Being and Becoming: Embodiment and Experience among the Orang Rimba of Sumatra 9781785331602

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Being and Becoming

Being and Becoming Embodiment and Experience among the Orang Rimba of Sumatra

 Ramsey Elkholy

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2016 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2016 Ramsey Elkholy

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Elkholy, Ramsey, author. Title: Being and becoming : embodiment and experience among the Orang Rimba of Sumatra / Ramsey Elkholy. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015045879| ISBN 9781785331596 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781785331602 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Kubu (Indonesian people)—Social life and customs. | Kubu (Indonesian people)—Religion. | Phenomenological anthropology— Indonesia—Sumatra Classification: LCC DS632.K78 E55 2016 | DDC 305.899/22—dc23 LC record available at hip://lccn.loc.gov/2015045879

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78533-159-6 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-160-2 ebook

For My Father

Contents

 List of Figures and Illustrations

ix

Foreword by Tim Ingold

xi

Preface

xiv

Acknowledgements

xviii

Introduction

1

Part I. Intersubjectivity Chapter 1. Into the Field: The Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang

19

Chapter 2. Sociality and the Negotiation of Self and Other

47

Chapter 3. Touch and the Mutual Constitution of Selves and Others

69

Chapter 4. Forest, Village, and the Significance of Movement

86

Part II. Body and World Chapter 5. A Journey to Kemumu

113

Chapter 6. Becoming a Hunter

131

Chapter 7. Becoming in the Forest

150

Chapter 8. Shamanism and the Textures of the Universe

166



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Chapter 9. Melangun

197

Epilogue

222

Orthography and Glossary

228

Bibliography

234

Index

247

Figures and Illustrations

 Figures Figure 1.1. Huts and family units at Sungai Gelumpang.

25

Figure 1.2. Kinship diagram of settlement at Sungai Gelumpang.

28

Figure 1.3. Map of Orang Rimba distribution in Sumatra.

30

Figure 5.1. Cross-cousin marriages between Sungai Kemumu and Sungai Gelumpang.

121

Illustrations Illustration 1.1. Huts at Sungai Gelumpang: Ajang standing with three of his five wives and children.

44

Illustration 1.2. Living conditions at Sungai Gelumpang: Talaman sitting on floor with sisters and infant while women cook on lower level.

44

Illustration 1.3. Ajang with prospective son-in-law Yayo standing behind to his right (Talaman and older half-brother Dedi standing to Ajang’s left).

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Illustration 2.1. Tampong holding a captured turtle.

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Illustration 2.2. First trip to Sugai Sumai: Tampong with family and Ajang’s third wife Timpo (standing).

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Figures and Illustrations

Illustration 2.3. Nighttime in the forest: Ajang, third wife Timpo, and children prepare for sleep.

67

Illustration 4.1. Malay traders paying a visit to the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang. Clockwise from right to left: Tampong, Manja (partial view), Kirai, Nina, Dedi, Silingkup, Talaman, Ajang, Malay trader, Malay trader.

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Illustration 4.2. Tampong in Sumai River.

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Illustration 5.1. Yayo (far right) reunites with his relatives at Sungai Kemumu.

122

Illustration 6.1. Camp members converge to inspect a hunter’s kill. Children touch and examine the carcass with particular interest.

147

Illustration 6.2. Women at Sungai Kemumu digging for edible tubers.

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Illustration 6.3. Preparing a meal of mouse-deer

148

Illustration 6.4. Orang Rimba hunters at Sungai Kemumu: Hassan, Sijuk (lying down), and Hussin. Talaman’s younger brother (squatting middle) was adopted by Ajang’s brother Hassan. 149 Illustration 7.1. Besunyi examining a fresh kill under the supervision of his elder brothers Nina, Silingkup, and Manja (left to right).

157

Illustration 7.2. Children playing in a forest camp.

158

Illustration 7.3. Women and children in a forest camp: children roam freely in the surrounding forest.

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Illustration 8.1. Elderly Orang Rimba Dukon (shaman).

194

Foreword

Cc What is it with hunters and gatherers? In a world of seven billion human inhabitants, more than half of whom are living in towns and cities, the proportion of people who still draw a livelihood from hunting and gathering, on ancestral lands inhabited by their forebears since time immemorial, is vanishingly small. Yet their lives are a source of unending curiosity and fascination, not least to the majority who have never set foot in the kinds of environments—arctic tundras, arid deserts and tropical rainforests— where they are still to be found. Why should we care about them so much? Every human life is precious, yet there is a disturbing incongruity between our concern for the survival of indigenous hunters and gatherers on the one hand, and on the other, the equanimity with which we seem prepared to accept the slaughter of millions of people by vicious and authoritarian regimes around the world, whether directly through tanks and bombs or indirectly through wholesale environmental destruction. How can it be that in the neoliberal endgame, wherein ordinary lives have become the disposable currency of geopolitical machination in a fight to the finish over the planet’s ever-dwindling resources, some lives are considered so extraordinary as to warrant special protection in the name of common humanity? And why should such extraordinariness be conferred upon those whom history has treated with the greatest of contempt? To pose the question like this sounds callous, even shocking, as indeed it is. I do so only to expose the inadequacy—hypocrisy even—of our usual way of answering it. This is to claim that at some deep level, installed through the evolution of the species, hunters and gatherers are us. To peer into their lives is to see us as we once were, many thousands of years ago, when the great movement that we call culture or civilization was in its infancy. In the founding charter of modernity, hunter-gatherers are our one remaining link to an origin. Were they to disappear, the link would be irrevocably severed. We would be cast out, once and for all.



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With good reason, anthropologists have vigorously protested against this portrayal of hunter-gatherers as living fossils. For it serves merely to disguise the long history of their oppression, dispossession and even genocide under the cloak of an original condition, to infantilize them as beings that, though anatomically ‘modern,’ have scarcely embarked upon the road to culture, and ultimately to fill an existential void that we feel in our own estrangement from what we call the natural world. Our pious concern for the survival of hunters and gatherers turns out to be but the flip side of nostalgia for a lost past, a balm to assuage the guilt we might otherwise feel over their historical extermination. We honor them for their innocence, for their respect for nature, for their stoicism in the face of adversity, for their traditional wisdom, and find in this a crumb of comfort amidst the despair of our own condition, as we see our own dreams of civilization wrecked on the rocks of war, famine, and environmental catastrophe. What should we make, then, of the account of the secretive lives of Orang Rimba people, hidden away in the most remote recesses of the Sumatran rainforest, which Ramsey Elkholy offers us in this astonishing study? At once evocative, profound, brilliant, and deeply moving, this is anthropological writing at its best. As we get to know the key characters in the account—as Elkholy got to know them in his fieldwork—we can readily empathize. Surely, they are us; and had we been born and raised in the rainforest, and known little else, we could be them. We can recognize in their lives the universal themes of tenderness and loss, joy and sorrow, hope and despair. But here, unfettered by the constraints and conventions that come with property, wage employment, formal education, institutionalized religion, and sedentary accommodation, these passions seem to run riot, much like the profusion of life in the forest itself. In the intimacy and volatility of the Orang Rimba’s bonding with one another and with the forest and its creatures—in the way their lives appear to run seamlessly into each other—do we not get a glimpse, at once poignant and unnerving, of life in the raw? There is something almost primatological in the account, as if social relations were performed in the moment, formed and dissolved on the fly, with no other register to play on than that of bodies encrusted with the odorous sediment of their immediate contact. Eyes grown used to life in the shade of the forest canopy, with their large, dilated pupils, project a sense of open innocence, unaccustomed to the greed and chicanery of the outside world. What we learn from Elkholy’s beautifully written account, however, is that life in the forest could not be further from the romantic or Arcadian idyll we might imagine it to be. It is no more idyllic for human beings than

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it is for the myriad non-human creatures that surround them, vocally if not always visibly. On the contrary, it is difficult and demanding, often dangerous, conducive to almost constant anxiety and existential risk. But we cannot read this book and still wonder whether, in the end, we should even care about the Orang Rimba, and other hunter-gatherers, when their numbers are so small. Of course we should! Not, however, because they are among the few surviving exemplars of our evolutionary childhood, before the loss of innocence, but for the very same reason that we should care about the world we live in and all of its inhabitants. To work with people like the Orang Rimba is, in a sense, to take the pulse of the world and to find it seriously unwell. If they are us, then their anxious existence must be ours too. And this book should leave us worried, not just for the Orang Rimba, but for us all, and for the planet we share. Elkholy leaves us in his hotel room in Jakarta, his fieldwork completed, precariously suspended between the world of the forest which he had shared with his Orang Rimba hosts and an unknown future in Europe and the United States. Outside there are tanks on the streets, droughtridden forests are in flames across Southeast Asia and people are suffocating from the smoke. The uncertainty and confusion that Elkholy experienced at that moment speaks to us all. That it is both uncertain and confusing, and must be faced with humility and forbearance, is what the Orang Rimba, through Elkholy’s masterful account, can teach us about the world. Tim Ingold University of Aberdeen April 2016

Preface

Cc This research was carried out over the course of twenty months from January 1997 to October 1999. Centuries of persecution amid a hostile Sumatran interior along with an enduring fear and mistrust of outsiders have rendered the Orang Rimba among the least studied people in the world. Early archival reports depict an elusive forest people that avoided all contact with the outside world and practiced a form of “silent barter,” whereby forest products were left in an area on the fringes of the forest. Local villagers would retrieve these forest products and leave products of their own such as metal spearheads, machetes, and salt—the two sides never coming face to face (Boers 1838: 288; Forbes 1885a; Van Waterschoot 1915: 221; Van Dongen 1931: 549; Loeb [1935] 1989: 281–82).1 This form of silent barter gradually gave way to more enduring trade relations facilitated through trusted Malay intermediaries called jenang, who served as mediators between the Orang Rimba and the outside world. In some areas these intermediaries held exclusive trade relations with the forest dwellers, who were often required to pay tribute in the form of forest products in exchange for their protection and political autonomy (Sandbukt 1988b: 113). This “feudalistic” style relationship continued until the last decades of the twentieth century in some areas, and even today there are many Orang Rimba groups that have limited contact with outsiders, aside from a few trusted villagers who serve as primary trade partners. As a consequence of their centuries of isolation, archival sources are extremely limited, particularly insofar as reliable firsthand accounts are concerned. Moreover, the few references that appear in the Dutch archives reveal a common confusion that further impedes the reliability of these early accounts, namely the usage of the vague nomenclature “Kubu”—an exonym often loosely applied to all non-Islamic forest-dwelling populations living in Jambi and South Sumatra Provinces. This has led to ongo-

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ing ambiguity in the ethnographic and archival literature regarding the identity of Sumatran forest-dwelling populations and, in particular, who the Orang Rimba are as an ethnic group. The most common mistake made in these early reports has been to conflate the 15,000 or so shifting swidden cultivators living in the penepelains between the Batang Hari and Musi River systems with the Orang Rimba (Sandbukt 1982: 9). These groups practice a mixed economy of swidden agriculture, hunting, and forestproduct collecting, but their economic orientation is primarily toward the land and full-time cultivation, much like the many “hunter-gardener” populations inhabiting the interior of Borneo and interior Amazonia.2 Aside from the scant references and occasional mention that can be gleaned through a judicious reading of the archival literature and the few published articles in current news media, the work of Norwegian anthropologist Øyvind Sandbukt stands out as the only reliable ethnographic source on the Orang Rimba (see Sandbukt 1982, 1984, 1984b, 1988a, 1988b).3 Today their total population is estimated at approximately 3,800– 3,900 individuals (Sandbukt personal communication April 2015), with more than one third of the total population located within what is now the Bukit Duabelas National Park (the area in which Sandbukt conducted his research). The remaining Orang Rimba populations are distributed in smaller concentrations throughout Jambi and South Sumatra Provinces, while remnant populations and new migrants are also found in West Sumatra and Riau Provinces (see figure 1.3). Although all groups share a common origin, their aggregate population can be divided into two main groups, each recognizing a common history of kinship affiliation. The first consists of those populations found in Jambi Province (along with those aforementioned new migrants and remnant populations in Riau and West Sumatra Provinces) and who refer to themselves as “Orang Rimba”; while the second group consists of those populations found in South Sumatra Province and the southernmost pockets of Jambi Province. These groups have historically referred to themselves as “Orang Hutan,” but like the Orang Rimba, both self-referents translate literally as “forest people,” according to their respective regional dialects. Orang Rimba will be used hereafter to denote both of these populations. Today logging and plantation companies have maintained a steady presence in the south-central Sumatran interior and continue to make inroads into the Orang Rimba’s once isolated forest enclaves. In addition to logging and plantation activities, a continual influx of Javanese transmigrants have cleared large swaths of forestland for their swidden fields and also participate in illegal logging activities. As a consequence, the Orang Rimba’s traditional forests have been fragmented or destroyed and most groups are finding themselves coming into regular contact with the



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outside world. This has resulted in an increased dependency on the outer market economy, where items such as coffee, sugar, cooking oil, radios, flashlights, and western style clothing can be purchased. In South Sumatra Province, where traditional forests have been greatly diminished, groups are more integrated into the encompassing Malay society than their Jambi counterparts. But despite their ever-increasing contact with the external Malay society, most Orang Rimba populations, particularly in Jambi Province, have been able to maintain their autonomy as a distinct ethnic group, for reasons that will become apparent in the chapters that follow. This study was conducted in one of the last remaining forest enclaves in northern Jambi, near the border of Riau Province. Trying to gain the acceptance of a shy people that had for centuries habitually eschewed almost all contact with the outside world was the primary challenge I faced in commencing this project. To gain initial access to the Orang Rimba, I started my research among a settled group that had become somewhat habituated to the presence of outsiders. It was through their initial acceptance that I was able to take advantage of wide reaching kinship networks that would later enable me to shift my residence to the forest. Amid the current sociopolitical and environmental milieu of south-central Sumatra, this research represents one of the last opportunities to study these forestbound groups. While the study draws heavily upon hunter-gatherer studies and contemporary themes in ecological anthropology, I expand on these discourses by incorporating  a phenomenological approach. My research methods were adopted primarily in response to pragmatic concerns while in the field. Due to my lack of language in such a remote and altogether foreign setting, I would find myself experiencing a new sensory world opening up before me; and these new impressions would greatly influence my fieldwork methodology and, later, my approach to ethnographic description and analysis. Looking beyond those language-based forms of culturally mediated meaning, the main aim of this study is to uncover the underlying processes of embodied action and perception that serve as the experiential basis for the creation of cultural meaning. For this I take a “person-centered” approach, treating the individual as a creative and ever-dynamic locus of awareness; one that is, at the same time, situated within the relational contexts of a lived-in world (Ingold 2000). By doing so I allow those “sensuous” aspects of my fieldwork experience to influence the ethnographic data I collected and the writing strategies applied, so that my own “becoming” in the field is paralleled with Orang Rimba ways of becoming-in-the-world. While I hope this book will be a worthy contribution to the study of hunters and gatherers and, more generally, to

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the ethnography of South East Asia, an equally important aim of this book is to put forth a more “sensory-based” methodology; one that can serve as an example of how a phenomenological approach can be applied to the fieldwork enterprise and, equally, to the process of ethnographic description and writing.

Notes  1. Archival sources indicate that this archaic form of trade may have persisted in some areas right up until the early decades of the twentieth century—perhaps among those groups without access to Malay jenang, or groups that wished to trade with less trusted Malays (see Van Waterschoot 1915: 221; Adams 1928: 299; Winter 1901).  2. These forest-dwelling groups often follow similar residential patterns to the Orang Rimba and other tropical hunter-gatherers, but it has long been presumed, since Schebesta pointed it out in the early decades of the twentieth century, that their residential mobility is more evasive in nature and not in response to resource distributions (Sandbukt 1982: 9). The Indonesian local and central governments continue to group these populations together under the same title (or in official government documents under the title Suku Anak Dalam, literally “Tribes of the Interior”); and even anthropologists, in recent years, have been unable to avoid this same confusion. Not only has this rendered the Orang Rimba among the most obscure and least studied people of the Indonesian archipelago, but it has also led many of these same contemporary scholars to regard hunting and gathering on the island of Sumatra as a secondary adaptation (see for example Bellwood [1985] 2007: 132; Persoon 1989; Endicott 2000).  3. In 2008 an American named Steven Sager presented a Ph.D. dissertation to the Australian National University in Canberra (see bibliography). To my knowledge he has not published any further work.

Acknowledgements

Cc The writing of this book took place intermittently over the course of four years from my home in New York. Having been away from an academic environment during much of this period I cannot adequately recall all the people that undoubtedly helped shape my thinking. However, looking back at the University of Manchester’s Department of Anthropology and the postgraduate setting there brings back clear recollections of a vibrant academic environment; one that surely contributed to the development of my ideas. In particular I would like to thank Tim Ingold, who continued to supervise me after taking up a new position at the University of Aberdeen. Many of my ideas are inspired by his work, as well as by our countless discussions, both when I was a graduate student and beyond. In Indonesia I would like to thank the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) for allowing me to conduct my fieldwork under their auspices. I would also like to thank the late Parsudi Suparlan from the University of Indonesia for serving as my Indonesian advisor during my stay in the country and extending his hospitality to me during my infrequent trips to Jakarta. For my initial introduction to the Orang Rimba during my first trip to Sumatra I owe thanks to the Indonesian Department of Social Affairs (Depsos). More generally, I would like to acknowledge all the people I had the good fortune to cross paths with as a curious traveler during my first trip to Southeast Asia, particularly those Penan in Sarawak and Jahai in Peninsular Malaysia who extended their hospitality to me and allowed me to reside among them. My time in their company and in their forest camps undoubtedly prepared me for the greater challenge of doing extended fieldwork in Sumatra. Finally, I would like to thank the Orang Rimba for taking a chance and allowing an inquisitive outsider into their private lives. In their company I learned much about the fundamental qualities of human relationships and experienced the personal rewards



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of collective living. These attributes, in some form or another, have found their way into the fabric of my own life, and for this I owe them the greatest debt of gratitude.

Introduction Situating Subjectivity

 The ambiguous role of ethnographer, occupying a liminal position vis-àvis two different and often disparate cultural idioms, has been an enduring theme throughout the history of anthropology, from Malinowski to the present (see Asad 1986). Postmodern discourses have well documented the problematic between provisional interpretations in the field and definitive presentations in text, direct experience and discursive presentations, authorial voice and the voice of others (Crapanzano 1986). Notions of “textuality” and “discursivity,” largely championed by Geertz in the 1980s, served as precursors to the postmodern critique of the 1990s, where the notion of “culture as representation” pervaded most discussions, both implicitly and explicitly. The kinds of knowledge sought were symbolic, representational and interpretive; and one gained insights into the lives of others not by simply gaining acceptance or establishing a kind of “communion” with one’s informants—a prerequisite that Geertz declaratively reduced to “part of one’s own biography” (1983: 70), but by “searching out and analyzing the symbolic forms—words, images, institutions, behaviors—in terms of which … people represent themselves to themselves and to one another” (Geertz 1979: 228). Throughout the ensuing era the emphasis on culture as representation and authorial voice often overshadowed concerns for quality in ethnographic description, and the importance of direct experience increasingly faded from anthropological discussions. Representation was often taken to constitute experience and experience, in turn, was reduced to language, discourse, and textual presentation (Csordas 1999: 183). As a result, the most important kinds of self-knowledge were often omitted from the final text and anthropological writing became increasingly removed from the lives of those it purported to describe (Hume 2007: 143).

