In the early 1990s, the logging roads running through Sarawak’s Upper Baram became the site of a bitter confrontation. Penan families built wooden barricades across red-dirt tracks, blocking bulldozers and timber trucks and facing units of the Police Field Force. As the protests drew international attention, the government of Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud restricted media access and portrayed the Penan as backward people manipulated by foreign activists. International environmental groups offered a different but equally simplified story, presenting them as forest dwellers engaged in a timeless struggle to protect an untouched Eden.
Pete Brosius, an anthropologist who conducted research with the Penan for four decades, spent much of his career complicating both versions. Brosius died July 29th in Athens, Georgia, at 72.
He had already spent years in Sarawak by the time the logging conflict attracted international attention. His research showed that Penan responses to logging varied substantially between communities. Some resisted through blockades. Others negotiated with logging companies or sought compensation and employment.
For Brosius, those differences reflected distinct histories and relationships with neighboring peoples, government officials, traders, and the forest itself. Penan people were making their own decisions under difficult circumstances, rather than simply following the direction of foreign activists.
