Any single nomad band of Eastern Penan uses a small area for its activities (minimum home range), often overlapping with the areas used by neighbouring bands.

It is the opposite with the Western Penan : they tend to occupy vast areas for their activities, areas that are far from each other and that rarely overlap. Neglecting to negotiate an overlap leads to conflicts and disputes (BROSIUS, 1992).

The Penan who have settled on land near the fields of swidden cultivators face many territorial problems with the latter. But there are no problems whatsoever for the Penan who have settled on their own traditional territory (LANGUB, 1991 : 30).

c) Habitat

* Sedentary Eastern Penan live in villages with separate houses for each family. KEDIT gives the example of a village of 87 people (i.e. 13 families with an average of 6,7 people per family) and 2 isolated families (of 4 and 11 members) living nearby. However, half the village had been living there for less than 3 months (1982 : 250). The Sarawak government itself has built long houses in some places to facilitate the settling process ; LANGUB mentions two such long houses, sheltering 140 and 132 people respectively (1991 : 20). A Penan household is usually made up of a couple, several children and their spouses, and grand-children (this can easily make a family of 10) (see LANGUB, 1972, in SELLATO, 1989 : 235).

* Sedentary Western Penan live in long houses that are 5 to 20 km apart and each one has one extended family living in it.

* The Punan Busang have similar communities of about 70 people with separate houses, each sheltering a wide extended family covering several generations -usually 3- (ELLIS, 1972 : 241).

d) Mobility

Every single community, even so-called sedentary groups, are constantly moving all year round.

* The mobile Eastern Penan move about once a month (10 to 12 times a year) 3 to 10 km away from their previous settlement.

* Sedentary Western Penan alternate between living in the long house or permanent hamlet while working in the fields, and staying in temporary camps scattered in the forest while preparing wild sago. Forest dwellings are thus used for 2 to 6 months each year, during the agricultural low season. This is an average of 4 months of mobility per year (BROSIUS, 1992). Also, the 'permanent' hamlet is moved about once a year. This shows how limited the concept of 'sedentary groups' can be.

* The Kereho have a mixed habitat : two thirds of the population live in 5 hamlets, whereas the families living in the other third live in houses scattered around and isolated from each other. One example is the case of 9 families that spent two and a half years in the forest collecting rattan and nuts and preparing wood shingle for trade. In the hamlets, individual houses shelter average families of 8 (from 3 to 16 members) covering 2 to 4 generations. These same families also build isolated huts in the fields for when they are working there (SELLATO, 1989 : 121, 122, 233).

* The Bukat also alternate between living in separate houses in hamlets (official policy in Kalimantan being against living in long houses), in wind-break shelters while collecting forest products, and in field huts while engaged in agricultural work. Whenever possible, they also use caves while living in the forest. Whole families leave the village periodically, between sowing and harvesting, and again between harvesting and the first clearing work, to go and live in the forest, exploit its resources and live off sago. Moreover, families often go on long visits (several months or even several years) to see relatives living far away. So though in theory each household is represented in village political and ritual life, often the village stands empty, most families being away in the forest or visiting relatives (SELLATO, 1989 : 79-80, 83).

3) SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

Mobile Eastern Penan and sedentary Western Penan societies are bilateral (no particular line of descent is favoured). These societies are organized around the elder brothers who each bring together their younger siblings and their spouses. Bukat social organization is similar : each local group (or band) is a village made up of one single extended family.

All communities have 'headmen' ;they are respected but only have more or less authority since the prevalent ideology is primarily egalitarian. The main role of a headman, usually an experienced elder, is to influence consensus, if necessary by convening community discussions for important decisions (Western Penan). However, some groups of Western Penan consider the role of the headman as particularly important ; headship is then an important local institution that can even be compared to the role of aristocratic class in stratified societies (BROSIUS, 1990 : 5). Obviously, some groups have been influenced by neighbouring swiddening populations.

The Kereho do not have any kind of hierarchy ; nuclear families are autonomous units, only affiliated to particular hamlets on a temporary basis. This implies that the membership of any single community is not permanent, and makes it even more difficult to apply government policies aiming at settling large communities in big villages (SELLATO, 1989 : 127).