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While gaining insights into another’s “inner life” will always be an interpretive issue, it is less a textual problem than an epistemological one. Fieldworkers have traditionally maintained a tenuous balance vis-à-vis their informants, establishing a close enough rapport to gain “inside” knowledge with which to formulate “thick descriptions” that can convey to readers a sense of “being there” (Geertz 1977), while maintaining a composed spectator’s distance so as not to lose one’s carefully cultivated sense of objectivity. The hermeneutical task of translation has traditionally superseded the real possibilities of exploring the potential of appropriating native ways of seeing and doing, so that one’s own horizons might be broadened or cultural capacities enhanced (Asad 1986: 160). In fact, “going native” was (and still is to some extent) regarded as taboo for ethnographers for a variety of reasons—both ethical and practical, but also perhaps not least due to the pretense of objectivity, a sense of which could be jeopardized should the fieldworker lose his/her objective stance vis-àvis the “other.” Such a methodological posture is further fostered by a paradigmatic assumption that subjective experience produces a kind of knowledge that is inferior to the kinds of knowledge produced in the “hard” sciences under controlled settings. This belief, in large part, has fueled a false necessity of achieving an objectivism that is thought to reveal itself through the adoption of rigid analytical models that often take on a programmatic life of their own, however removed from those experienced realities on the ground. Strathern notes how, “analytical language appears to create itself as increasingly more complex and increasingly removed from the ‘realities’ of the worlds it attempts to delineate …” (1988: 6). Described worlds often become captive to the analytic model—“the creation of more data to give it more work”—and the model itself becomes the subject of inquiry rather than the method of inquiry (Ibid.: 6–7). Society, to be sure, is not a text that communicates itself to the skilled reader (Asad 1986: 155) and translating fieldwork experience is not a matter of deciphering an exegesis or “reading culture over the shoulders” of those studied. On the contrary, fieldwork produces a kind of authoritative knowledge that is rooted to a large extent in subjective, sensuous experience (Pratt 1986: 32); and to locate the “ethnographic present” in the abstracted discursive text requires a movement toward a more “sensual” methodology (Stoller 1989), toward the kind of self-knowledge that has traditionally been only ancillary or, at best, complementary to the kinds of discursive styles on which ethnographic writing has traditionally placed its credibility. Culture not only resides in various forms of symbolic representation, but also in the bodily processes of action and perception that serve as the experiential foundation for those representations. The various

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bodily resources we call upon during the course of our communication with others—sights, sounds, scents, touch, movement, and their various combinations—form the experiential basis of intersubjectivity and, as such, serve as the ontological foundation for the creation of cultural meaning (Finnegan 2002). Everyday corporeal experience, then, does not vitiate anthropological understanding but rather enhances it, pressing us to replace facile notions of absolute knowledge and objectivity with approaches that can accurately capture and convey the subjective and often transient character of human social life. Ideas and models we employ to make sense of the world should be tested against the whole of our experience (Jackson 1989: 14), so that scientific aims, moral sensibilities, and common sense can be validated and continually tested and reaffirmed against our own bodily and sensory involvement in the field (compare Hume 2007: 143). Perhaps the greatest challenge in applying phenomenological approaches to descriptive ethnography lies in adopting methodologies that reflect and capture the actual day-to-day, moment-to-moment processes through which we engage with the world. The objective of “sensuous” fieldwork, then, is to get at the multiplicity of cultural meaning in which we are perpetually immersed (compare Csordas 1999); to capture the richness of experienced realities so as to comprehensibly bring the exotic or foreign into the fore of our own lived experience, thereby expanding our own horizons and enabling us to give the reader a more vivid sense of other experienced worlds. Eliciting these kinds of embodied knowledge does not require a special set of techniques but, rather, involves the adoption of more “body-centered” methodologies. By inserting a phenomenological sense of embodiment into the ethnographic enterprise the notion of bodily and sensory involvement with others is raised to the methodological level (Csordas 1999d: 184–86) and the body becomes a means of “knowing” in the field. Western epistemic rationality is replaced by more intuitive, sensory-based modes of inquiry and the notion of a “thinking observer” is replaced by a more connected “aware participant” (Hart 1997). Discernible cultural patterns and forms can be viewed from the “bottom-up” by examining the interactions between people and the wider environment that comprise the precursors and content for those forms. In such an approach human behavior is seen relationally, as part of a wider field of dynamic interactions wherein individual action and perception is always situated. Despite the growing interest in the physical body in contemporary sociocultural anthropology there still remains an inherent tendency to formulate the person in discrete terms, as separable from the wider social world from which personhood and identity are born and in which

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they continually develop. Such a synchronic view of the person appears to be, in large part, a figment of scholarly imagination, stemming from a western cast of mind that bifurcates individual experience from the experience of others and from an implicit assumption that selfhood is always constituted in distinction from other selves. The idea of a bounded individual as set apart from other individuals, and of individual experience as set apart from the experience of others is, in fact, a bizarre notion to many non-Western peoples, not least to the Orang Rimba among whom I lived. A tacit assumption underlying this study is that persons—both in the ideational and corporeal sense—are constituted through their active engagement with others and undergo continual development through their habitual interactions in the world. An important objective, then, is to examine the dynamics of these various interactions and, in so doing, uncover the underlying processes that constitute the basis for more enduring cultural forms, such as the development of sociality, the creation of cultural meaning, the development of specialized skills and, more generally, those culturally patterned uses of the body and senses that lead to unique modalities of being-in-the-world. Realizing these aims within the context of fieldwork involves, among other things, collapsing dualities of self and other, and discerning through direct experience with others and the wider environment the inherent dynamics in the boundaries of corporeality itself. As a receptive entity, the body becomes the experiential fulcrum through which meanings can be created and “co-produced” during the course of interactions with other bodies and, as such, serves as a valuable means of gaining knowledge in the field. Through my own bodily involvement in the field I would gain access to aspects of Orang Rimba life that may otherwise have been inaccessible, enabling me to participate in the unique and salient ways in which their sociality is constituted. Also, by learning how to use my body while in the forest I would gain profound insights into the great extent to which the body transforms itself through its kinetic interactions with the non-human environment.

Toward More Body-Centered Methodologies Once we accept the use of the body as a methodological tool in the field we open ourselves up to the realization that others may not be as inaccessible as hitherto presumed. We also open ourselves up to the notion that we can gain access to the lives of our fieldwork informants not only by eliciting meanings through language and concepts, but also through those more direct bodily and sensory interactions that come into play, and often

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guide, the meaning-creation process. The fact that humans share much of the same sensory, emotional, and cognitive capacities already provides a strong basis for high degrees of experiential overlap. Thus, however disparate people’s biographical histories and ways of seeing the world, there is often a common experiential foundation on which to build as people intuitively take for granted that they have much in common. If this were not the case, cultural assimilation (and fieldwork for that matter) would not be possible at all. As Hanks points out, “actors have different perspectives, attach different significance to objects, and moreover … they common sensically recognize this fact” (1990: 44). As “meaning-seeking” beings there is often an incontinent pull toward reaching common understandings, where meanings emerge through our shared experiences within a common social context. Thus while people bring their own sensibilities and dispositions to any social situation, there is often “a convergence of individual projects because of their common origin in the social world” (Whitford 1982: 77). Attaining the appropriate level of subjective awareness within the context of fieldwork, then, involves tuning in to one’s surroundings and tapping into processes already in motion, so that one’s involvement in the field becomes the primary source through which meanings are created and co-constituted. These meanings, in turn, crystallize into discernible impressions or “events” and become the content of the written text. Stoller (1989: 54) summarizes this idea succinctly when he writes of the need to seek a mode of expression “in which the event becomes the author of the text and the writer becomes the interpreter of the event who serves as an intermediary between the event (author) and the readers.” Wikan (1993: 194) echoes this idea when she writes of the need to go beyond language to create a “resonance” with one’s informants, and to try to convey that resonance in the written text so as to invoke a similar resonance with readers. Thus while the tension between positivist knowledge and “empathic understanding” remains an interpretive issue, we can approach our subject matter with the understanding that mutual meanings arise and are dynamically constituted through our involvement with others, often through our common perceptions within a shared social space. Moreover, it is through these most basic and spontaneous forms of meaning-creation that the most potentially valuable forms of ethnographic knowledge are produced. Despite the intuitive means through which these kinds of sensorycentered and body-centered knowledge are elicited, maintaining a steady balance between two often disparate cultural viewpoints and ways of relating to the world is a methodological stance rarely completely achieved (as Malinowski’s diary revealed in harrowing detail). What is important,

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however, is maintaining a degree of receptivity to situations in the field so that common understandings can be forged, thereby opening up the possibility for enriching one’s own cultural capacities and ways of seeing the world. In my case, the primary challenge in achieving these ends involved gaining the acceptance of a shy people who had, for centuries, habitually eschewed almost all forms of contact with the outside world. Establishing a steady rapport was not only a part of “my own biography” and a necessary prerequisite for doing proper fieldwork, but the process in and of itself proved to be an ever-evolving medium through which the course of my fieldwork would take shape. When I arrived in Indonesia in the winter of 1997, I could speak what can best be described as intermediate level Bahasa Indonesian. It was during my original six-month visit two years previously that I gained a basic working knowledge of the language, and I would further increase my proficiency by undertaking an intensive one-month course upon my arrival in the capital city of Jakarta. However, those people living in the Sumatran interior were primarily ethnic Malays and spoke an archaic Malay dialect, while the Orang Rimba—who used this dialect to interact with their Malay neighbors—spoke still yet another unintelligible dialect of their own. Needless to say my first months in Sumatra were spent in a dizzying fog of incoherence, an experience many fieldworkers share during their initial introduction to the field. During this time I would rely mostly on non-verbal modes of social interaction within the closed confines of the Orang Rimba’s domestic camps, engaging primarily in the silent observation of behaviors, speech patterns, body language, and other non-verbal cues, i.e., focusing on what my informants were doing rather than saying. This more rudimentary kind of direct sensory interaction with the Orang Rimba—and later to the physical environment I was living in—guided the course of my fieldwork; and those methodologies I adopted and employed along the way were less a conscious undertaking than a response to the exigencies of my particular fieldwork circumstances.1 Grounding my inquiries in the lived experience of the Orang Rimba, this study attempts to synthesize the immediacy of bodily and sensory experience with more enduring anthropological themes in order to lay the groundwork for a more relational ontology; one that can better elucidate the dynamic and multifaceted character of human social life and development. I begin with the underlying premise that human life can only be viewed within a broader nexus of relations; that human behavior and accompanying processes such as thinking, acting, perceiving, and learning must be situated within the relational contexts of people’s practical engagement with their lived-in environments (after Ingold 2000). Starting with the person immersed in the world, human agency—thoughts, feel-

Introduction

 7

ings, volitions, and intentionality—arises within the context of interactions with others and the wider environment in which these interactions take place. The individual is then seen as a dynamic and ever-evolving locus of creative growth, undergoing continual development through its interactions within a wider nexus of relationships. From this follows a dynamic view of human social life and development that can only occur through our emplacement in the world and, conversely, a view of the world that takes on form and significance by being lived in, rather than through the attribution of meaning by a disembodied mind, or by being constructed in accordance with a preordained mental design (Ingold 2000). It is through our ongoing interactions with both the human and nonhuman environment that the world takes on significance; and those embodied skills and habitual patterns of behavior required to live successfully in the world are appropriated through our incorporation into the world and by maintaining a characteristic pattern of day-to-day activities. Through everyday actions such as perceiving, learning, and remembering, both the body and senses come to be fashioned in relation to the lived-in world over the course of a lifetime; and it is through such basic forms of embodied experience carried out in every day contexts that salient developmental processes are revealed. By exploring various forms of bodily and sensory experience, both within the context of interpersonal relations and through interactions with the wider forest environment, I examine how sociality and social life is constituted, maintained, and reproduced among the Orang Rimba. On the intersubjective plane, I pay particular attention to nonverbal forms of bodily and sensory interaction in order to shed light on the underlying processes at work in the formation of key social bonds and relationships. In Orang Rimba society most interactions are carried out in the “open” context of forest camps, where shelters are erected without walls and in close propinquity to one another. Such open living arrangements engender particular ways of interacting, where personal activities are carried out in plain view of others and distinctions between public and private domains of experience are often collapsed. I treat perception and bodily interaction as constituting processes, whereby sociality becomes shaped and “co-constituted” through being-with-others and maintaining close bodily proximity within the context of the domestic camp. Sociality is also constituted through interactions with the non-human environment. In a hunting and gathering society where resources are widely dispersed, intimate knowledge of large expanses of the landscape is required to make a living; and this leads to a strong sensory-cognitive and emotional identification with vast areas of geographic space and the features found therein. By maintaining a trajectory of movement in the

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forest, the Orang Rimba develop an intricate familiarity not only with the topographic features of the landscape, but also with a wide host of resident deity manifestations on whom they depend for their wellbeing and survival. Through continual interactions within the context of the forest meanings come to be discovered, reproduced, and transformed in relation to human activities (compare Tilley 1994: 25), and those impressions that people take away from the forest feed back to condition notions of self and society. Just as humans imbue those features of the landscape with agency and meaning, so too the senses, through their ongoing reciprocal interplay with the forest, come to be conditioned by the environment. In an everchanging “living” environment persons must attend to the right things in the forest, to continually monitor its resources and learn to identify its “affordances” for survival. Starting at an early age the relationship between cognition, perception, and the environment is established, and the senses continue to undergo development over the course of a lifetime of interactions with the forest. Through everyday interactions in the forest the body also comes to be conditioned in highly specific ways. Much like bodily and sensory interaction with others, I also treat bodily kinesthesia as a constituting process whereby habitual patterns of movement are acquired in relation to the nonhuman environment and continue to develop over the course of a lifetime. Specifically, I am interested in how certain skills and capacities are learned and come to be embodied through people’s ongoing engagement with the forest. To live in a tropical forest environment requires the development of a highly specialized skill set. These skills become appropriated as “embodied knowledge” and are expressed in various bodily techniques and kinetic patterns that are employed during the course of day-to-day activities. Through activities such as hunting, gathering, forest product collecting, and everyday movement in the forest, the vectors of the body come to be set in response to the rigors of the environment, resulting in a high degree of bodily-kinetic conditioning that is unlike the typical bodily regiment required for the maintenance of a modern urban lifestyle. Drew Leder highlights the increasingly “decorporealized” character of existence in modern society: Western society is typified by a certain “disembodied” style of life. Our shelters protect us from direct corporeal engagement with the outer world, our relative prosperity alleviating, for many of us, immediate physical need and distress. Via machines we are disinvested of work that once belonged to the muscles. Technologies of rapid communication and transportation allow us to transcend what used to be the natural limits imposed by the body. (1990: 3)

Introduction

 9

Drawing out such a contrast aptly illustrates the varying degrees of bodily attunement people must undergo to live successfully in their diverse environments and invokes an appreciation for the demands that a foraging lifestyle imposes on the body. Eliciting this kind of embodied knowledge requires careful study of the body’s development in relation to the multifaceted characteristics of a tropical forest environment. By maintaining habitual patterns of movement and perception, the nonhuman environment feeds back and further establishes the parameters of the body’s kinesthesia and its sensory-motor repertoire. The forest thus serves as more than a mere backdrop against which social life unfolds. Body and environment become co-constituted through people’s habitual patterns of action and perception, and these affects are discernible through the body and expressed through characteristic patterns and ways of acting on the world. As Polanyi (1969: 147–48) writes, “every time we make sense of the world, we rely on our tacit knowledge of impacts made by the world on our body and the complex responses of our body to these impacts.” Body and World are thus mutually engendering phenomena, and through their codependence, become self-propagating processes. In this regard, the body, the senses, and the wider lived-in environment can be seen in a properly “ecological” context; constituting a coherent field of relations, their interactions can be studied as a relational system. Working and living among hunting and gathering people in an open environment is particularly instructive, where the body and senses are in continual engagement with others and the wider forest surroundings, and where the acquisition of those specialized skills necessary for survival highlights the extent to which the body transforms itself in relation to the non-human environment. The environment acts as a conduit for development, not only imposing its particular characteristics on the body and senses, but—as Orang Rimba ethnography will show—the forest also serves as a nurturing ground for thought and as a wellspring for ideology. The focus of this study, then, is not on culturally or symbolically mediated meaning per se, but on the underlying processes of embodied action, perception, experience, and “inter-experience” that serve as the basis for the creation of cultural meaning. Rather than rooting my explanatory framework in the workings of the mind, I move away from a cognitivist understanding of “culture from the neck up” (Csordas 1990: 186) toward a more body-centered methodology, taking as my starting point the “bodyin-the-world.” I treat the body as a dynamic and ever-receptive locus of awareness; one which transcends its own corporeity through the senses and through its habitual patterns of action and movement in the world. As a precursor to all experience, the body serves as the fundamental mediating point between thoughts, feelings, sensory-motor awareness, and

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Being and Becoming

the wider environment in which people habitually engage. This rather expanded understanding of the body (and corporeal practice more generally) has come primarily by way of French phenomenology, and I now take a moment to lay out a general framework for its application in the chapters that follow.

