APFT Pilot report - English - B - THE BATAK, ISLAND OF PALAWAN

B - THE BATAK, ISLAND OF PALAWAN [36]

In the area where the Batak live, the forest covers rather rough terrain and is still relatively unspoilt. Their hunting, fishing and gathering traditions thus survive and represent approximately 50% of their total production.

They are semi-nomads, alternating residence on the swidden plot, in the forest and along the rivers. Their territory is a valley and its surrounding slopes, about 240 km². High mobility between the village, their permanent base (about 15 families), camps in the fields and in the forest (only part of the group, sometimes up to half).

It seems that over one year a Batak group spends three months overall in the village, three and a half in forest camps and over five months in dwellings close to their fields. Also, one or two weeks are spent visiting other communities.

* Small-scale swidden agriculture provides the supplementary tubers and cereals for their diet.

* Hunting is very important.Wild pig (Sus celebensis), squirrel, peacock, various birds and snakes. But game is beginning to dwindle because they sell it to farmers in the plains or share the take if the latter lent them a gun.

* Fishing, together with mollusc and shellfish gathering is done in rivers and on the coast (which is never very far).

* An important part of their means of subsistence come from contacts with neighbouring populations : half their food is provided for by their own activities (hunting, fishing, gathering, and agriculture), the other half is obtained through wage labour and the sale of forest products.

- Sale of forest products : honey, meat, Agathis resin, rattan.

- Wage labour : they work in the fields for neighbouring ethnic groups (especially the Tagbanua), to help clear the forest or harvest the crops (this includes coffee picking).

* Staple food is provided by hunting and by their own crops : 60% of carbohydrates (tubers, cereals) are provided by their own crops and by exchanges, and 10% by gathering activities ; 80% protein come from game, 10% from fish, but only 5% from domestic animals.

Carbohydrates

Protein

cereals, cultivated
50%
game
80%
cereals, bought or exchanged
30%
fish (from rivers and sea)
10%
tubers, banana, cultivated
10%
domestic animals
5%
wild tubers
10%
salted fish
2%

dried fish
3%

* However, the Batak are in a situation of cultural decline because they are loosing their specific characteristics through increasing numbers of mixed marriages and through loss of their economic independence.

[36] CADELIñA, 1988; EDER, 1987

Carbohydrates		Protein
cereals, cultivated	50%	game	80%
cereals, bought or exchanged	30%	fish (from rivers and sea)	10%
tubers, banana, cultivated	10%	domestic animals	5%
wild tubers	10%	salted fish	2%
		dried fish	3%