Whatever the case, instead of a set of rigid laws, far removed from individual concerns, such as the adat as it is found in 'closed farming populations, these societies work on a system of rules of behaviour and interpersonal relationships (SELLATO, 1989 : 248).

Communications between different communities

* Mobile Eastern Penan : different groups have many friendly relationships, contacts and even visit each other frequently.

* On the contrary, the sedentary Western Penan are very independent and there is a lot of competition between different communities ; distant hamlets have few relationships with each other.

In any case, bands or hamlets are autonomous as far as decision-making is concerned and they have no higher authority above the level of the group (SELLATO, 1989 : 182).

Community life is livened up by visits made by nuclear families to relatives living far away. In several societies, scattered families will gather for funerals : a vast Kereho kin group will thus come together for ceremonies to raise funerary posts.

4) SUBSISTENCE ECONOMY

The only feature distinguishing sedentary and mobile groups is agriculture. What varies is the degree to which people are dependent on rice or wild sago for their staple food. Many Penan groups tried growing rice but then went back to exploiting wild sago (in the Baram Valley for example, see ROUSSEAU 1988 : 36).

The economy of mobile Eastern Penan is based on hunting, and collecting wild sago and commercial products. Sedentary Western and Eastern Penan, and the Hovongan, Kereho, Bukat and most of the Punan in Kalimantan (e.g. P. Kelai and P. Busang) are engaged in four major activities : agriculture, sago production, hunting and collecting products for trade (see BROSIUS, 1986, 1990, ELLIS, 1972, GUERREIRO, 1985, SELLATO, 1989).

a) Agriculture

Agriculture was adopted recently and 5% of the Penan are still not engaged in this type of activity. Agriculture mainly provides extra foodstuffs, and only enough for a few months (3 to 6 months...). Generally speaking, the annual cycle includes about one term during which people will bebased in the village and work in the fields, grow and eat the crops. Cultivated plants are dry rice and manioc, the latter occasionally yielding bigger quantities than rice (manioc provides a kind of food close to sago and its cultivation has fewer constraints than rice, which requires supervision and harvesting). However, groups that have been sedentary for longer grow more rice than others. Cultivated areas vary from 1 to 2 ha per family and are cleared as often in primary forest areas as on fallow land. Fallow periods last a long time (10 years).

Wild sago is nevertheless the main staple food, eaten all year round and by all the different groups (KEDIT, 1982 : 252, BROSIUS, 1986 : 174, 176, SELLATO, 1989 : 110). For the Bukat for example, rice only makes up half of their dietary intake (50 to 70% according to Sellato 1986 in ROUSSEAU, 1990 : 247).

But after having been adopted successfully by several communities, agriculture often turned out to be a problem : population increase led to demands for more land. Neighbouring populations (e.g. the Kelabit) were generous at first but then refused to continue giving land. Many Penan families therefore returned to forest dwellings (LANGUB, 1991 : 9).

b) Gathering

The main food resource is wild sago, Eugeissona utilis, which is their main source of starch (and calories), even for sedentary Penan, for the different Punan and for the Kereho, Bukat, Hovongan. Sago palm also provides its shoots, the young leafbuds that are the only vegetables eaten by the Penan. Fungi and fern shoots are also occasionally picked.

Mobile Eastern Penan exploit several species of sago : Eugeissona (the most common one, but not what they prefer), and Caryota no, C. mitis and Arenga undulatifolia (ANDERSON, 1979 : 206, KEDIT, 1982 : 257).

Work teams are small among the mobile Eastern Penan, made up of only one or two nuclear families ; they eat on the spot the sago they have prepared and do not carry it elsewhere (BROSIUS, 1990 : 7, 1992).

The Western Penan, on the other hand, work in big teams, all living together in the same camp (about one third of the community). These camps move according to the available sago. Part of the harvest is brought back to be stocked at the base-camp (BROSIUS, 1990).