The Perceiving Body Mauss’s “Les Techniques du corps” (Techniques of the body) is generally regarded as the precursor to the contemporary interest in the body in anthropology. Mauss regarded the body as both the original object upon which the work of culture is carried out and the very instrument with which that work is achieved (Mauss 1934). His early formulation of habitus is envisaged as the sum of culturally patterned uses of the body in society—an idea later developed by Bourdieu (1977) who was greatly influenced by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Husserl. Such an approach to the body stands in stark contrast to the notion of a passive and malleable tabula rasa upon which society imposes its codes and representations (for example, see Douglas 1973). The body, instead, should be posited as an active center of action and awareness, and a source of agency and intentionality that in-habits the world and is constituted through its engagement with others and the wider lived-in environment. Culture and personhood are then best understood as an existential condition in which the body is the subjective source and intersubjective ground of experience. In phenomenological terms, the body is the primary vehicle and locus of our being-in-the-world and, as such, not an object to be studied in relation to culture, but the very existential ground and embodied manifestation of culture (Csordas 1999d: 181; 1990: 5). “Culture,” then, becomes shorthand for a wide range of overlapping and intertwining aspects of our existence—from thoughts and ideas that we employ to act on the world, to specific bodily usages and embodied skills (Barth 1995: 66). With this in mind, I approach Orang Rimba ethnography with a wide scope, placing equal emphasis on interpersonal dynamics and those dynamics operating between people and the non-human environment—the underlying theme being those culturally patterned uses of the body that come into play during the course of these interactions. The language of phenomenology is compatible with descriptive ethnography, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of the lived body. According to MerleauPonty, the social world should not be constructed or formed, but described through our immediate bodily and sensory experience in the world. These pre-personal links comprise the ontological foundations

Introduction

 11

onto which all human experience is built and, as such, serve as precursors to our subjective experience in the world. Perception, then, is best regarded as a prerequisite process—not as a deliberate taking up of a position or intentional act, but as the “background from which all acts stand out, and [which] is presupposed by them” (Fischer 1969: 31). The world that is experienced through the body and senses, then, is posited in contradistinction to the world that is conjured in the mind through thought and imagination. The kind of immediate visceral experience we have with our bodies runs counter to the reflective processes that detach subject from object, whereby corporeal experience becomes thought about the body, or the experienced world becomes “thought about the world” (Ibid.: 212–13). Descartes and Kant both detached consciousness from the world by presuming that a subject could only apprehend its existence by first experiencing itself as existing in the act of apprehension. While accounting for self reflexive states of the mind and subjective experience more generally, such a view obscures the possibility of a direct, pre-personal connection with the world. Cognitive science has had a similar tendency to create a disembodied relationship between individuals and the wider experienced world, and the result has been a separation of perceiving subjects from the sensorial world in which perceptions are born and given content. A phenomenological approach recognizes that the lived-in world exists only in relation to the experiencer and vice versa; and this body-world contingency, as Merleau-Ponty (1962) showed, is facilitated by and made tangible through acts of perception. Human existence, then, is not predicated on thoughts or cognitive formulations, but on our direct apprehension of the world by way of the senses. Decarte’s cogito ergo sum could thus be reformulated: “I perceive therefore I am.” We are rooted in the world through innate processes of perception and the most rudimentary aspects of our being-in-the-world are grounded in a pre-personal awareness that arises through our immersion in an environment. To perceive is to already embody certain characteristics of the world. That is to say, perception must be “perception of”—vision of tangible objects, olfaction of discernible odors, aurality of sound, tactility of physical objects, and so forth (compare Merleau-Ponty 1962: 203). So our bodily actions in the world are always movements of perception and intentionality casting out into the world; movements that are fueled by the innate motility of human consciousness (Bohm 1980) and grounded in our direct bodily experience in the world. As perception begins in the body, I follow Merleau-Ponty’s lead and treat the body as the very instrument of perception.2 Paraphrasing Merleau-Ponty, Drew Leder notes how linkages between body and environment and the perceived cogency of

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the experienced world all rest upon fundamental linkages from within the lived body: My two eyes integrate their powers to form a unified vision when, for example, I gaze at a vase. As I reach out to pick it up with my hands, vision is woven together with motility and touch. This synergy of bodily power does not require the assistance of conscious will or intellection; it is a prethematic accomplishment. (1990: 87)

Ingold echoes this notion of a generalized bodily perception, emphasizing how the senses, rather than working in isolation and combined at higher levels of cognitive processing, operate “as aspects of functioning of the whole body in movement, brought together in the very action of its involvement in an environment” (2000: 262). Any one sense “homing-in” on a particular object of attention “brings with it the concordant operations of all the others” (Ibid.). So rather than treating the senses as distinct registers of perception, our sensory experience in the world can be seen as a generalized corporeal activity, diffused throughout the body and the wider lived-in environment. The boundaries of the body are thus open and porous, continually absorbing stimulus through the senses and their collaborative bearing on the features of the world. Experiencing a tropical rainforest aptly illustrates the notion of a unified bodily perception. While walking in the forest the landscape unfolds to the senses as a vast tapestry, made up of many seen and unseen components; and these sensorial elements are often not reducible to one sensory modality or another. Through the body’s innate receptivity to the world and the concordant workings of the senses the forest is experienced in a generalized way, as an “aura” or “atmosphere.” The body also exhibits its own kind of memory during the course of movement and navigation through familiar settings, as it continually orients itself in relation to the world it encounters. By maintaining habitual patterns of action and movement, certain features of the environment become incorporated into the body’s own kinetic patterns and responses—or into what Gaston Bachelard called our “muscular consciousness” (1964: 11). The body thus has its own kind of innate “intelligence”, and those habitual ways of acting on the world become integrated aspects of the body’s kinesthetic and sensory-cognitive repertoire, undergoing continual refinement throughout the course of a lifetime. These embodied forms of knowledge and experience are achieved not through conscious learning, but through performance and routinization, whereby behaviors and actions become embodied through continual practice and repetition (compare Bloch 1990). Once expertise is acquired, such habitual patterns of

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Introduction

action and movement become integrated aspects of the body and thus part and parcel of one’s sense of being and self. The body can thus be regarded as an open repository for embodied knowledge and skills, most of which are not “transmitted” through structured teaching but, instead, are “cultivated” or “grown” into the body (Ingold 2000: 356) during the course of people’s habitual engagement in the world. It is with this dynamic understanding of a receptive, everdeveloping, perceiving body that I approach the following chapters. I situate social practices, bodily usages, and ways of perceiving and acting on the world within a broad framework of dynamic interactions, emphasizing the many intertwining aspects of experience that constitute Orang Rimba culture and social life. Broad themes such as sociality, the creation of cultural meaning, the development of specialized skills, and corporeal practice more generally are examined within the context of Orang Rimba life with the wider aim of drawing out those more universal processes at work.

Organizing the Chapters The book is divided into two parts—Part I: Intersubjectivity and Part II: Body and World. These divisions are somewhat arbitrary, but serve the heuristic purpose of organizing the chapters along loosely circumscribed areas of inquiry: the first focusing primarily on social interactions between persons (including the Orang Rimba’s interactions with their Malay neighbors), and the second on interactions between humans and the forest. For the Orang Rimba, and hunter-gatherers generally, human-environment relations take on a truly interactive quality much like intersubjective relations between people. As such, both analytical frameworks are inherently social in nature, as the following chapters will bear out. Part I is comprised of chapters 1–4. Chapter 1 is written in a somewhat traditional anthropological vein: describing the environmental setting of rural Jambi Province, recounting my arrival to the field, and introducing some of my main fieldwork characters. I write mostly in the first person to situate myself within the ethnography, as I chronicle the slow and challenging process of finding my feet in a new social setting. This chapter sets the stage for chapters 2 and 3, where I examine some salient aspects of Orang Rimba sociality by focusing primarily on non-verbal modes of social interaction. In chapter 2 I illustrate the ways in which individual perceptions become public and how self-other boundaries are continually encroached and negotiated within the context of the domestic camp.

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In chapter 3 I continue with the theme of sociality by examining tactility and other “corporeal” modes of social interaction. I take a somewhat pragmatic approach to tactility and the sense of touch, treating both as an innate behavioral need and as integral components of our biosocial makeup as a species. I explore tactile interactions within the context of mother-infant bonding and child development, along with the role of tactility in a child’s education of the forest environment. I also examine some important ways in which touch cements key social relationships through selective grooming and through sleeping in groups, or “social sleeping.” In chapter 4 I look at the various ways in which Orang Rimba identity and worldview is constituted vis-à-vis the external Malay society. I show how ontological security is achieved and maintained by following paths of movement in the forest. For centuries evasive mobility has been a strategy employed to avoid the depredations of their dominant villagedwelling neighbors. Maintaining high residential mobility in the forest has thus enabled the Orang Rimba to effectively manage the tenuous balance between themselves and an often hostile encompassing Malay world. So movement serves not only as a means of gaining knowledge about the forest’s resources and other people but also, through its continual practice, affirms their staunch opposition to village ways. Movement embodies the ethos and collective values associated with forest dwelling and I argue that movement, ethnic identity, cultural continuity, and the continuity of the forest are mutually dependent phenomena and, as such, are regarded as one and the same for the Orang Rimba. In Part II (chapters 5–9) I shift my focus from intersubjectivity to human-environment relations. I construe the forest not as a static environment where food is sought, or an inert backdrop set apart from the sphere of human activities. Instead, the forest is conceived as an animate, interactive life-world that feeds back to condition the body and senses in highly enduring ways. Through the body’s innate receptivity to the animate and inanimate agencies in the environment, the forest comes to serve as a conduit for personal growth, development, and change. As such, I treat both humans and forest as mutually engendering processes. In chapter 5 I chronicle my first journey to a remote forest region in northernmost Jambi Province, where I expanded the scope of my fieldwork by establishing contact with and residing among a new Orang Rimba group. Through these longer stints of fieldwork in the deep forest among highly mobile groups, I gained a deeper appreciation for the kinds of “tacit knowledge” that are required to make a living in the forest. By examining the salient connections between vision, cognition, and bodily kinetics, I show how the body and senses become attuned to the features and nuances of the forest environment through even the most quotidian

Introduction

15

Cc

of actions such as walking. Movement in the forest also conditions the body’s muscular development and sensory-motor responses and establishes the foundations for the acquisition of more specialized skills such as hunting, which I turn to in chapter 6. Few studies have brought to light the high degree of bodily and sensory conditioning that is required to hunt effectively in a tropical forest environment (but see Puri 2005). By following in the footsteps of experienced hunters and undergoing a kind of apprenticeship of my own, I examine some of the salient ways through which the body transforms itself in relation to the non-human environment and how the senses undergo continual attunement to the ever-changing characteristics of the forest. Hunting also constitutes the core of a nomadic foraging phase and I argue that its continued practice carries the same ideological significance for the Orang Rimba as movement and stems from the same nexus of ideals and core beliefs associated with forest dwelling. In chapter 7 I explore the salient links between memory, pre-personal experience, and the perception of the environment. Edward Casey’s (2000) phenomenological study of memory and Chris Tilley’s (1994) Phenomenology of the Landscape have greatly influenced my thinking and approach to this area of inquiry, and I use their work as an entry point for this chapter. Following Tilley (1994: 40), I argue that the forest serves as the fundamental “reference system” through which individual biographies and social identities are anchored. I show how recollective experiences are “embedded” in the Orang Rimba’s perception of the environment and how personal biographies and memories take on enduring meanings, and are preserved, by being rooted in the tangible features of the forest. These embodied forms of “meaning-creation” point to more general, often pre-personal, processes of appropriation, and I show how these processes become embodied at a very young age through early interactions with the environment, when the forest first opens up to the burgeoning senses of the Orang Rimba child. In chapter 8 I shift my focus to those more esoteric modalities of perception that occur through shamanic practice. Shamanic visions represent continua of experience from the quotidian to the esoteric, and those perceptions that take hold of the shaman arise out of a wider nexus of ideas or “ecologies of mind” (Bateson 1972) that find their source in everyday interactions with the outside world. I illustrate the various ways in which exogenous forces influence the Orang Rimba’s perceptions of the forest and how these external influences play out during the course of shamanic rituals. Trance-induced visions provide a window into the unconscious mind and often reveal those subliminal and overt fears that the Orang Rimba experience in their ongoing interactions with the wider Malay society. As the dynamics of their interactions with the outside world change

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over the course of time, so too new meanings are woven into the forest and given expression in shamanic trance imagery. In the final chapter I examine the Orang Rimba mourning practice of melangun through an ethnographic account of a death that occurred during my final weeks in the field. The tragic events I witnessed would greatly shape my understanding of Orang Rimba notions of death, separation, society, and belonging. I emphasize the more spontaneous aspects of mourning that often occur within more structured ritual frameworks and contrast these genuine displays of grief with more codified displays of emotion. I highlight the co-constituting nature of emotional experience by showing how mourners become uncontrollably drawn into the ebb and flow of activity and, in so doing, open themselves up to the wider tide of emotion through which genuine feelings of grief are born and given expression. The chapter progression and part divisions also serve a narrative purpose. My fieldwork began among a settled group, where I focused primarily on language learning and gaining a basic understanding of Orang Rimba culture and social relations. I later moved to the forest, which greatly enhanced the quality of my knowledge by enabling me to situate my data and the accompanying analysis within the proper context of the forest. So the layout and general progression of the chapters, in many aspects, reflects the evolution of my own growing understanding in the field—a journey I invite the reader to join as the following chapters unfold.

Notes  1. It should be noted that my access to Orang Rimba females was somewhat limited (for reasons that will be explained in chapter 1), and the majority of my social interactions took place among Orang Rimba males. As a male interacting primarily among other males, the content of my data is undoubtedly skewed.  2. This is where Merleau-Ponty’s and Mauss’s notions of the body differ. While Mauss treated the body as an instrument through which the work of culture, by way of the self, is carried out, Merleau-Ponty regarded the body and self as intertwining phenomena, leading him to the conclusion that it is the body itself that perceives.

PART I

INTERSUBJECTIVITY



Chapter 1

Into the Field The Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang

 Bureaucracies and Beginnings On 10 January 1997 I arrived in Jambi, the capital city of Jambi Province. The logistical procedures involved in doing fieldwork in Indonesia amount to a convoluted bureaucratic process to which any foreign researcher can attest. One begins at the national level in Jakarta where documents are prepared by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), the governing body overseeing all foreign research in Indonesia. Once all official research documents and permits are received they must be delivered to all relevant government, police, and social welfare offices. These offices also prepare official letters for their provincial counterparts who, in turn, prepare letters for their smaller offices at the district level. All documents must be delivered by hand, and upon meeting with certain government officials, researchers may be required to undergo impromptu interviews (occasionally regressing into “polite” interrogation). The first week or so in the country is thus invariably spent running around from office to office at a frenetic pace, searching for marked areas on the map of Jakarta, as if on a wild treasure hunt. Common obstacles include arriving at an office an hour before closing to find that the relevant persons had all gone home for the day; waiting for unspecified periods of time for an official to return to the office from lunch; learning that certain documents cannot be stamped by a particular office until a preliminary stamp is first received from a different office located on the other side of

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Being and Becoming

the city; and so on. These seemingly routine occurrences only contribute to the looming sense that one is running around in circles with no end in sight. The purpose of such stringent bureaucracy is to account for and monitor the movements of foreign researchers, both as a safety precaution but also as a “national security” measure from the point of view of the central government in Jakarta.1 The reality experienced on the ground, however, is very different. Once one has proceeded beyond the district level and letters have finally trickled down to local village polities, one enters into rural Indonesia, a world in which one’s personal wellbeing cannot be accounted for by any government agency or individual. Such was the case when I arrived at the small village of Pasir Mayang in Bungo-Tebo Regency, one week after my initial arrival in Jambi. Not long after my arrival I found myself surrounded by a small crowd and some minutes later the village chief was summoned. Having just awoken from his afternoon slumber, he came out to greet me wearing only a cloth sarong wrapped around his waist and a Muslim kufi cap on his head. After exchanging brief introductions, I in Indonesian and he in a Malay dialect that was new to my ears, we proceeded to the business at hand. He appeared genuinely perplexed as he sorted out and attempted to read through my small stack of documents. Having little or no prior experience dealing with foreigners—let alone a foreign researcher coming to study the enigmatic Kubu (a pejorative term used by villagers and the wider Indonesian society to refer to the Orang Rimba)—I could see he was uncertain as to how to go about assisting me. I easily identified with his bewilderment after having experienced the rigors of Indonesian bureaucracy firsthand. I was, therefore, quick to guide him through the final step, which involved writing a letter of introduction to the local timber company management office just across the Batang Hari River. Most of the forested areas inhabited by the Orang Rimba along the upper reaches of the Batang Hari and its smaller tributaries fall within the logging concession of P.T. IFA and other affiliate companies of the Barito Pacific Timber Group—Indonesia’s largest timber and wood processing conglomerate. After one failed attempt at establishing contact with an Orang Rimba group along the main road connecting the towns of Bangko and Maura Bungo, where they occasionally gather to sell their forest goods, I decided to try my luck with a settled group residing within this concession area. Although this did not fit my romantic vision of doing fieldwork in a tropical forest, I felt at this early stage that it was more important to remedy my more immediate problem of gaining their acceptance. In a sedentary living context, I figured, the Orang Rimba would be more accustomed to interacting with outsiders than their forest-dwelling

Into the Field: The Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang

 21

counterparts. Moreover, I saw this as a good “jumping in” point, particularly since I needed several months to gain a rudimentary understanding of their language, which is more closely related to local village Malay than modern Indonesian, the country’s official lingua franca. After spending an uneventful hour or so in the shade of a coconut palm surrounded by village children and adults who had come to greet or simply look at me, the last letter was finally given to me, hand-written on a small piece of yellow notebook paper. I was now prepared to cross Jambi Province’s main waterway, the mighty Batang Hari River. On the other side of the river I would be entering into P.T. IFA’s concession area, a vast hilly region of once-contiguous primary forest land, and it is here where I would spend the greater part of the next twenty months. Here an off-road motorcycle would prove to be an invaluable mode of transport as many once-distant forest areas have in recent years been adjoined by logging roads and overgrown bulldozer tracks formerly used to extract select timber from deep in the forest. Only decades earlier these Orang Rimba enclaves would have required weeks of travel by foot to reach. To cross over into this concession area with a motorized trail bike (or motor scooter, the most common mode of transport used by local villagers) requires the use of a small outboard-engine wooden canoe, onto which the vehicle must be hoisted. Wooden planks are used to roll the vehicle into the canoe back-end-first, which enables one to ride out of the canoe (front end first) once the other side of the river is reached. This can be a strenuous task, particularly during the dry season from June through August when river levels are low and the incline leading to the riverbank is so steep that several people are required to maneuver and hoist the vehicle into place. However laborious, I would eventually grow accustomed to this routine when entering and leaving the field. Once the other side of the river is reached, one enters into yet another Indonesia. Asphalt roads give way to dirt tracks, which are impassable for days at a time during the rainy season from September to May. Battery driven electricity is sporadic, enjoyed during the early evening hours by logging camps and a privileged few villages. The hum of rural Indonesian village life all but comes to a halt, and one can stop on the side of the many logging roads that crisscross this rolling tropical landscape and hear only the sounds of the encompassing forest, or the occasional roar of a logging truck speeding by, carrying raw timber to base camps downstream. An urban dweller such as myself cannot help but feel a sense of omnipresent desolation, one that quickly transforms into an appreciation for life on the land. But even more poignantly felt are the ominous signs of destruction that one sees all around, calling attention to the alarming rate at which human activities have altered the natural environment. Looking out upon

