwadley@let.leidenuniv.nl.