Penan Girl Today

the young penan generation today not know what their fate in future and how they want survice in modern world

who are the penan

penan girl victim of sexuality

The report by the national task force set up in October last year also found troubling incidents of children as young as 10 years old being sexually abused by the timber companies' truck drivers when they took the children to school.

help penan people

The Penan people in Sarawak are desperately trying to defend themselves against the advance of the timber and palm oil industries. Since the 60s logging companies have already cleared large parts of their ancestral territory and rain forest and now they are threatened by final expulsion and extermination.

A Penan family meal

Demographics

The Penan number around 10,000; around 350-500 are nomadic ^[2]. The Penan can be broken down into two loosely related geographical groups known as either Eastern Penan or Western Penan, the Eastern Penan residing around the Miri, Baram, Limbang and Tutoh regions and the Western Penan in and around Belaga district ^[3].

They can be considered as a native group or 'tribe' in their own right, with a language distinct from other neighbouring native groups such as the Kenyah, Kayan, Murut or Kelabit. However, in government censuses they are more broadly classified as Orang-Ulu which translates as 'Upriver People' and which contains distinct neighbouring groups such as those above. Even more broadly they are included in the term 'Dayak', which includes all of Sarawak's indigenous people.

whose penan people

The Penan are a nomadic aboriginal people living in Sarawak and Brunei. They are one of the last such peoples remaining.^[1] The Penan are noted for their practice of 'molong' which means never taking more than necessary. Most Penan were nomadic hunter-gatherers until the post-World War II missionaries settled many of the Penan, mainly in the Ulu-Baram district but also in the Limbang district. They eat plants, which are also used as medicines, and animals and use the hides, skin, fur, and other parts for clothing and shelter.

Penan communities were predominantly nomadic up until the 1950s. The period from 1950-present has seen consistent programmes by the state government and foreign Christian missionaries to settle Penan into longhouse-based villages similar to those of Sarawak's other indigenous groups^[4].

Some, typically the younger generations, now cultivate rice and garden vegetables but many rely on their diets of sago (starch from the sago palm), jungle fruits and their prey which usually include wild boar, barking deer, mouse deer but also snakes (especially the Reticulated Python or kermanen), monkeys, birds, frogs, monitor lizards, snails and even insects such as locusts. Since they practice 'molong', they pose little strain on the forest: they rely on it and it supplies them with all they need. They are outstanding hunters and catch their prey using a 'lepud' or blowpipe, made from the Bilian Tree (superb timber) and carved out with unbelievable accuracy using a bone drill - the wood is not split, as it is elsewhere, so the bore has to be precise almost to the millimetre, even over a distance of 3 metres. The darts are made from the sago palm and tipped with poisonous latex of a tree found in the forest which can kill a human in a matter of minutes. Everything that is caught is shared as the Penan have a highly tolerant, generous and egalitarian society, so much so that it is said that the nomadic Penan have no word for 'thank you' because help is assumed and therefore doesn't require a 'thank you'. However, 'jian kinin' is typically used in the settled communities.

Very few Penan live in Brunei any more, and their way of life is changing due to pressures that encourage them to live in permanent settlements and adopt year-around farming[