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this vast sprawling landscape one sees a topographic mosaic of old and new. Plantations and swidden fields interspersed by small villages and logging camps reveal a patchwork of human activity, carved out of a primeval and ever-looming forest backdrop. Since 1968 the French-founded P.T. IFA, along with other local operators—all of which draw their legitimacy from their ties to the former Suharto regime—have radically transformed the landscape through decades of continuous timber extraction and, most recently, oil palm and monoculture pulp cultivation. Much of this concession area lies just to the south of the newly established Bukit Tigapuluh (literally “thirty hills”) National Park (TNBT), forming a 248,000 hectare belt along the park’s southern boundary. Established in 1995, the reserve and the surrounding forest areas host a wide variety of plant and animal life, much of which is rare or endangered, including the Sumatran Tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), Clouded Leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus), and Sumatran Elephant (Elephas maximus sumatrensis). Within the park’s boundaries, 192 bird species have been recorded and comprise nearly one third of the total number of species found on the island of Sumatra (Syam 1998). The hilly terrain facilitates water drainage from headwaters upstream and provides an essential catchment basin for downstream agricultural communities. Five widely dispersed village populations lie within this concession area. Four are long-established Malay settlements, while one is a Javanese transmigration project established in 1994. Totaling approximately 4,000 persons, their economies are based primarily on subsistence farming, rubber tapping, small business mercantilism, and timber and non-timber forest product collecting. Illegal logging networks have also emerged as a highly profitable economic alternative under the auspices of local military officials and police. Teams equipped with vehicles and chainsaws are organized into work crews and extracted timber is hauled out of the forest manually or with the use of water buffaloes. These logging operations are silently sanctioned by P.T. IFA and cooperation between both parties in times of need is common, such as in instances when vehicles are broken down or stuck in mud and in need of repair or towing. Although the government has established primary schools in several villages in the area since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, local ethnic identity continues to prevail. Islamic law infused with local village custom, or adat, is the law of the land; and the villagers here refer to themselves as Malays or village-dwellers (orang duson) rather than Indonesians. Here village life continues much as it has for centuries and recent developments have had little effect on the Orang Rimba’s economic relations with local Malay populations, aside from the building of logging roads, which have

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provided the Orang Rimba with easier access to market goods and increased trade opportunities with external sources. Despite P.T. IFA’s continuous logging activities for over three decades, few benefits have been extended to the Orang Rimba and local village populations living within this concession area. The promise of development has been slow in coming to the area and the timber company’s perceived lack of regard for the welfare of local populations has been the source of some resentment that many villagers harbor against the company managers and employees, who generally enjoy a much higher standard of living than the native rural population. It was therefore no surprise that the timber company manager, upon learning of my intentions, adopted a somewhat defensive position. Aside from expressing genuine bewilderment that anyone would want to live among and study the primitive Kubu, he seemed uneasy with the idea of a foreign researcher roaming around this vast hinterland region unchecked. After several hours of convincing—not least by my ever-growing stack of documents and government permits—he finally conceded. I was put up that night in a small sleeping quarter at the base camp, and the following morning I was escorted to a smaller logging camp farther upstream where responsibility would be passed on to a timber company worker and former truck driver who had gained the trust of the Orang Rimba. Two years earlier he had been assigned the contracting duties of building the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang (i.e., “the Gelumpang River”), and he was one of the few villagers in the area who had social and trade links to the Orang Rimba there. He also held the principal duty of mediating between the settled Orang Rimba and the timber company, as well as other external local government agencies such as the Department of Health (Dinas Kesehatan) and the Department of Social Affairs (Depsos). It is through this initial introduction that I would establish contact with the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang.

Getting Started The following morning we set off for the settlement for what would be my first meeting with the Orang Rimba. Following the advice of local villagers, I brought along several packets of cigarettes as a gesture of good will. The journey involved a slight but steady ascent along logging roads that crossed newly converted mono-pulp plantation land—a ten to thirty minute trip, depending on road conditions. Upon our arrival I was taken directly to the hut of Ajang, the head (penghulu) of the settlement, where



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I would introduce myself and try my best to gain his favor. Itching from acute psoriasis and appearing slightly decrepit in his bodily comportment, he appeared much older than his age, which I guessed to be somewhere near fifty (Orang Rimba do not keep track of their birthdays). It was not long before all those members present at the settlement assembled and my intentions to live among them were explained by the timber company representative. It was decided that I would share a hut with the young bachelor males, but Ajang was quick to point out one rule that I would need to abide by throughout the course of my stay here: never bathe or walk down to the river when women are present. This seemed like a simple request to follow, but I later discovered this to be a euphemism that entailed a far greater degree of restraint that I would be expected to maintain throughout the course of my stay here—and indeed while visiting other forest-dwelling groups. Among most Orang Rimba, particularly in Jambi Province, stringent behavioral constraints are placed on men regarding their interaction with women (Elkholy 2001). These constraints are enforced through a widereaching corpus of taboos that are codified in Orang Rimba customary law (adat), relegating women to the status of jural minors (Sandbukt 1988b: 114). The term anak bini (literally “child-wife”)—a common term used by men to refer to a wife—reflects the sub-adult status accorded to women in legal matters. According to Orang Rimba customary law, the onus of liability rests on men to look after their female affines and consanguines; and it is males rather than females that are commonly held culpable in instances when these rules are breached. Generally males initiate some kind of overture towards a female, which can involve simply approaching her while she is alone or bathing in a river, or following her while she is walking alone in the forest. Merely looking a female in the eyes for too long or in a furtive manner can constitute an offense (sumbang). Such infractions commonly lead to public complaints from a girl’s family, which in many cases result in a formal hearing (pekagho). If the male in question is found guilty of the alleged offense (most often the case), the headman presiding over the hearing will administer a fine (dendo), normally paid in sheets of cloth.2 During the course of the following months I would witness several disputes between men, some more serious than others, but nearly all concerned with violations of this code regarding men’s claims over women. Ajang’s request that I avoid bathing in the river in the presence of women, in essence, translated into a veiled yet poignant injunction: stay away from my women! With five co-residing wives Ajang held a particularly large claim over the labor power, not only of these women, but also their nineteen children. Many were of adolescent age and thus able work-

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Into the Field: The Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang

ers, their energies utilized primarily for the collection of forest products. Moreover, he held the privilege of reaping the direct rewards of the bride service and labor power of any future in-marrying males. Any incoming male—including a foreigner such as myself—could pose a considerable threat to the leader of an Orang Rimba group, as it is in such co-residential settings that improprieties between males and females commonly occur. The layout of the settlement follows an L-shaped design, comprising seven white wooden huts elevated on foundational stilts. Five huts run along the east-west flank and two at the west end run north-south are set upon the edge of a plateau overlooking the Gelumpang River some thirty feet below (see figure 1.1). While appearing more superimposed onto the landscape than a typical village structure, where new huts are built and extensions are progressively added over time to give a natural

Ajang

wife 1 Ma Tuo

Bachelor hut

wife 2 Ma Mangil

wife 4 Arjuna

wife 3 Timpo

wife 5 Sangon

Yayo Dedi Talaman Silingkup Nina

P.T. IFA Timber Road

Buyong Bebunyung

Tampong: wife 1: Marapat wife 2: Mona wife 3: Nejut

L

er g Riv pan lum e G

FIGURE 1.1. Huts and family units at Sungai Gelumpang.



 

 
  

HIL

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lived-in appearance, this settlement, from a distance, appears to be an ordinary assemblage of small wooden shacks. Only upon closer inspection is one struck by the abject and unsanitary conditions here. Dirt and food particles spot the wood planked floors, where people sit and children roll about indiscriminately. A smaller annex below is an area with an earthen ground, enclosed by four walls where a hearth is placed and cooking is done in metal pots over burning wood, much like in a typical forest camp. Black ash and food particles coat the entire area and smoke often inundates the main hut above. Dogs frequently raid this area while making their rounds underneath the main shelter in search of scraps of food that may have fallen through the cracks above. The midday heat is for the most part unbearable, as all the foliage in the vicinity of the huts—an area of approximately 4,000 square yards—had been cleared by the local timber company during construction, exposing the raw earth below to the blazing equatorial sun. Flies abound while the scent of feces occasionally drifts in the air as the surrounding area is used for the disposal of human waste. This was the epitome of a huntergatherer-turned-sedentary settlement and had all the trappings of a people who had yet to embrace the ethos and learn the practical techniques associated with sedentary living. I would have no choice but to live under these less than sanitary conditions during my initial weeks in the field; conditions that I would later learn also had adverse effects on the Orang Rimba, particularly infants. At nightfall, the timber company representative rode back home, leaving me alone to spend my first night at the settlement. Two of Ajang’s sons, Dedi and his younger half-brother Talaman—aged approximately sixteen and thirteen—took a particular interest in me. We shared a hardwood floor that night and tried to communicate with one another to the best of our abilities—me in Bahasa Indonesian and they in the Malay dialect they commonly adopt while speaking to local villagers. The following morning I awoke to a nearly empty camp. Almost everyone had either ventured out for the day in search of rattan (rhotan) and other forest products (which they sell to local Malay traders), or had already been away on longer excursions to more remote forest areas and thus remained completely oblivious to my arrival the previous day. Despite their taking up residence in these huts, the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang continued to rely on the surrounding forest to meet their economic needs, but in recent years their emphasis has been less on subsistence hunting and gathering and more on the collection of forest products. These days they subsist primarily on store-bought rice (bought from proceeds earned through forest product sales) supplemented with forest game. They have, for the most

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part, moved away from their traditional diet of wild tubers (beno, gadung), which can involve many hours of unremitting digging. While on excursions deep in the forest, however, digging for tubers is still commonly practiced by women and children. Later in the afternoon Dedi and Talaman arrived, both seemingly anxious to see me and further explore what I imagined must have seemed a strange and exotic creature in their midst. We spent the remainder of the afternoon bathing in the Gelumpang River, where I amused them with my average swimming abilities. The Orang Rimba are not a riverine people and only since their taking up residence here did these boys grow accustomed to the use of water for bathing and recreation. Among forest-bound groups, and indeed among all older-generation Orang Rimba, water is generally avoided, aside from during occasional river crossings while on the move in the forest (compare Van Dongen 1906: 241). Their habitual lack of bathing combined with continual exposure to smoke from wood burning fires creates a pungent body odor that, while unbearable to local villagers, I would eventually come to associate with the forest and its human inhabitants. Later that day the rest of the camp arrived from a two-day excursion in a nearby forest area, where they had been in search of jerenang, or “dragon’s blood”, a highly valued dye-stuff extracted from the resinous outer layer of certain rattan species (Sandbukt 1988a). Word quickly spread of my intentions to live here for the purpose of “study,” but I had the nagging sense that my new hosts were still coming to terms with the initial shock of my sudden arrival and unable to truly grasp, or perhaps trust, my reasons for being here. Nonetheless, the newly arrived adolescent males, although shy at first, seemed welcoming, or at least curious that a stranger from a distant land who was neither Orang Rimba nor Malay villager would come to this settlement to live among them. With the arrival of this second group the camp was now noticeably larger. This settlement would appear as a small village to an outside observer. In fact, only three families resided here, but due to their polygamous marital arrangements and consequent bearing of many children, they totaled some forty-four persons (see figure 1.2). Ajang was the first to settle here with his five cohabiting wives and nineteen children. They occupied four huts, his two youngest co-wives sharing a hut. Tampong, another family head, shared a hut with his three wives and their female children and infants. Buyong, Ajang’s eldest son, occupied a hut with his newlywed wife and her newborn; and the final hut, where I would reside, would be designated for the bachelor males, primarily Ajang and Tampong’s adolescent sons.

FIGURE 1.2. Kinship diagram of settlement at Sungai Gelumpang.

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Into the Field: The Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang

 29

Northern Migrations Orang Rimba residential groups are most commonly divided into nuclear or extended family units, falling under the leadership of a single adult male. These family units become larger groupings (rombongan) once male outsiders have married into the group. In cases where group sizes are small, two or more nuclear families may share a camp and pool their resources. Smaller residential units are commonly preferred over larger groupings and male family heads generally limit their co-residential arrangements to specific, trusted family members such as brothers or first cousins. Consistent with their long-established avoidance of Malay villagers, they also mistrust other Orang Rimba, often suspecting their distant kin of practicing witchcraft and other wrongdoings, most notably “stealing” women. These clan-like groupings customarily do not trace ancestral descent due to a taboo prohibiting the utterance of a deceased person’s name. If asked the name of any dead person, an Orang Rimba will typically reply, “akay telupo” (I forgot). By tracing (nameless) lines of descent through living Orang Rimba, I was able to ascertain that these family units, as well as most of the Orang Rimba in the Bukit Tigapuluh area, descend from a common great grandfather originating from the Sungai Telai watershed area, a forest area approximately seventy miles to the south, situated within the administrative regency of Sarolangun-Bangko. According to legend, this man was a hunter of great repute and a well-respected headman (temenggong) with seven wives. Five wives were later divorced for what was described as their inability to live amicably with his first two wives. Due to population increases created by a continual influx of transmigrants and the building of inroads into the forest by timber companies, the pressures on the productive capacity of the land led many Orang Rimba groups to migrate elsewhere in search of new forest areas. Unable to eke out a living in what remained of their traditional forests, the headman with his two original wives migrated north to the Sungai Kilis area in the 1960s, where they would form the first Orang Rimba communities in the Bukit Tigapuluh area. Their descendants gradually worked their way to the watersheds to the west and northwest, where the majority of the Orang Rimba in this area currently reside. Several decades after the first influx of Orang Rimba migrants, children from the headman’s divorced wives also began migrating north, in response to the ever-dwindling resources of the forests of the Telai and nearby Seranten watershed area. The progeny of both northern migrations are the current inhabitants of the ten watersheds in the Bukit Tigapuluh area where Orang Rimba populations



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Cc

Figure 1.3. Map of Orang Rimba distribution in Sumatra (adapted from Sandbukt 1988b).

are found today (see figure 1.3). In the following section I provide a biographical sketch of each family unit residing at Sungai Gelumpang and the particular circumstances that brought them there. I also touch upon some key social dynamics between these related groups and individuals in order to foreshadow specific events that would develop over the course of the following months.

Cast of Characters Ajang’s Family Unit Born and raised in the Sungai Kilis area, Ajang left the area to marry into his first wife’s group in a forest area that has since been converted to the Javanese transmigration project of Rimbo Bujang. Over the course of the following years these new settlers would clear much of the encompassing forest areas for rice and rubber tree cultivation, causing Ajang and his

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group to relocate northeast to the jerenang-rich forests of the Bukit Tigapuluh area. During these years they maintained high residential mobility in primary forests (rimbo bungaghon), living off the land, and occasionally acquiring certain bare essentials from a trusted villager at Duson Tuo. Some years later when P.T. IFA moved their operational headquarters south from Riau Province to Pasir Mayang, just across the river from Duson Tuo, they once again found their forests coming under increasing threat. The sudden arrival of logging trucks, an imposing new presence to Ajang’s group, served as an ominous sign of the drastic changes that were to come. Over the course of the following years they would find their surrounding forests radically transformed by timber and plantation activities, which also brought with them a continual influx of new settlers. They continued to retreat further upstream as P.T. IFA forged new inroads into their once remote forest enclaves. For several years interactions between the timber company and Ajang’s group were limited to intermittent sightings, which on occasion would cause the latter to flee into the bush, particularly when women and children were present. Ajang’s earliest recollections of P.T IFA’s initial expansion into the upper Gelumpang area are of seeing logging trucks whiz by, leaving behind clouds of thick dry dust—but otherwise no direct communication was established. During this time timber company workers and their families confirm that the Orang Rimba had little contact with outsiders and, as evidence, they cite the bark-skin loincloths the Orang Rimba wore during the first years of contact (today either shorts or factory-made cloth acquired or purchased from villagers are worn around the loins). Ajang assumed leadership of the group when his father-in-law died sometime in the 1980s. Representing a new generation of Orang Rimba, one which was by now becoming more accustomed to contact with outsiders, Ajang’s group gradually established relations with a few select timber company workers. This was due mostly to their desire to acquire certain market goods such as tobacco and salt—goods that now required ever-farther distances of travel on foot to the village of Duson Tuo. By now they had found their home in the upper reaches of the Gelumpang River and its adjoining tributaries, not far from the southern border of Riau province. The Duson Tuo area, once their main source of trade goods, had, by now, been replaced by local timber company canteens that could provide them with the same products without requiring them to travel such long distances downstream on foot. In 1994, coinciding with the establishment of the Javanese transmigration project—referred to by the Orang Rimba simply as “tran”—Ajang’s group was enticed by the local timber company and Jambinese provincial government to take up settlement at Sungai Gelumpang. They were

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assured a better life—the details of which remained vague, but nonetheless certain from the point of view of local authorities, who could not fathom how a people could live in the forest without permanent shelter and lacking religion (as they assumed). The building of the huts at Sugai Gelumpang, therefore, served as the timber company’s great contribution to the “civilizing” of the Orang Rimba, after which time the latter were left to their own devices with little education regarding the techniques and practical knowledge required for healthy and sanitary sedentary living.

Ajang’s Predicament While Ajang’s compliance with P.T. IFA’s recommendation to settle seemed expedient at the time, he could not foresee future troubles looming on the horizon. Ajang was quite fortunate, or cunning as other Orang Rimba males would claim, to cohabit with five wives—none of whom had living fathers to impose their authority over him. This is a much sought after residential arrangement for males, as it is primarily a woman’s father (and brothers to a lesser extent) who poses an obstacle to her betrothal and, further, who remains an inhibitor of a male’s personal autonomy, so long as he is alive and an able group leader. Only at the death of a father-in-law (or his ineptitude in old age) can a son-in-law rise to the status of group leader (kepalo rombongan). Although Ajang’s strategy of “strength in numbers” was prudent in theory, it would eventually backfire on him. Having such a large work force is desirable as forest product collecting can be a highly profitable endeavor, allowing for sufficient comfort in a sedentary context. But he was unable to foresee that the surrounding forest area would undergo continual fragmentation as a result of P.T. IFA’s ongoing timber extraction and land clearance, and thus require ever-farther distances of travel on foot to procure forest products. To cover these distances they would need the use of a trader’s vehicle which, in turn, would eventually lead to their perpetual dependence on the latter. Moreover, Ajang could not foresee the subsistence and somatic dependencies that would develop over time, mainly in the form of store bought rice, tobacco, coffee, and sugar; nor could he anticipate the gradual accumulation of large immovable objects such as wooden chairs and tables—items that would preclude the possibility of leaving the huts unattended for extended periods of time, resigning him to the use of this settlement as a permanent base camp. In short, Ajang got in over his head with too many wives, too many mouths to feed, and too many possessions in an environment where resources would become increasingly scarce with the continued fragmentation of the encompassing forest. His current residential situation, along with the aforementioned

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dependencies, would make it difficult for his group to abandon this settlement should they ever wish to revert back to full-time forest dwelling.