The following estimates give an idea of the labour involved in the production of sago starch : one sago palm provides about 4 kg of sago which is enough to feed one person for a week. Two men can produce 50 to 70 kg a day. A group of 25 people will need approximately 15 to 20 sago palms per week, i.e. 800 to 1000 per year. As palm groves have 50 to 100 trees, a group must move on after a week or two : this coincides with what has been said about group mobility (KEDIT, 1982, SELLATO, 1989 : 139, BROSIUS, 1990 :5). When all the sago palms in one area have been exploited, they are left to grow back for several years before people return to use them again (BROSIUS, 1986 : 177).

As far as spatial organization is concerned, it is the palm groves and the strategies chosen to exploit them that determine the layout of paths and the place where camps will settle (always the same place) (SELLATO, 1989 : 171).

c) Access to resources

Groups of Western Penan (and not Eastern Penan) have developed a system of appropriation and management of useful trees on what they call 'reserves', molong : trees belong to the first person who finds them and marks them. Useful trees are fruit trees (durian, wild mango trees, etc), sago palms, but also the big trees that are used for making dugouts. It is a matter of marking and thus putting aside resources for oneself or for the group ; more particularly, this practice is efficient forest management since it aims at protecting plants for the future by marking young trees that will only be used later (see BROSIUS, 1986 :176, LANGUB, 1990 : 5).

d) Hunting

Hunting is an important activity and fundamental for all groups as it is the only source of protein. Fishing is not a significant activity.

The Eastern Penan, whether mobile or semi-sedentary, hunt mainly with blowpipes (with poisoned darts) and kill a wide variety of animals, whether arboreal (macaques, langur, squirrels, hornbills), or terrestrial (chevrotain and boar) (ANDERSON, 1979 : 205, KEDIT 1982 : 257).

The Western Penan, sedentary, the Kereho and Punan Busang hunt with spears and dogs and kill mainly large terrestrial game (Sus barbatus, deer such as Muntiacus muntjak and Cervus unicolor). They also use guns and occasionally blowpipes when large game is scarce (BROSIUS -Penan, SELLATO -Kereho, ELLIS -Punan). Men hunt on average every two days, in groups of two or three, with four to six dogs and cover distances of 10 to 16 km. On each expedition, usually, at least one 30 to 60 kg wild pig is killed (BROSIUS, 1990 : 5). However, boars migrate, and are to be found in different areas every year depending on the abundance and variety of fruit available, its fructification. Thus there may sometimes be many of them and they may disappear completely at other times (BROSIUS, 1990 : 6). But small animals are always available and eaten : squirrels, lizards, pythons, birds...

5) DIET

All these societies (Western and Eastern Penan, Punan, Kereho, Hovongan) eat sago more or less every day and for nearly every meal. Their favourite side-dish is made with sago shoots. Even communities engaged in agriculture only eat rice or manioc a few weeks a year, i.e. until they have eaten up all that was harvested that year (this never takes more than 6 months). Most families eat meat several times a week. The products of sago (flour and shoots) are available at any time, whereas meat supplies vary depending on the trees' fructification (see KEDIT, 1982 : 252).

ANDERSON (1979 : 209) looked at 113 meals (in 42 Easter Penan families) : 70% contained sago, 26% rice, and 4% cultivated banana.

6) TRADE : RELATIONSHIPS WITH SWIDDEN CULTIVATORS

The Penan have important commercial links with swidden cultivators (see BROSIUS 1986, 1990, ROUSSEAU 1977, 1989). They are not totally isolated groups but are on the contrary integrated, directly or indirectly, in a network of political and economic relationships extending over the whole island (SELLATO, 1989 : 158).

The two sub-groups, Eastern and Western Penan, live in the centre and have contacts with a good dozen ethnic groups (Kelabit, Berawan, Kayan, Badang...) (BROSIUS, 1991 : 138). But their hamlets or camps are always set up far from the villages of swidden cultivators (1 to 4 days transport). Swidden cultivators build their long houses at the mouth of rivers and thus control access to Penan camps upstream and guarantee their exclusive rights over the exchange of Penan products (BROSIUS, 1990 : 6). The relationship between the Penan and swidden cultivators is half way between symbiosis and exploitation and is based on the trade of forest products intended for outside markets (merchants on the coast and the Asian continent).