Tampong’s Family Unit Tampong was also an exceptional leader in that he had married five women. His first wife was left behind in the Sungai Seranten area, while his third wife died soon after due to an unknown illness, leaving him with three wives. In total Tampong fathered nineteen children—thirteen residing in the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, while six remained in the Seranten watershed area with his first wife, whom he was alleged to have abandoned at the time of his migration to the Bukit Tigapuluh area nearly two decades earlier. While he and Ajang share a common great-grandfather and are second cousins, they inhabited distant watershed areas for most of their lives and thus had limited contact prior to Tampong’s settlement in Sungai Gelumpang. Tampong’s reasons for leaving the Seranten watershed area were unlike those of his predecessors, who migrated north to seek out new forests in which to make a living. Instead, Tampong was pressed to flee the Seranten area by his angry brothers-in-law, who claim that he ran off with their sister, who later became his second wife. He settled in the jerenang-rich forests of Sanglap—a vast virgin forest area in southern Riau Province— where he would reside for the next fifteen years. As a young man in the Seranten area Tampong had impressed a local village chief with his social skills and willingness to cooperate with local village and district polities. At the time he had been offered a quasigovernment position as an Orang Rimba representative, but much to his disappointment, and for unknown reasons, he was passed over for the post. However, it was during these years of living in close proximity to Malays that he learned a great deal about village life, and perhaps even gained a taste for some of the comforts of sedentary living. His willingness to move his group into the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang may have reflected his constant striving for acceptance by the wider Malay society, but there is no doubt that he too was lured into this settlement with promises of a prosperous, better life. In later months he would discover these to be empty promises and, furthermore, he would also grow increasingly disheartened by his inescapable status as Kubu in the eyes of local villagers—a stigma he had become all too familiar with over the course of his past dealings with the outside world. As a late arrival and tentative member of this settlement, Tampong was only given one hut to cohabit with all three of his wives. Ajang and his five wives would occupy the majority of the huts and the former would

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alternate residence from time to time, spending most nights with his senior wife Ma Tuo. Like Ajang, Tampong had grown accustomed to village products such as tobacco, coffee, and sugar. Unlike Ajang, however, he did not forbid his wives from smoking tobacco, and the amount of packets he and his wives regularly consumed was truly remarkable, amounting to nearly a carton per day (i.e., ten twenty-cigarette packets). This would amount to an exorbitant expense that, coupled with his daily need for coffee and sugar, would leave him in perpetual debt to local Malay merchants and traders. The latter would commonly advance these goods before a forest expedition under the agreement that they would be paid for in forest products or deducted from future earnings. Aside from the long distances they would need to travel in a trader’s vehicle to secure their livelihood, his wives had also accumulated countless bundles of cloth sheets—a custom practiced by Orang Rimba in Jambi Province to demonstrate wealth (Sandbukt 1988a: 110)—and they were thus no longer as mobile as they had been in the past.

A Volatile Union Only months after Tampong’s arrival to this settlement, his eldest daughter, Bebunyung, would come under the watchful eye of Buyong, Ajang’s eldest son. They met secretly outside the settlement on several occasions and one day, with no forewarning to the rest of the camp, they decided to run off together into the forest. They returned several days later, Bebunyung to a sound whipping from her mother (Tampong’s senior wife), and Buyong to a frenzied assault by Bebunyung’s younger siblings. Much like the aforementioned ritual beatings practiced by co-residing wives, Buyong was not permitted to resist or retaliate in any way. So severe are these physical assaults on some occasions that the fear of undergoing these public displays of aggression can be enough to deter young men from carrying out their plans for elopement, or “runaway marriage” (kawin lari), as it is called (compare Sandbukt 1988a: 114–115). Whether or not sexual intercourse occurred between Buyong and Bebunyung during their short foray in the forest is a secret that has remained with the young couple, but it was assumed that undue intimacy did occur and they were thus both wed on the spot. Months later Bebunyung was pregnant with her first child and Buyong’s status as son-in-law was solidified. As a consequence of this less-than-honorable marital union, Tampong would have a decided political advantage in his relations with Buyong, as his daughter’s hand in marriage was never asked for and, therefore, no prerequisite bride service had been offered or performed. In such instances entitlement over a bride is not implied (Sandbukt 1988a:

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114–115) and a son-in-law, aside from being expected to provide his labor power and moral support indefinitely to his father in-law, is susceptible to claims that might call into question the legitimacy of his status as a family member. Residing in a hut adjacent to Tampong’s, the young couple would be the cohesive element binding Ajang and Tampong, while at the same time committing both families to the highly delicate status of in-laws. Buyong, however, would prove to be a wayward son-in-law, uncontrollable by both Tampong and his natural father, Ajang. His relationship with the latter had been soured some years earlier when his adopted step-sister was appropriated by Ajang as his fifth wife. Ajang would claim this to be a relationship not born out of common blood and, therefore, not an incestuous union. Buyong—who was raised with the girl and regarded her as a natural sibling in every way—strongly disagreed. At the time their marriage took place—which involved little more than a public declaration of cohabitation—Buyong brought the matter before a local village chief. It was decided that the marriage did not constitute actual incest, but the union, nevertheless, should not be permissible under local village adat law. Much to everyone’s disapproval, Ajang disregarded the chief’s ruling and continued to cohabit with his adopted daughter. Relations between father and son have remained strained ever since and on occasion Buyong’s ill-feelings toward his father would surface and find their expression in vocalized death threats that would reach Ajang via third party word-of-mouth. Tampong’s problems with Buyong were primarily over the latter’s treatment of his daughter, in what was developing into a tumultuous marriage fraught with mutual dissatisfaction. The young couple’s grievances would often be on display in their many public quarrels, during which time heated verbal exchanges would digress into all-out shouting bouts. Before the ever-open ears of the settlement Buyong might claim that his wife did not cook his evening meal, while the latter might counter with a complaint that she was not receiving enough food (referring to meat from the forest). During such disputes one or both parties often used the center of the settlement as a platform, just as they would have in their forest camps, thereby manipulating social space as a tool of persuasion.

Yayo The only other adult male residing at Sungai Gelumpang was a lone bachelor named Yayo. Having reached his late twenties and still unwed, he was something of an anomaly at the settlement. When I first met Yayo he was a man on the run, in search of a wife but unable to gain the support of any

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prospective fathers-in-law. This was partially due to his own pride and underhandedness, but also due to the complexities inherent in the delicate power relations between men. Yayo had a history of failed relations with potential future in-laws and as the younger brother of Timpo and Arjuna he was a thorn in the side of his elder cousin and brother in-law Ajang. Yayo had taken up residence in the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang six months before my arrival there. Shortly after, he expressed to Ajang his desire to wed his eldest daughter. Ajang had married and continued to cohabit with two of Yayo’s sisters, Timpo and Arjuna, while Ajang’s younger brother was married to Yayo’s eldest sister and resided in a nearby forest area with Yayo’s widowed mother. Due to all the in-marrying between these two sets of cousins, Yayo felt it a matter of reciprocity to take Ajang’s daughter as his wife—particularly in light of the grief caused to him when his sister Arjuna had been taken as a lowly fourth wife. Ajang, however, saw the matter very differently. Several years earlier while living with his mother’s group, Yayo had been accused of excessive intimacy with a female cousin. Details of the incident are unclear, but among Orang Rimba gender relations are such a delicate matter that undue intimacy can be construed by a mere gaze, or any kind of furtive behavior, such as following a girl in the forest or expressing a desire for marriage directly to a girl without the presence of her father. Her elder brother Gumbaye, Yayo’s first cousin and age mate, made certain the two were never alone together again, but tensions between the two cousins finally prompted Yayo to shift residence. Having nowhere else to turn, Yayo finally arrived at Sungai Gelumpang and took up residence in the bachelor hut with the adolescent sons of Ajang and Tampong. His ambitions to find a spouse, however, were unwavering and it was only weeks into his stay here that he began making subtle overtures toward one of Ajang’s nubile daughters, while openly expressing his hopes to marry her before Ajang. As news spreads quickly between Orang Rimba encampments, Ajang had long known of Yayo’s past infractions. It was therefore no surprise that he was reluctant to agree to Yayo’s preliminary terms for a future marriage and, to be sure, he proposed a bride price of unprecedented proportions, involving gold and currency that would have taken years to accumulate. Of course Yayo could not meet his demands, but to further exacerbate the matter he did not appear to be performing adequate bride-service by buying coffee, cigarettes, and other goods requested by Ajang. From his point of view, Yayo did little to prove his commitment and worthiness as a prospective sonin-law while Yayo, in light of the aforementioned circumstances, expected Ajang eventually to acquiesce to his wishes and offer his daughter to him

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in marriage. Despite his uncertain residential status at Sungai Gelumpang, Yayo did his best to maintain good ties with Ajang. While he acted as an ordinary member of the settlement and participated in most group activities, the hope that someday he would be wed to Ajang’s daughter was his primary reason for remaining here.

The Microcosmic Society of Adolescent Males I would reside in Yayo’s hut along with the other bachelor males. Most of these boys were too young to marry but too old to maintain close ties to their mothers.3 Yayo and I would share this hut with Ajang’s two sons, Talaman and Dedi, along with Tampong’s sons Silingkup and Nina. Occasionally Nina’s younger brother, Manja, and a youngster named Pendek (literally “shorty”) would tag along, both boys being in the intermediate stages of moving away from their mothers/caregivers but not quite old enough to mix freely with the older boys on a regular basis. Progressively over the following weeks these boys and other youngsters would begin to sleep in our hut on a regular basis, their eagerness induced not least by my supplies of rice and cookies that I would be obliged to share with whomever happened to be present. Nina and Manja were the only two male siblings of the group descended from common parents. The loss of their mother some years earlier (Tampong’s deceased third wife) had drawn them particularly close to one another, despite their age difference. Manja had no true age mates, and he spent most of his free time playing with younger children or amusing himself by pestering Nina and the others in our hut. He was somewhat stout and notably strong for his age, which I guessed to be nine or ten. He was rambunctious and pesky, but more due to his youth and intermittent boredom than to any inherent flaws in his personality. His idea of an afternoon well spent might involve instigating a long protracted chase with Nina and the other older boys, perhaps through verbal taunts or physical harassment that might include hair pulling or dirt kicking. In the event that the boys grew distracted or bored of chasing him, they would be further incited by more physical and verbal torments. These episodes would often end with a sound whipping or perhaps a group thrashing that would send Manja off exhausted and in tatters, occasionally on the verge of tears. But these beatings served only as minor deterrents, dissuading him from wreaking further havoc on the others for only a day or so. Unlike Manja, his older brother Nina was gentle and mild mannered. During my early days at Sungai Gelumpang I would often catch him glancing at me with approving eyes that seemed to reveal a deep empathy

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for my initial discomfort in this new setting. Almost always in high spirits and disarming in manner, his calm smile was truly contagious. He was a hard worker and quite able for his age; adept at forest product collecting and all the other subsistence related activities expected of a young teen. Two years older than his half-brother Nina, Silingkup was not nearly as adept at forest product collecting or subsistence related tasks, preferring instead to spend much of his time socializing with just about any receptive person in the settlement. He was a unique personality in that he seemed to be suspended in a state of perpetual animation. A hedonistic pleasure seeker by nature, he actively sought out the liveliest social situations, which would generally be the hut with the most persons present. It took very little to amuse him, and at times when no action was to be found he would create his own entertainment. It was not uncommon to hear the sound of his loud cackling laughter reverberate throughout the settlement, or to see him on the ground grasping his ribs and salivating at the mouth during one of his frequent laugh attacks. If Nina’s smile was contagious, so too was Silingkup’s laughter. The world he perceived was vivid, richly animated, and always amusing. During the early weeks of my fieldwork he would take a special interest in guiding me through the intricacies of the Orang Rimba language; and my frequent blunders in pronunciation would, without fail, prompt him to break down in fits of uncontrollable laughter. Dedi was a semi-orphaned adolescent, approximately seventeen years of age. His natural mother passed away during the later stages of his infancy. He was consequently adopted by one of Ajang’s sisters and raised in another camp. At approximately age fifteen, he was reunited with his father Ajang and thereafter his senior wife, Ma Tuo, assumed the role of his surrogate mother. His demeanor was generally bashful and timid, perhaps due to the loss of his mother and separation from his father at an early age. His half-brother Talaman was the elder of two brothers, one of whom was given to Ajang’s brother to rear in another camp at the time his mother married into this group and took up residence at Sungai Gelumpang.4 Precocious, perceptive, and highly inventive, Talaman was Dedi’s younger sidekick and partner in crime. He resented his stepfather Ajang, and on occasion objected to my reference to him as penghulu (chief). His antipathy toward Ajang was not only due to his decision to separate him and his younger brother. He also felt that Ajang had done little to better the life of his mother Arjuna since their marriage several years earlier. Talaman maintained particularly close ties to Yayo, as is common between nephews and maternal uncles, uncles often having more say (in theory at least) over the affairs of his sister’s children than their natural father. They were

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also aligned politically against Ajang, each for their own but often coinciding reasons (i.e., out of their consanguineal loyalties to Arjuna). Although good-natured and always exuding a zest for life, this was an unruly group of boys, and their fathers, Ajang and Tampong, did little to discipline them. Whenever together, they formed an independent and often mutinous force, creating a mini-society of their own. It is in their company that I would find an entry point into the social relations of the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang. Over the course of the following months these bachelor males would become central characters in my fieldwork experience, constantly keeping me company, teaching me language, and sharing all the latest camp gossip. Our mornings would often be spent together hunting birds and small rodents near the settlement with slingshots or collecting forest products, while our afternoons were commonly passed cooling off in the Gelumpang River. Through my incorporation into this microcosmic society of adolescent males, the adults at the settlement would eventually grow less weary of my presence. As long as I was tagging along with the bachelor males, they figured, I was being looked after and out of harm’s way.

The Impossible Task of Assimilation Time spent at the nearby Javanese transmigration village would be the only remedy for my initial discomfort due to the poor living conditions at the settlement. Although I could never be truly alone, as I would always be accompanied by Orang Rimba on these short excursions (usually at least two boys would want to ride on the back of my trail bike), I nevertheless welcomed the change of environment and village foods, such as chicken and fresh vegetables. Despite the relative ease with which I would come to be accepted among the local village population, who saw me as something of a novelty, the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang were relegated to a less desirable status, one that would preclude the possibility of them ever being accepted as legitimate members of the wider rural community. By participating in the economic networks of local villagers, mainly through the selling of forest products and purchase of local village goods such as rice, cigarettes, coffee, and sugar, the Orang Rimba’s social interactions would be restricted to specific villagers, mainly local traders (toke) and shopkeepers. While many villagers who do not have trade relations with the Orang Rimba could often recognize individual members from the settlement, by face if not by name, the large majority of Malays and Ja-

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vanese transmigrants in the area had decidedly little or no direct contact with them. Timber company workers and those intrepid villagers in search of forest products or illegal timber would occasionally happen upon Orang Rimba encampments while in the forest. But despite their occasional camaraderie in the forest, these interactions were always ephemeral in nature, and an instance of a Malay villager spending the night in an Orang Rimba camp has yet to be reported. Only those relationships that were economic in nature endured, but even these were tenuous and ever-changing, as Orang Rimba would commonly change trade partners in order to avoid specific debts or economic dependencies (compare Pedersen and Wæhle 1988). During the course of my fieldwork several fall-outs would occur between the Orang Rimba and their Malay toke due to real or perceived improprieties (on both sides), or an inability to pay off incurred debts. In such instances, relations are severed for an unspecified period and debts are generally never recovered by the toke. While both groups coexisted in the same geographical region, they occupied very different ecological and economic niches and, more importantly, they remained diametrically opposed in religious and ideological terms. Their incommensurable life-styles are perhaps illustrated most clearly through their opposing commensal practices. While Muslim villagers are forbidden under the codes of Islam to eat pork, snake, turtle, and all animals not killed using Islamic slaughtering techniques, the Orang Rimba are forbidden under strict behavioral codes passed down from their ancestors to eat village foods such as chicken, cow, goat, and all other domesticated animals. This difference is but one aspect of a more far-reaching nexus of beliefs and values that are articulated in a cosmological order that assigns social, physical, and metaphysical realms to forest and village domains. This forest-village dichotomy is essential to understanding all that is sacred and profane to the Orang Rimba. In short, it is in their differences, and in particular their staunch opposition to village ways, that the Orang Rimba realize and articulate their identity as a people, while at the same time reaffirming their sacred connection to the forest. Over the course of the following months it would become apparent that despite their adoption of a semi-sedentary lifestyle and aspirations of “upward mobility,” the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang could only enjoy minimal success as marginal members of the wider rural community. The stigma of being regarded as Kubu, as local villagers would refer to them, would remain an indelible stain on their ethnic identity. The Orang Rimba were acutely aware of their subordinate position vis-à-vis the village world and, as a consequence, their general manner and bodily

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comportment remained noticeably subdued and timid while in the presence of villagers (compare Turnbull 1965a; Bird-David 1988). While visiting the village the Orang Rimba might be warmly welcomed by local shopkeepers and a few select villagers, but these fleeting moments of comfort are almost inevitably brought to an abrupt halt, often by the approach of curious villagers who might gather around to ask questions or simply gawk. On occasion, a village bully might spot an Orang Rimba and unleash an effusion of verbal abuses or physical taunting. In one instance I witnessed a Malay bachelor male calling out to Ajang as he barked unintelligibly in a sardonic attempt at speaking the Orang Rimba’s language. A small group looked on, including Dedi, as this young man delighted in exhibiting his perceived superiority over Ajang. Adolescent males have also experienced similar hardships while venturing away from the settlement. On one occasion while walking back to the settlement along a nearby logging road, a group of village boys chased after Silingkup and Nina, forcing them to flee into the nearby bush for safety. While such episodes are infrequent, they nevertheless contribute to the pervasive feelings of estrangement that the Orang Rimba have habitually come to associate with the bucolic and open spaces of the village world—a kind of culturally-induced agoraphobia. Such interactions can trigger, even in an adult Orang Rimba male, a deeply inculcated reflex to return to the safety and sanctuary of the forest. The Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang, having settling there two years ago, forfeited such an exit option. Here they could be visited by outsiders at will; and on more than one occasion I witnessed Malays from outer regions arrive to the settlement posed as long-lost acquaintances or timber company sanctioned authorities. Their intentions were either to establish trade relations with the Orang Rimba, whereby the latter would provide their labor power for the collection of forest products, or to gain unfettered access to the nearby forest area for illegal logging. The collective alienation of the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang, resulting from their relegation to the lowest social standing within the wider rural society, would be further exacerbated by their rejection by other Orang Rimba groups in the area—those that had maintained their forest-based way of life and continued to eschew excessive contact with outsiders. Their settlement at Sungai Gelumpang would be widely viewed by these groups as a kind of “selling out”—a betrayal of the sacred mode of life passed down through generations by their ancestors (ne ne moyang). In their adoption of a semi-sedentary living arrangement in Malay style huts and continual contact with villagers they had, in effect, forsaken this sacred mode of life. The Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang were thus caught in a cultural chasm, a kind of ideological no man’s land between

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forest and village domains; one that would lead to considerable psychological trauma, as I would witness in the months to come.

Reconfiguring Ethnic Categories Inured by years of negative experiences with the outside world, the adults at Sungai Gelumpang remained somewhat wary of my presence during the early weeks of my fieldwork. After experiencing so many years of hardship and abuse in their dealings with local villagers, they had grown disheartened and distrustful of all outsiders. Moreover, our relationship was particularly sensitive in that I persisted in my efforts to develop a rapport with them and gain their acceptance with no apparent economic motives. I would eat their food and pay them the kind of attention they were wholly unaccustomed to receiving from outsiders. While my appearance and mannerisms were unique, my commensal habits were not so unlike their own. It was therefore no surprise that the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang had yet to make clear sense of my humanity. Despite their initial, if not tentative, acceptance of my plan to reside among them, my continued presence would be the source of some confusion during my first weeks in the field. Aside from the obvious fact that I did not speak their language or possess the general skills to adequately function in their society, their centuries-long bifurcation of humanity into two types—Orang Rimba and Malay—would render my identity to a still unknown category, one that seemed to defy conventional Orang Rimba classification. Despite their genuine curiosity and cautious acceptance of my presence, I remained something of an enigma in their lives. Although my identity was not clearly linked to the village world due to my willingness to eat wild pig and other forest foods, I was nonetheless designated by the title orang bayghu (i.e., “newcomer”), a term also use to refer to villagers. To emphasize my status as an outsider, I would not be invited to accompany them on their extended forays in the forest. My exclusion, they would claim, was due to their concern for my personal safety coupled with the need to have someone remain at the settlement in the event that a timber company or regional government representative might pay a visit. In general, Tampong’s sons would travel together on these excursions, while Ajang’s sons, Talaman and Dedi, often remained back at the settlement. While I was sharing my rice, they figured, there was less need for them to earn money. These forays in the forest would normally range from one to three weeks in duration, depending on the availability of for-

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est products and pre-arrangements with local traders, who would arrive to a pre-designated pick-up site along the logging road to purchase these products and transport the group either to another forest area or back to the settlement. These excursions were cyclical and alternating, with one group—either Tampong’s or Ajang’s—remaining back at the settlement. On rare occasions, however, both groups would travel together, leaving the settlement nearly empty for days at a time. On rare occasions the Department of Health (Dinas Kesehatan) would pay the camp brief unannounced visits. These were routine “check-ups,” during which time cookies, cigarettes (!), and toiletries such as combs and soap would be dispensed, along with some brief instruction on basic hygienic practice. These visits appeared to be part of a public relations campaign and had little lasting effect. Follow-up visits were rare and, aside from meeting the bare minimum requirements of making these routine stops at the settlement, the visitors seemed to take little interest in Orang Rimba affairs. They were normally whisked in and out of the settlement by a timber company representative, often spending less than half an hour with the Orang Rimba, which was insufficient time to develop any sort of meaningful rapport.5 While my initial acceptance was tentative, I could be depended on to share my rice and cookies as well as to provide transport to the village, where I would purchase food and other goods, including tobacco. I would also offer assistance in their negotiations with local traders—who were often less than scrupulous in their business dealings with the Orang Rimba. They would, therefore, soon develop a modicum of trust in me, particularly regarding economic matters. Although I did not gain the complete trust of the adults until later months, they did seem genuinely curious about my willingness to live among them. My adherence to their commensal practices seemed to be the greatest determining factor in their initial acceptance of me. Eating their food—in particular those foods forbidden under the codes of Islam such as wild pig—would singularly set me apart as a non-villager, as no Malay would dare eat food prepared by the Orang Rimba (even when proper slaughtering techniques are practiced on non-taboo species). In time a new category would emerge, one that would help them make better sense of my humanity and my new role in their lives. Although never articulated outwardly I imagined their new classification translated roughly into “non-Muslim, non-Orang Rimba, wild-pig-eating, giver of food, transport, and tobacco”. So long as I maintained this utilitarian function and performed all those duties and tasks expected of me, my presence would be tolerated at the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang.

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ILLUSTRATION 1.1. Huts at Sungai Gelumpang: Ajang standing with three of his five wives and children.

ILLUSTRATION 1.2. Living conditions at Sungai Gelumpang: Talaman sitting on floor with sisters and infant while women cook on lower level.

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ILLUSTRATION 1.3. Ajang with prospective son-in-law Yayo standing behind to his right (Talaman and older half-brother Dedi standing to Ajang’s left).

Notes  1. Journalists and foreign researchers have often been suspected of disseminating certain kinds of politically sensitive material and information and, for that reason, their presence in the country has always been a source of some tension for the central government in Jakarta, particularly in past decades under the Suharto regime.  2. Since the introduction of fabric in the second half of the twentieth century (often in the form of village-bought sarongs), sheets of cloth have been used to pay tribute and as currency to pay fines. Cloth also holds a social value of increasing prestige and, as such, patterned sheets are widely collected by Orang Rimba households (Sandbukt 1988b: 110).  3. As a rule, when an Orang Rimba boy reaches the age of nine or ten, he is no longer permitted to sleep with his mother. This prohibition serves to curb incestuous desires while providing more time to nurture younger siblings. A post-partum taboo on sexual intercourse is another social mechanism intended to provide a sufficient weaning period for the young. For two to three years after the birth of each child husbands are expected to adhere to this restriction, and in the event that a child is thought to have died of milk deprivation a fine or “blood money” (bengun) may be imposed on both parents by the maternal grandparents (Sandbukt 1988a: 128–129). Such close birth spacing is more common during swiddening phases when the post-partum taboo is

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more lax. This commonly results in more births, which can be a hindrance to the group when they revert back to nomadic foraging, and mothers may find it difficult to cope with too many mouths to feed (Sandbukt 1988a: 128–29).  4. Giving children up for adoption into other groups is an occasional practice among Orang Rimba, particularly in instances when one has too many mouths to feed (as was the case at Sungai Gelumpang), or when a request is made for a child by a barren woman (Sandbukt 1988a). In some cases children are given as a form of payment, amounting to a kind of debt bondage—the child’s labor power serving as the main source of remittance (Ibid.). In rare cases children are stolen, perhaps by a midwife (bidan) who is pressed to run off with a delivered infant in order to pay off a personal debt previously incurred.  5. As a consequence, the relationship between the two parties would be characterized by mutual misunderstanding. The Orang Rimba were unclear as to the Department of Health’s intentions and applied strategies, while the latter seemed unable to gain a clear understanding of the Orang Rimba’s true needs and aspirations. Moreover, they also lacked a clear understanding of the logistics and complexities involved in making the transition to sedentism and, consequently, they attributed the Orang Rimba’s inability to adapt to a Malay lifestyle to laziness or an unwillingness to change their old habits. The Orang Rimba would reaffirm this negative stereotype by expecting the Department of Health to provide continual economic support, often in the form of food, so as to supplant the role of the forest as a caregiver, nurturer, and source of food.

Chapter 2

Sociality and the Negotiation of Self and Other

Cc Fieldnotes, 12 March 1998: While cooling off in the Gelumpang River one hot afternoon I happened upon young Besuni, who had been piling up mud near the riverbank for his own amusement. He had been alone for only a minute or so, the other children having returned back to the camp some moments earlier. I wandered over to him and for no apparent reason, other than wanting to initiate some kind of contact and lacking any other means to do so, I reached out and gestured him to give me the mud from his hand. He paused briefly to be sure he understood my request, then carefully placed the pile of mud into my open palm. He then passively gazed into my eyes, anticipating what I would do next. I held it for a brief moment, then placed the mud back into his hand with a satisfied nod. He walked off and carried on with his project, and I to mine—both of us, I imagined, with a sense of validation after our successful interaction.

Such encounters typify a preverbal child’s experience in the world during the first years of life. Before learning language, the child navigates within their field of intersubjective relations through an ongoing attunement of the senses to the vagaries of the encompassing social environment. Such sensory assimilation is often accompanied by human guidance, often in the form of gestures and inchoate sounds (i.e., speech) that the child learns, through their ongoing interaction and participation with others, to match to the features of the world around them and later to concepts (Trevarthen and Logotheti 1989; see also Trevarthen and Aithen 2001). I begin this chapter with the basic premise that human intersubjectivity, while often guided by verbal communication, is not contingent on the conventions of language (as the above example illustrates). Our sociality

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arises out of being with others, as a natural consequence of our immersion in a common sensory world, occurring prior to any cognitive mediation through language or mental formulation of events or ideas. While language may mediate our perceptions during the course of our interaction with others, it cannot replace those more direct forms of sensory engagement that provide the requisite conditions out of which all forms of interpersonal experience are born. Language arises out of social experience, extending and augmenting modes of social interaction that are already in place (Hanks 1990: 44; Edwards 1978: 451). The most basic forms of intersubjective engagement, therefore, should not be regarded as an exchange of conceptual intentions or a “meeting of the minds” but, rather, as a corporeal dialectic of the senses; or as Jackson (paraphrasing Merleau-Ponty) writes, intersubjectivity is “lived as intercorporeity and through the five senses as introceptivity” (1998: 11). Following from this I would suggest that the rudiments of sociality lie not in language or speech, but in those innate forms of awareness that arise out of our shared perceptions within a common environmental context (compare Reed 1988). Even in instances when language is used to mediate social interaction, our perceptions and understandings are guided by an ongoing attunement of the senses, often in response to specific cues such as a speaker’s intonation and bodily comportment; along with various forms of gestural and facial affectation, or what Ekman referred to as “conversational signals” (1979). In his pioneering studies on facial analysis, certain varieties of facial expression were shown to correspond to inward emotional states, a characteristic that Darwin long ago also attributed to nonhumans (1998).1 While such forms of gestural communication can be found in many nonhuman species, King shows how humans and great apes are particularly adept at communicating their needs and desires through gestural and other forms of non-vocal communication (2004).2 Recent studies employing principles from an emergent interdisciplinary approach called dynamic systems theory focus on the various means through which non-vocal communication is enabled by subtle moment-by-moment shifts in expression and gesture between participants, through which the joint creation of meaning arises (Fogel 1993, 2006, 2008; for great ape communication see King 2004). For instance, a simple gesture such as a caregiver’s raised eyebrow to a child could mean “be careful,” “pay attention,” or take on a wide variety of other meanings depending on context and the specific understandings that have been worked out between them (Fogel 2008). Such subtle gestures take on meaning to both caregiver and child through their repeated interactions, whereby their mutual needs and goals are negotiated over time.

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At the heart of this approach to human communication lies the idea of coregulation, defined by psychologist Alan Fogel as the “continuous unfolding of individual action that is susceptible to being continuously modified by the continuously changing actions of the partner” (1993: 29). So rather than attributing intentionality or significance to individual gestures, the emphasis here is on reaching understandings through our ability to read and draw meanings from one another’s gestures and common perceptions (King 2004: 60). Social interactions, then, are seen not so much as exchanges of discrete information, but as acts of meaning creation whereby participants’s ongoing sensory engagement with one another feeds into a broader system that represents the entire history of the growth of the relationship (Ibid.: 5–6). The unit of analysis is thus shifted from the individual to the broader encompassing relationships between individuals that, when taken in their entirety, constitute a dynamic system that is greater than the sum of its constituent parts. Take again the example of child and caregiver. During the course of their communication both are attending to subtle bodily movements and gestures to create ever-shifting “in the moment” understandings that arise and continuously develop over the course of the relationship. Through this ongoing unfolding of action and perception, both find themselves operating on a common plane of awareness as one sensory unit: caregiver-child. The focus here is shifted from individual perception to the wider “field of perception” out of which common understandings arise and through which individual experience becomes co-opted into an encompassing relational system. The most basic building blocks of human sociality are thus not necessarily constituted by those language-based modes of communication that are so commonly regarded as the hallmarks of humanity but rather by those shared modalities of awareness that arise out of direct sensory engagement with the social world around us. Through our immersion in a common social setting we find ourselves incontinently drawn into a common sphere of awareness, whereby extraneous agencies from the social and physical environment around us guide the senses, opening up the possibility for high degrees of sensory continuity between perceiving subjects. In this regard personal or “private” conscious states are intricately bound up in the conscious states of others, and the world comes to be perceived in a shared way. Such shared modalities of perception are made particularly evident in contexts when persons are without recourse to a common language. During the early months of my fieldwork I depended more heavily on the subtleties of these direct modalities of perception along with other nonverbal forms of communication, due to my lack of proficiency in the Orang

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Rimba’s language. Through our shared awareness of each other within the common context of our encompassing environment, I found myself (often involuntarily) drawn into the Orang Rimba’s sensory universe. Unknown to me at the time, these more direct, non-language-based modes of social interaction would lead to a high degree of intimacy that would form the basis of and define the trajectory of our relationship throughout the course of the following months. This chapter is inspired in large part by the exigencies of my own social survival in the field, as many of the insights gained here stem from my initial communication problems during my first weeks and months of fieldwork. My primary focus is on those nonverbal modes of social interaction that occur within the context of the forest and collective camp life. I illustrate the salient ways in which perceptions become shared, and how self-other boundaries are continually encroached and negotiated in such intimate and open contexts, leading to high degrees of sensory and bodily continuity. With this in mind I address the broader issue of negotiating self and other. I treat nonverbal communication as a natural byproduct of our living in a shared social and physical environment; and I touch upon some implications these sensory-guided modes of interaction have for human sociality—a theme I further develop in chapter 3.

The Mute Fieldworker During the early months of my fieldwork I had established myself among the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang. But despite my initial, if not tenuous, acceptance here I had yet to gain more than a rudimentary understanding of their language. Although lexically similar to the Malay dialect spoken by their village-dwelling neighbors, and no doubt sharing the same etymology, the Orang Rimba’s speech is, for the most part, unintelligible to local Malays, due to phonetic variations in inflection, as well as the glottal manner in which it is spoken. I would have much difficulty in making the transition to the Orang Rimba’s dialect that, at the time, seemed to bear scant resemblance to the modern Indonesian I had studied prior to my arrival in Sumatra. We would have little recourse but to communicate in broken Malay, which shares many similarities with Indonesian, but in this case is spoken with a local variation in dialect that is particular to this part of rural Jambi. Over time we would develop our own unique verbal rapport whereby my utterances and simple speech patterns could be vaguely understood when accompanied by facial expressions and bodily gestures. I continued to work at gaining a basic understanding of the Orang Rimba’s language, often spending hours a day notating or recording basic vo-

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cabulary onto audio cassette—an exercise that never failed to evoke public amusement. So much time did I spend trying to gain a working knowledge of their language during the early weeks of fieldwork that when asked by local villagers about the reason for my cohabitation among them, the Orang Rimba often replied “belayjo bahaso” (learning language). Children and adults alike would often coach me along in this process, moving the conversation forward with affectionate rebuttals whenever I attempted to speak. But despite my painstaking efforts, the Orang Rimba’s language would continue to elude me for many months to come. While our verbal rapport would grow progressively over the following months, I nevertheless found it impossible to gain an understanding of Orang Rimba life through questioning and informal interviews. It is often the case that verbal descriptions and explanations, especially those elicited by contrived questions, bear little relation to the actual processes by which persons think and act in the world. This is particularly evident among hunters and gatherers where most forms of knowledge are “hands-on” and generally not transmissible in contexts outside their application (Ingold 2000: 25; see also Bloch 1990). The Orang Rimba were thus not in the habit of decontextualizing their lived experience, particularly to the extent required to satisfy a fieldworker’s curiosity.3 Gaining little headway in learning the Orang Rimba’s language and having little luck with interviews in broken village Malay, it proved to be far more beneficial to observe the Orang Rimba’s habits and behavioral patterns by simply maintaining a passive presence, through a kind of nonverbal participant observation. I could gain a bearing on social situations by looking at the context and manner in which persons spoke. By listening carefully to the timbre and intonation in their voices while observing facial expressions, bodily comportment and positioning, I could often detect individual moods and volitions, even in instances when I found their speech completely unintelligible.4 Without recourse to language I would attempt to discern between the Orang Rimba’s natural and contrived expressions in order to help me better understand those feigned postures discussed in the previous chapter that are adopted in order to stake personal claims or sway public opinion. While much of the time I could not determine the substance of what was being said, I could ascertain the general tone and quality of certain social interactions by following such visual cues, which would allow me to glean a good deal of information about participants and their motives, often with a fairly high degree of accuracy (as I confirmed in later months when I became more proficient in the Orang Rimba’s language). My frame of reference did not differ so greatly from trying to follow a storyline in a foreign film without subtitles through watching the ongoing interplay



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between various characters throughout the course of an unfolding plot sequence. Despite our language barriers, we continued to move further along this nonverbal trajectory of action and perception; and it was due to my lack of proficiency in the Orang Rimba’s language that our interactions took on a particularly transparent and immediate quality. During the first few months of my fieldwork I wavered precariously on the fringes of this more visceral domain of experience—what Bourdieu referred to as the “hither side of words and concepts” (1977: 2); and, as mentioned above, these nonverbal modalities of social interaction would serve as an everevolving medium through which highly enduring modes of awareness between the Orang Rimba and myself would develop in the weeks and months to come.