This trade has been going on for centuries and the products involved vary at different times and in different places : damar resins, rattan, eagle-wood, wild rubber, bezoar (in the stomach of some mammals), bills of hornbills, deer antlers, and rattan mats and baskets. Eagle-wood was very imporant in the 1970s, but supplies have since been depleted ; the price of damar fell quite low recently. Rattan is still the main product, whether exported from the area as raw material or not. A few families, for example, may set up small satellite camps to collect rattan (BROSIUS, 1986 : 178).

Food supplies are mostly provided by men (meat and sago), whereas basketwork for exchange is usually done by women (especially now that the wild products no longer have much commercial value). Among some groups, e.g. the Punan Busang, men make baskets and women make mats.

An important fact that ought to be underlined is that, in these exchanges with swidden cultivators, forest populations never get foodstuffs in return for their products but goods such as tobacco, metal (raw), textiles, salt and even batteries : the Penan are self-sufficient for food (BROSIUS, 1990 : 7, 1991 : 136).

Traditionally, patron/client relationships linked nomads to the long house populations who protected them against the raids of head-hunters (hiding the location of 'their' Penan) but monopolized trade. But if the Penan thought they were being ill-treated, they just moved off. At present, the relationship is dominated by the indebtedness of the Penan to swidden cultivators (BROSIUS, personal communication), relationship that the latter actively encourage so as to retain a clientele. Also, it enables swidden cultivators to increase productivity of the Penan while directing the latter's efforts towards those products that are most in demand on the markets downstream (SELLATO, 1989 : 206, 207).

7) CHOOSING A WAY OF LIFE

There is no doubt that all communities, both Punan and Penan, have made a deliberate choice to use as few agricultural products as they can, and this is not due to some sort of technical (or mental !) deficiency. An old Penan quoted by LANGUB (1990 : 1-2) sums this up neatly :

"As a forest nomad, I find it difficult to understand why I should waste time clearing the forest or growing food when sago and other edible plants are available, just standing there waiting to be picked and protected for our children and their children. Why should I waste time breeding animals when so many are available in the jungle and I can hunt them ? And why waste time growing cash crops when the jungle produces as much rattan as I would ever want to cut ?"

As mentioned above, settling down is now a general process, but does not in the least imply a switch to agriculture, even less to rice cultivation. In other words, rice cultivation never comes accross as having been the aim people were trying to fulfill when settling down to sedentary life (SELLATO, 1989 : 155). In fact, many Penan think that manioc and banana cultivation around a fixed camp, combined with hunting and gathering, is an easier life than only living off the produce of hunting and gathering. The Penan are adopting a mixed economy, flexible and reliable, a system combining in different ways rice, sago and manioc, safer than relying on rice alone. This system also allows time for them to develop professional standards in collecting forest products for trade (see SELLATO,1989 : 221-226).

Besides, several nutritionists, such as ANDERSON (belonging to the Sarawak medical services, 1979) and KIYU, (Divisional medical officer of the 7th division of Sarawak, 1982), underline the dangers of agriculture : severe malnutrition can be a consequence of adopting agriculture if access to sago and game is no longer possible (either because there is too much agricultural work to do or because traditional territories have been reduced). Specialists tend to insist rather on the absolute necessity of protecting the Penan's territorial rights and encouraging sago cultivation instead of pushing them to grow rice ; more especially, they advocate 'the right to choose' as far as their way of life is concerned, particularly when these populations adopt sedentary life and agriculture (ANDERSON, 1979 : 212-214).

Settling down can sometimes provoke conflicts with local swidden cultivators with whom they thus compete for land. But Punan territory is in the highlands, beyond the areas occupied by swidden cultivators, and these problems therefore only arise in a few places : swidden cultivators encroach on some Penan areas when clearing forests, but they also empty other areas as they drift down into the valleys (see SELLATO, 1989 : 158).

Possible competition with swidden cultivators does not give any idea as to what the impact of forestry might be on Penan lands. In some cases the communities may be protected by the fact that they live in rugged and remote areas. This factor is hardly ever taken into account : the Penan are professional gatherers and exploit the remote forest areas in the interest of their country ; these areas are thus put to good use in a way that is less destructive than logging would be.