The Need for Social Inclusion Camp life had by now become somewhat routine. In the mornings I tagged along with the younger boys or bachelor males while they hunted small animals or searched for turtles in the remaining patches of forest near the settlement. However, I was still forbidden from joining them during their longer excursions in the forest and so most of my initial understanding of Orang Rimba life would be gained while residing at the settlement among the bachelor males. While all these boys were individualistic in temperament and personality, their group-centered modes of behavior became apparent to me during my early weeks at Sungai Gelumpang, commonly expressed through their strong fear of social exclusion, as the following anecdote will illustrate: One late afternoon Talaman, Dedi, Nina, Silingkup, and I arrived back at the settlement after spending the day searching for turtles in a nearby stream. Upon our arrival everybody but Silingkup congregated in the bachelor’s hut and having caught no turtles that day it did not take long before all eyes were affixed on my cookies. Naturally I felt obliged to share the entire packet with those who happened to be present. Within seconds Manja, along with his younger sidekick Pendek, and several young girls appeared from out of nowhere, as they often did at the sight of persons assembling or the mere sound of a cookie package opening. Several moments later Silingkup arrived to a small group of us heartily munching on cookies, only to look down into the package and see nothing but crumbs. He immediately walked out of the hut, dejected. Moments later when I asked Talaman why Silingkup seemed so distraught, he explained that his friend was menyakit hati, translated loosely as “brokenhearted,” because everybody enjoyed the cookies without him.5

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The grief resulting from exclusion from the group cannot be overstated, amounting in many cases to deep personal trauma. On one occasion a trader’s vehicle had arrived at the settlement several hours before scheduled to transport Tampong’s group to a forest area to the north to collect forest products. Manja was accidentally left behind, as he had been off on his own not far from the settlement but was completely oblivious to the trader’s arrival. Upon his return to the settlement he was shocked to find present only me, Talaman, Dedi, and Ajang with two of his wives and their infants. Feeling abandoned by his father Tampong and his older brother Nina, Manja moped about the camp sulking for four days, occasionally weeping silently. I would try to divert his thoughts and lift his spirits with cookies and invitations to accompany me to the village on my trail bike, but he was resolutely despondent and inconsolable. Days later when the others arrived, adults and children alike sat and listened attentively as a still beleaguered Manja, playing both judge and jury, demanded an explanation. As it happened, Tampong had asked the trader to wait for Manja but after fifteen minutes or so, the trader decided that he could delay their departure no longer due to signs of impending rain that would cause the roads to become wet and slick and thus impede his return. Everybody seemed to empathize with Manja’s sorrow, knowing how painful it can be to be separated from one’s family and friends. The strong need for social inclusion can also be illustrated in instances when negative attention is called to personal conduct and individuals are subsequently singled out before the scrutiny of the camp. On one occasion two of Timpo’s daughters were asked to fill their household plastic containers with water in a nearby stream. The two girls were heard frolicking about in the water and when they returned back to the camp with murky, silt-laden water, it was deduced that the girls had not filled their containers before playing in and muddying the water. Timpo scolded the girls by inflicting several light lashings with a tiny limb extracted from a nearby shrub, as she shouted harsh and contemptuous reprimands at them. These were only mock beatings, hardly enough to inflict any bodily injury or physical pain, but the girls nonetheless wept and wailed aloud at the shame and humiliation that had been cast upon them, that they would be singled out and castigated publicly before the camp. Their sense of belonging had been suddenly shattered, albeit temporarily, and their general mood and disposition remained timid and distraught for several days as they continued to feel the sharp stigma of the ostracized. The deep personal trauma experienced as a result of exclusion or ostracism illustrates the high degree to which personal wellbeing is bound up in, and contingent upon, the quality of one’s relations with others. Fear of ostracism and abandonment can be so strong that it can have equally

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traumatic affects on adults. Turnbull provides a lucid illustration of a Mbuti hunter named Cephu, who was temporarily abandoned by other camp members as punishment for setting up his net in front of his fellow hunters’ nets. The shame induced in Cephu was so severe, according the Turnbull, that it induced fears of death (1962: 106–8). For the Orang Rimba banishment from one’s residential camp is often a last resort, occurring only in the most extreme instances of breaches of conduct. Such episodes commonly transpire as a natural outcome of a dispute rather than a formal declaration of expulsion: no longer feeling welcome among the residential group, the ostracized person will often flee to another camp. This exit strategy serves to diffuse interpersonal tensions and is the most commonly reported means of conflict resolution practiced by hunting and gathering societies throughout the world (Turnbull 1965a; Pedersen and Whaele 1988). It appears that Yayo, as a consequence of his recurring breaches of adat custom during his many failed attempts at courting a bride, found himself in a position where fleeing the area was his last and only recourse. Orang Rimba generally accept, and even embrace, individual idiosyncrasies in behavior, however extreme. For example an elderly man, with whom I shared a camp for several days during survey work in the distant Air Hitam watershed area to the south, exhibited highly eccentric behavior, often talking to himself and laughing aloud, seemingly without cause. He demonstrated a degree of self-absorbed amusement that in many societies would have been deemed a mark of mental illness. Although his behavior was noticeably odd, his intentions were clearly benign and the Orang Rimba thus embraced his unique and quirky mannerisms with enthusiasm and occasional humor. He made no pretence at normalcy, wearing his neurosis on his sleeve, so to speak. Such peculiarities, by virtue of being treated as “dysfunctions” in many societies, often lead to the further maladjustment of such people by highlighting and drawing negative attention to such behaviors (see Szasz 1961). Among the Orang Rimba, acceptance of individual peculiarities tends to have a normalizing or “socializing” effect, ever diversifying and enhancing those unique personality traits that one encounters in collective camp life. The Orang Rimba’s strong emphasis on social inclusion would work to my advantage on one decisive occasion and radically alter the course of our relationship. Nearly a month after my arrival the entire settlement would embark on a three-week excursion to a forest area located some distance to the east. As the camp would be completely empty I would have little choice but to leave the field or stay at the settlement alone. This seemed to be a pressing concern for the adolescent males, who expressed their desire to have me join them. The following morning the trader’s

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vehicle arrived and the entire camp hurriedly collected their belongings and in less than five minutes was ready to depart. However, the issue of whether or not I could accompany them was left unresolved. Ajang, his eldest wife Ma Tuo, and Tampong convened an impromptu gathering to discuss the matter. The bachelor males were sure to offer their votes of confidence, but I remained silent, perhaps appearing slightly anxious, as I had no other established field sites at this early stage of my fieldwork and thus nowhere else to go in the event that I could not join them. While I could not make out the substance of their discussion, their decision became clear to me upon seeing Talaman and Dedi jump for joy as they ran toward me and instructed me to quickly collect my belongings and climb into the back of the truck. Having been consumed by the hurried pace of the moment, I could only realize in hindsight how momentous this occasion truly was: the Orang Rimba’s centuries-long taboo restricting outsiders access to their forest camps had been unceremoniously broken in just a few brief moments. This was indeed a fortuitous turn of events that would immeasurably alter the course of my fieldwork.

Setting Up Camp The trader dropped us off approximately fifteen miles to the north alongside a small and seldom used logging track, from where we would trek another mile or so along a narrow trail running parallel to the Sumai River. I would come to know this forest area intimately over the course of the following months, as this was Tampong’s main territory—a patch of primary forest frequented by his group where resources were commonly secured and their distributions carefully monitored over the years. We set up camp alongside a small tributary and I learned to build my first shelter that night with the help of Silingkup and Nina. Orang Rimba household shelters (susudongan) are traditionally built by women, but adolescent boys are normally expected to build their own—a practice that is consistent with the strong emphasis placed on their self-reliance. Crossbeams and scaffolding are constructed using local saplings and tied together at cross sections to four corner posts with rattan vine. Smaller saplings are laid out horizontally for flooring, making for an uneven and often bumpy sleeping surface. This can occasionally be mitigated by using a local species of tree bark that, when available, can be fitted and laid on top of the original flooring to add additional comfort and support. Straw-woven mats made by or purchased from local villagers are used as sleeping pads. Thatch palm roofing has, in recent years, been replaced by village-bought plastic tarpaulin, which is tied with thin rattan vine to the corner posts.



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These single or split-level structures are erected without walls and are open family dwellings as well as storage areas. In split-level dwellings, the bottom level is the exclusive domain of women and children, and the only adult male permitted to enter this area is a woman’s spouse. Here a hearth is placed at the edge of the flooring and it is the principal area for cooking, sleeping, and other domestic activities. The upper level is open to other members of the camp and is an area where adult males and adolescent boys commonly congregate to smoke cigarettes and socialize. Adolescent females are also expected to build their own shelters, where they will reside alone or with other unwed females (gadis). As a young girl approaches her first menarche she will be required to adhere to the strict social sanctions regarding excessive contact with males. For the remainder of her pre-marital years, the only men she will interact with will be her male siblings and father. It is not uncommon, however, for an adolescent or young adult female to eschew intimate contact even with her male family members who, following the same code of conduct, may speak to her only when necessary (Elkholy 2001: 276). Within the camp there is generally a freedom of movement between genders, so long as bachelor males and men in general avoid the shelters of unwed girls and the lower level of family shelters. In most cases undue intimacy occurs while a girl is alone in the forest, outside the purview of others in the camp. When surveying a prospective camp site the Orang Rimba will commonly seek out clearings in the forest, occasionally near overgrown bulldozer tracks. These areas provide easier access to timber roads, where local traders can access pick-up sites with their vehicles to haul off forest products. Also, in areas with sparse vegetation there is less likelihood of falling trees caused by lightning or decrepitude—a very pressing fear for the Orang Rimba and tropical foragers in general (Lye 1997: 151; Puri 2005: 3). Another primary concern in choosing a campsite is water. Camps are always built near small streams or rivulets (anak sungai/sakoh), providing ready access to drinking water. These sites, however, are never located near broad stretches of water or major confluences where river traffic may flow. As upstream watershed areas and their smaller tributaries are generally not navigable by boat, setting up camp in the upper reaches of river systems ensures a safe distance from downstream areas that may be inhabited or visited by local villagers.

Nighttime in the Forest In less than twenty minutes a cluster of fourteen shelters had been erected and the camp, although still a work in progress, was already beginning to

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take on a lived-in character. These shelters had been etched into the landscape with the use of local materials and visually blended in with the surrounding forest. After erecting my shelter, I lay down to take a rest. It was at this moment that I began to notice that the adults were watchful, if not cautious, of my presence here. They were clearly unaccustomed to seeing an outsider in the intimate confines of their forest camps. The younger generation, while also watchful, seemed less fazed by my presence. Unlike their elders they had yet to become hardened by years of negative experiences with outsiders and, furthermore, were less indoctrinated into the pervasive system of beliefs and taboos demarcating cultural boundaries between forest and village domains. They were thus noticeably more open and comfortable in my presence. Later in the evening an open squabble broke out between Talaman, Dedi, Silingkup, and Nina, each mounting an impassioned argument as to why he should have the exclusive right to sleep in my shelter. Unable to satisfactorily resolve the matter unilaterally, they all decided, as I watched on seemingly invisible, that they would all join me. That night five of us shared a shelter that seemed suitable to hold no more than three and I would find myself smothered in the center of a small group of festive teens, reveling and singing songs into the night. Hours later I still lay awake, sandwiched between bodies as I tried to sleep over the incessant din of the forest. Submerged in this tropical forest setting, the acoustic environment is much louder than one might imagine. Without the aid of vision, the sounds of the forest blindly converge from every direction as the calls of crickets, cicadas, and all the other often neverseen critters in the night invade one’s auditory faculties. Tangible and intangible aspects of the environment inextricably blend together to form an all-pervasive ambiance that pulses and breathes as if emanating from an animate, all-encompassing body of life. Completely immersed in this tropical environment I was now experiencing the acoustics of the forest as an active participant, as the ongoing polyphony of sound streamed into my body from every direction, commingling with my thoughts and perceptions and saturating my very experiential state. As I lay awake that night near a smoldering fire peering out at a sleeping camp, it became apparent that the Orang Rimba were in a familiar place; their tropical forest environment providing an acoustic backdrop and sense of continuity to their sensory experience. As Ingold writes, “to be at home in a place, especially in the dark, means knowing how it sounds and resounds” (2000: 274). The acoustic environment of the forest, giving voice to its multifarious life forms, provides a sense of ontological security and cogency to an Orang Rimba’s lived experience. By contrast, individuals often experience a restless unease when faced with

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the quietude of the village, a relatively barren environment that can seem inert and acoustically vacuous by comparison. My aural experience in the forest, unlike theirs, would be far less comforting and it would take several weeks in the forest to grow accustomed to these new sounds and the sheer volume of the forest’s continuous sensory output. Even after twenty months of fieldwork, the forest’s unique and chaotic sonic structure, with its irregular pulses piercing through a ubiquitous polyrhythmic background, remained a continual reminder that I was, indeed, in a very foreign setting.

Sink or Swim! The following morning I awoke to a small mound of freshwater frogs (katoq), served to me by one of Tampong’s wives in a small, village-bought metal bowl. Boiled in water, they retained their green pigment; and with their limbs and bodies fully intact, this pile of frogs still looked very much alive and well. This was a common morning meal, as their capture was fairly easy during the early dusk hours and their supply somewhat predictable. I would grow accustomed to catching and eating their tender meat over the course of the following months. Shortly afterward small work parties formed and dispersed at a leisurely pace into the surrounding forest. The Orang Rimba’s strong work ethic is inculcated at such an early age that even young children are expected to work at subsistence-related activities as well as in the collection of forest products. But those productive activities that might commonly be regarded as “work” could just as easily be considered “play” by the Orang Rimba (see Sahlins 1972), as they often maintained a light-hearted temperament even during the most trying of tasks, such as digging for edible tubers. Despite the cumbersome and unremitting work required for their extraction, which often yields only enough to feed the young, it is not uncommon for women and children to sing songs and joke around while digging, often with little regard for their low returns. Several hours each day would be spent on the collection of forest products, the sole aim being to earn enough money to buy village goods such as rice, tobacco, coffee, and sugar. But the Orang Rimba did not derive the same kind of satisfaction in these pursuits as they did while hunting and living off the land. They would take great pleasure pointing out and commenting on features in the environment while walking in the forest: a tree that may have fallen, newly budding fruit, the movements of animals, or the remains of abandoned camps previously inhabited by other groups. Excursions into the forest are often marked with an air of

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festivity, as persons reacquaint themselves with familiar landscapes from their past while reaffirming their social bonds with their present company. In the sanctuary of the deep forest individuals are tacitly aware of the enveloping solitude and privacy, and it was during such excursions that the bachelor males would share personal information, camp gossip, and other intimate knowledge with me. Returning from a forest foray is also marked with a mood of conviviality as those back at camp anxiously wait to hear stories of the day’s journey, or perhaps gather around to examine a hunter’s captured prey. I also felt a renewed enthusiasm being in the forest and following the Orang Rimba in their daily activities. While they had always taken a keen interest in my education while in the forest near the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, they now mentored me with particular fervor and attention, as if to recognize me as a new member of their forest camp. Cohabiting together in this new environment seemed to create a special bond of trust and camaraderie, one that I would only fully come to appreciate in later months with my growing understanding of the Orang Rimba’s sacred connection to the forest. Here they exuded a child-like exuberance that was largely absent from the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang. The markedly jovial and upbeat mood in their forest camps stood in sharp contrast to the melancholy atmosphere I had come to associate with the squalid living conditions there. I too preferred the cool shade beneath the forest canopy to the blistering heat at Sungai Gelumpang, where the tin roofs trapped the afternoon heat, raising the temperature inside the huts to unbearable extremes for the better part of the day. Their forest camps also proved to be a far more intimate setting than the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, where the small wooden huts, separated by distance and walls, delineated social space and provided a modicum of privacy when desired. The Orang Rimba’s forest camps at once embodied both the open and transparent qualities commonly associated with public spaces and the intimacy and social immediacy associated with private domestic spaces (compare Lee 1979: 461). But with the intimacy inherent in this kind of open living arrangement came a lack of personal privacy to which I was altogether unaccustomed. With no walls in these temporary shelters, coupled with their close spacing, my behavior and general movements were left transparent for all to see and hear. No sooner than I had grown accustomed to the public nature of daily life at the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, I was now in a situation of extreme intimacy and in a setting where my every move could be observed in plain view of the camp. The irony of my circumstances was painfully apparent. Before my arrival in the field I often found myself consumed by the logistical problems of penetrating the Orang Rimba’s

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life-world and gaining the acceptance of a people that had, for centuries, eschewed almost all forms of contact with the outside world. Not only was I in a position where I could remain among the Orang Rimba as an accepted group member, but I now found myself submerged in a socialenvironmental context where I seemed to be getting too much exposure. Despite my precarious position I knew I could not remain too individualistic while in this domestic camp setting; nor could I retreat to privacy, as either response could be construed as suspicious behavior and possibly lead to mistrust. My only recourse would be to jump in headfirst and try to inure myself to all the negative thoughts and feelings that lead to apprehension and self-doubt. To achieve these ends, all fears of failure and uncertainty would need to be put aside. They feared me as much as I feared them, I reasoned. I consoled myself by recreating in my mind a scene from Argonauts in the Western Pacific, where I imagined the Dutch trading vessel sailing off into the distance and leaving Malinowski on an unfamiliar beach to fend for himself with only his few possessions and supplies (1961: 4). I drew comfort in the knowledge that I could escape to a nearby village or logging camp for a brief respite, or to the small town of Muara Bungo a two hour’s ride away (on dry roads) for a lengthier break from the field.

Private Selves and Collective Perception Despite my concerted attempts at maintaining a receptive posture, the lack of privacy and open living conditions inculcated in me a new and never before experienced agoraphobia that I had no means to remedy; and my awareness of this fact left me in a state of perpetual anxiety during my early days in the forest. In this isolated forest camp setting one is irrevocably connected to one’s surroundings with no recourse to privacy. Here my inner thoughts and impressions converged with public awareness and I would find myself unable to filter out those extraneous agencies emanating from the surrounding social and physical environment: the crying of infants, horseplay of children, quarrelling of couples, and the general ebb and flow of camp life—all occurring against the incessant acoustic backdrop of the forest. The public and open nature of this kind of living arrangement, coupled with the overall sensory output of the forest, was nothing short of an assault on my senses. I was deeply immersed in the Orang Rimba’s domain of action and perception and faced with the stark reality of sink or swim in a context where the latter seemed desperately unattainable. All the while my personal boundaries continued to be tested by the curiosity and mischievous proclivities of the adolescent males. For example,

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when I would walk into the forest to relieve myself, Dedi and Talaman would habitually accompany me. Other boys, upon sighting us walking into the bush, would openly inquire before the ears of the camp as to the whereabouts and reason for our mission, to the common response, “awo ndo concing!” (we’re going to piss!). I would soon after find myself surrounded in the forest by a group of boys, shamelessly viewing and commenting on my physiology in great detail, just as they would with one another. In other contexts they would unabashedly discuss their own body parts, often in graphic detail, and it was not uncommon to overhear stories of autoerotic behaviors and each boy’s sexual “potential.” These were typical bedtime conversations, and although always told in good humor—perhaps not least to test my reaction—they undoubtedly left me with an uneasy feeling that I was being inundated with far too much of the wrong kind of ethnographic information. With no diversions from the outside world in this isolated forest enclave time is attenuated to such an extent that one is perpetually suspended in the moment. Within the intimate confines of these forest camps we would find ourselves, for better or worse, locked into a common experienced reality, occurring on a shared plane of awareness. With limited language to mediate our communication, our interactions took on a particularly raw and inchoate quality, and our silences were at times deafening. Just as it is often said that music is composed not only of notes but also of the silences or spaces between the notes, so too our silences would highlight a degree of self-other awareness that would often be revealed in excruciating detail. Unwitting gestures and bodily movements seemed to elicit further gestural responses and bodily adjustments, taking on a communicative life of their own—one that was unnervingly transparent. Irrevocably locked into a common plane of action and perception, it was through such shared modes of awareness that I found myself being incontinently drawn into the Orang Rimba’s social universe in the most direct manner and, furthermore, at a pace and level of intensity that seemed entirely beyond my control. Within the confines of the Orang Rimba’s forest camps social encounters are stripped of all ancillary interference and one innately “tunes in” to the movements and behavioral patterns of others. Through close bodily proximity in such intimate settings, the senses become elevated or “enhanced” to such an extent that one can detect, often with great accuracy, another’s moods, volitions, and general state of being. Edward Hall refers to these sensory-intensive social contexts as “the range of intimate and personal distance”: At intimate distance the presence of the other person is unmistakable and may at times be overwhelming because of the greatly stepped up sensory output. Sight (often distorted), olfaction, heat from the other person’s body,



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sound, smell and feel of the breath all combine to signal unmistakable involvement with another body … Persons habituated to living in such propinquity to others in intimate social environments experience such “stepped up” sensory outputs and, through their ongoing interaction with others, further refine or cultivate this sensitivity. (1966: 110; in Wilson 1988: 26)

Here in the forest the Orang Rimba were relaxed and in their element. They could assess my general disposition with little difficulty by detecting the most subtle cues in my bodily comportment. The objects of my perception could easily be ascertained by following my head and eye movements, by observing the dilation and constriction of my pupils as my gaze affixed onto a person or feature in the environment. My moods and volitional states would be amenable to visual interpretation even during those introspective moments when I was not intending to communicate with anyone. These less modulated forms of intersubjectivity illustrate more involuntary aspects of our sociality, or what Wallon aptly described as “incontinent sociality” (1949; see Merleau-Ponty 1964b:141). Engaging in these forms of shared sensory experience would at once dispel any preconceived notions I may have had concerning the presumed “private” nature of perception. These realizations would be felt most poignantly in certain instances, such as when young children would unselfconsciously lean up against me as I sat in my shelter and gaze fixedly into my eyes, unabashedly entering into my field of perception. At such moments one experiences a conflation of subjective boundaries, whereby one’s being is temporarily engulfed in the other; where the self “stands out momentarily against a background of otherness, only to become ground in its turn for the figure of the other” (Jackson 1998: 10). Aside from being able to visually detect the objects of my perception, those individuals with whom I would spent the most time over the course of the following months could often predict my future actions, such as when I was making preliminary plans to leave the field. They could read my intentional states through their familiarity with my habitual patterns of behavior: our perceptions, in effect, became public in the intimate confines of their forest camps. So heightened do the senses become among persons living in these kinds of open residential settings that one might be tempted, as Silberbauer has commented on the Central Kalahari G/wi, “to attribute [others] with extrasensory perception” (in Wilson 1988: 26). Persons tend to appropriate and assimilate to the moods, dispositions, and behavioral patterns of others through their mere co-presence. Through our collective immersion in a common environmental setting a kind of mutual “transference” of intentionality occurs whereby both self and self-other awareness mutually engender one another (Merleau-Ponty 1964b: 118), leading to an ongoing dialectic that continually repositions

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experiential boundaries. Self and other, in this regard, can be treated as coconstituting entities, their boundaries regularly infringed and conflated during the course of intersubjective engagement (Jackson 1998: 16–17). At times we find ourselves fully embodied and distinct from others, while at other times we find ourselves overwhelmed and engulfed in “otherness.” I found myself balancing haphazardly between these two existential polarities, ever aware that my ontological security, as well as the carefully cultivated rapport I had developed with the Orang Rimba, could be jeopardized should this balance be lost. I would oscillate between being contained within my own corporeal boundaries and being acted upon by the will of others—between a “being-for-oneself” and a “being-for-others.” At times I would feel self-contained and alone in my thoughts, while at other times I would find the intentionality of my conscious states guided by the will and intentionality of those around me. Over the course of the following weeks and months the last vestiges of privacy would be gradually eroded away in these forest camps. I would undergo a tumultuous inner struggle as I tried, in vain, to hold on to what I considered to be precious and private, as I found myself being incontinently drawn into to the ebb and flow of collective camp life.

Orang Terang Three weeks later the Malay trader (toke) arrived to transport us back to the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang. Soon after our return I set off for the town of Muara Bungo, where I would spend the next few days writing up a quarterly progress report to submit to the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). Riding out onto the logging road on my trail bike, I felt an overpowering sense of relief. It felt liberating to be free from the watchful eyes and continual buzz of camp life; from the unremitting sounds and continuous shade beneath the forest canopy. Feeling myself reborn, I teemed with new found vitality in the bright and open spaces surrounding me. I was alone once again and enjoying a sense of autonomy and personal freedom that I had not experienced in three long weeks. The Orang Rimba use several exonyms for villagers, one of which is orang terang, translating literally as “clear person.” The term connotes the state of dwelling in an area where the forest has been cleared, thereby opening up the landscape to a lurid brightness that the Orang Rimba often find optically unbearable. Orang terang thus implies a state of living in brightness—a sharp contrast, visually, to the darker ambience beneath the forest canopy. As I rode out onto the logging road, the late afternoon sun beaming brightly overhead, I affirmed to myself that I was indeed a “clear



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person.” I was a novice in this new forest setting and, despite the Orang Rimba’s continual guidance, I still remained overwhelmed in the dizzying detail and intricacy of this unfamiliar tropical environment—I could not yet see the forest for the trees.

Balancing the Dialectic of Self and Other Through our ongoing bodily and sensory engagement with others we experience the subtle yet highly enduring ways in which intersubjectivity is constituted. The wheels of perception are set in motion through our collective immersion in a common social setting, whereby extraneous agencies from the social and physical environment guide our conscious states in a shared way. Particularly in intimate contexts, such as I have described above, persons find themselves thrust onto a common plane of action and awareness; and through our shared perceptions and close propinquity individual corporeal boundaries are transcended toward a common lived experience. While personal conscious states may be experienced as discrete phenomena, our subjective awareness is often constituted through engagement with others. Individual conscious states can thus be envisaged as dynamic nodes of awareness, arising within a broader field of awareness that is perpetually shifting in boundary and focus in response to ongoing perception and interaction within a shared social setting. In such intimate settings there is always the potential for sensory assimilation, whereby subjects collectively “tune in” to the world around them via the perception of others. So rather than projecting a self-present individual who is confronted by another that is essentially inaccessible and beyond comprehension, self and other are always at least partially constituted through their mutual involvement. The self is thus best construed as a relational and context-specific entity. As Jackson points out, “[s]elf has no reality except in [its] relation to others” ( Jackson 1998: 2). Merleau-Ponty, particularly in his later work, was apt to illustrate how otherness, or what he calls “alterity,” is already embodied within our own subjectivity; how both come to be constituted in a complementary way through their potential reversibility. For example, when we look at another person there is always a tacit self-recognition that we too can be looked at (in Reynolds 2005). Even our own corporeal bodies are brought to full fruition through the gaze of the other, much in the way that our own self-understanding comes to be shaped by seeing what others see in us (Leder 1990: 64, 92). But while otherness is perpetually encroaching upon us, it is never fully reducible to us: the risk of self/other conflation need always be present, for it is precisely in their overlap, or in their “chiasmic intertwining,”

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that our subjectivity is constituted (Merleau-Ponty 1968). Jackson echoes Merleau-Ponty when he asserts a balance between “being-for-oneself” and “being-for-others” (after Sartre’s distinction between en-soi and pour soi) as the most elemental condition of social existence (Jackson 1998: 16), requiring careful navigation by subjects in order to achieve and maintain a sense of ontological security. Our perceptions of the world are thus secured through the perceptions of others, just as our perspectives on the world are extended through the perspectives of others—they “intertwine in mutual validation” (Leder 1990: 63–64, 94). Language often serves to facilitate our interactions with others, mediating this delicate and everevolving self-other dialectic. As we saw above, without the symbolic use of language and concepts, social encounters can take on a raw and sometimes unnervingly transparent quality, opening up the possibility for mutual estrangement. In such cases the balance between “being-for-oneself” and “being-for-others” can be lost; and self and other run the risk of being reduced to the status of mutually alien objects (compare Jackson 1998: 16–17). During the most intimate forms of social interaction, self and other momentarily merge into a common domain of action and perception, resulting in a kind of chiasmic inversion of empathic awareness, or what Shutz referred to as the “reciprocity of perspectives” and the “interchangeability of standpoints” (1970: 183–84; 1973: 312–16; in Jackson 1998: 65). Through our shared perceptions individual experiential states become bound up in the experiential states of others; we appropriate the general moods of those around us, often unselfconsciously, by familiarizing ourselves with their individual nuances and patterns of behavior. Over time we come to embody these dispositions in our own habitual patterns of behavior, and our experiential states become constituted through our ongoing perceptual engagement with those around us. It is in this sense that it can be said, quite literally, that people “grow” on one another. While language and thought may serve to guide our perceptions during the course of our interactions with others, it does not constitute, nor can it supersede, the pre-verbal foundations upon which most forms of social interaction are predicated. These more immediate forms of awareness often dictate the ebb and flow of social encounters and constitute the underlying substrata upon which language-based modes of mediation arise. Human intersubjectivity is therefore not necessarily predicated on the sharing of a common language, or on verbal communication at all, as I learned during my first months of fieldwork. Before I had a firm grasp of the Orang Rimba’s language, I would need to rely on various forms of nonverbal behaviors and visual cues to gain my bearings in social situations. Through reading facial expressions, bodily movements, intonation, and manner of speech, I could draw congruencies between observed



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behaviors and social context. Conversely, the Orang Rimba would grow accustomed to my patterns of behavior and learn to read subtle cues in my bodily comportment and mannerisms, thereby enabling them to assess my current mood and general emotional state. During the course of our time together, our shared perceptions would become an ever-evolving media through which higher degrees of sensory continuity could be achieved and further perceptions and sentiments could be communicated. Thus while language and the ability for abstract thought and interpretation are commonly touted as uniquely human traits, they do not precede those innate proclivities that draw us into social interaction with others. As Merleau-Ponty wrote, “the social is already there when we come to know or judge it … it exists obscurely and as a summons” (1962: 362). Our social forms, in whatever cultural patterns or traits they manifest, arise, again, out of being-with others, through our collective immersion in a shared social context. The rudiments of human sociality thus lie not in language or individual action and perception, but in those shared forms of awareness that arise as a natural consequence of our living in a common sensory world.

Illustration 2.1. Tampong holding a captured turtle.

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ILLUSTRATION 2.2. First trip to Sugai Sumai: Tampong with family and Ajang’s third wife Timpo (standing).

ILLUSTRATION 2.3. Nighttime in the forest: Ajang, third wife Timpo, and children prepare for sleep.

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Notes  1. Ekman discovered that forty-three muscles in the human face work in combination to produce 3,000 meaningful facial expressions. Six “basic” emotional expressions are considered by Ekman to be produced and comprehended universally by humans across the globe (King 2004: 57).  2. King attributes a high level of creativity in the non-vocal communication of great apes and even suggests that such forms of non-vocal meaning-creation may be an appropriate platform for modeling the origins of human language (2004: 229).  3. My seemingly endless barrage of questions would occasionally induce headaches, as they would exclaim on such occasions (poning kepalo!). After some time I would be met with blank stares or flustered looks, indicating to me that my informants had had enough verbal interrogation for one day.  4. Ekman’s studies on facial analysis showed how many kinds of facial expressions are involuntary (1997), revealing a wide range of emotions in persons without their conscious effort. In instances when persons attempt to deceive others they are, in effect, trying to intentionally disguise or inhibit these natural movements of the face.  5. The strong emphasis on sharing has been widely documented in the literature on hunters and gatherers (see for example Marshall 1961; Service 1966; Lee and DeVore 1968; Sahlins 1968). In many cases the expectation to share is so great that members will commonly insist that others share with them. This sort of “demand sharing” (Peterson 1993) is also practiced by the Orang Rimba, but due to my new status among them they would subtly veil their demands for my items through various means, such as looking at certain food items in an overt manner (as the example illustrated), or through indirect modes of speaking. For example persons—youngsters in particular—would often shift the emphasis away from themselves by speaking in the third person, stating that “he” or “she” (engay aye/dia) is in need of something. Initially this caused me a great deal of confusion, as I would try to ascertain the identity of the person making the request without realizing that it was the person I was speaking with!

Chapter 3

Touch and the Mutual Constitution of Selves and Others

 Few anthropological studies have focused specifically on the subject of human tactility. This apparent dearth in the literature is particularly surprising when considering the countless ethnographic monographs that have been written about non-industrialized societies where tactile behaviors are often an integral component of daily social interaction. Despite our knowledge of the important role tactility plays in human social life, most of the literature on touch has come out of the medical and nursing fields, where research has been concerned primarily with the significance of skin-to-skin contact in infant growth and development (see, for example, Montagu 1986; Heller 1997; Field 2003; Caplan 2002). In recent years there has been a revival in what has been dubbed the “anthropology of the senses” (see, for example, Stoller 1989, 1997; Howes 1991, 2003, 2004; Roseman 1991; Harvey 2002; Classen 1993, 1997, 2005; Ingold 2000; Geurts 2002; Drobnick 2006; Pink 2006). Most of these studies, however, have been devoted to the senses of sight, audition, olfaction, and taste (or any combination of these), leaving the sense of touch conspicuously absent (Classen 2005: 2–3). Among this recent crop of literature there have been a few noteworthy studies on the subject of touch, but these studies have been non-ethnographic in focus, reflecting diverse interests ranging from the significance of touch in memory and in the development of therapies for the blind (Paterson 2007), to cultural notions of the skin in western literature, art, and philosophy (Benthien 2002), to the prevalence



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of touch in the history of early modern European society (Harvey 2002). As of yet, little attempt has been made in this emerging field of scholarship to undertake a comprehensive study of touch from an ethnographic point of view (see Classen 2005). In the study of non-human primates, the significance of tactility, in particular grooming behavior, has been well documented. Touch and close bodily proximity, it has been shown, lead to the formation of enduring social bonds and key political alignments—commonly depicted in the popular image of monkeys huddled together while grooming one another. Such forms of grooming behavior, we now know, not only serve the practical function of keeping the body free of parasites and dirt, but also constitutes the “social cement” that binds conspecifics to one another, providing cohesion between individuals and a semblance of societal order (Montagu 1986: 45–46). Primates are thus essentially “contact animals” and touch is a basic behavioral need of all primate species—humans included. Following from this we can posit that touch, like those other forms of nonverbal social interaction explored in chapter 2, is integral to our biosocial makeup as a species and, as such, is an essential component of our sociality. In this chapter I examine the importance of touch among the Orang Rimba. I emphasize tactile bonding in early infant and child development and explore some of the key interpersonal dynamics that serve to illustrate the ways in which Orang Rimba forge long-lasting bonds through touch and close bodily proximity in general and grooming specifically. I also examine those pre-personal forms of bodily contact and awareness that occur during sleep, a social activity that serves as an important means of social bonding, particularly among adolescent males. My own incorporation into the Orang Rimba’s web of tactile relations further illustrates the universality with which these more rudimentary, pre-verbal modes of social interaction shape our sociality as a species—a theme I turn to in the concluding discussion. As the subject of human tactility still remains on the margins of anthropological inquiry a brief overview on the subject is required, which will enable us to draw upon sources from both within and outside of contemporary anthropology. This will provide us with an analytic framework with which to make sense of the sections that follow.

The Sociology of Touch Diffused throughout the skin, touch is the most generalized of our sensory modalities. It is the first sense to develop in humans (in the uterus, well before birth) and the last to fade with old age, after seeing and hearing

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have already begun to diminish (Field 2003: 8). We commonly associate our sense of touch with the hands, but we are continually coming into contact with the physical environment around us passively through the skin (Field 2003: 75). As the body’s most extensive sensory organ, the skin’s sensitivity far exceeds that of the other senses in its ability to both detect and transmit a wide variety of tactile signals, such as texture, pressure, pain, and temperature, as well as respond to an equally vast range of external stimuli (Montagu 1986: 290–291). The skin, at times, can exhibit “cold blooded” qualities through its direct contact with the external environment, becoming warm when encountering high temperatures and cold when experiencing low temperatures (Classen 2005: 33). While all the senses, with the exception of smell, are unified within the central nervous system (Heller 1997: 135), only the skin is capable of sending direct messages to the brain. Through its direct and immediate sensory response, which is enabled by receptors located throughout the skin’s tissue, the body’s outer skin effectively functions as an exposed portion of the internal nervous system, or what Montagu referred to as an “external nervous system” (Field 2003: 77). Temporally, touch lends itself to the “here and now,” summoning the body to the present by creating a direct connection with world. As such touch has been regarded by some writers as the most “primary” of the senses, in some cases even taking precedence over vision. James Gibson, in his The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, put forth the assertion that touch, without the aid of vision, constitutes an equally important means of perceiving the animate environment, while noting how touch in combination with vision often yields a redundant input of information (1966: 53, 132). The eighteenth century philosopher George Berkeley went so far as to put forth the theory that the human ability to see in perspective (in three dimensions) necessarily derives from our early experiences of touch (Benthien 2002: 195). Unlike vision, olfaction, and audition, touch requires physical proximity and contact with objects in the world for its operation; and it is through the skin that a direct and immediate connection to the physical environment is established, thereby collapsing pre-existing subject-object boundaries between the body and the external world (compare Merleau-Ponty 1962: 316–17). If the body, as Merleau-Ponty famously wrote, is “a means of belonging to the world,” then it is through the skin that this body/ world interface is instantiated. In societies in which people spend the greater part of their lives wearing clothing, the skin does not develop the same degree of sensitivity as in instances where clothing is not habitually worn and the skin is continually exposed to the elements. Stewart notes how Philippine Negritos are very sensitive to the feel of external stimuli,

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recounting their astonishment when their fieldworker could not detect the presence of an ant crawling up his leg (1954: 105). While in the forest the Orang Rimba seldom wear more than a sarong wrapped around their loins (men) or the waist (women), so they develop a sensitivity to the textures around them through continual skin-to-surface contact with the immediate environment (compare Howes 2005: 29). Through their habituation, the Orang Rimba have also inured themselves to the climatic variations of the forest. Not accustomed to modifying the body’s temperature in relation to the outer environment, aside from adjusting their sarongs (unwrapped and used to cover the body during sleep), their thermoregulatory ability has developed in response to the extreme fluctuations in temperature, from the hot and humid afternoons to the moist, algid mornings. Touch confirms the materiality of the world and, as such, is the sense that is the least susceptible to deception (Yi-Fu Tuan 2005: 78). Intersubjectively, touch confirms our corporeal boundaries while allowing for their dissolution, thereby transcending our individual physical limits. The communications we transmit through tactile behaviors constitute the most powerful means of establishing human relationships and form the foundation of our social experience as a species. We know that the highest development of social or “exploratory” touching is found among primates, and humans are no exception (Gibson 1966: 104). Gibson referred to the digits and hands of primates (including humans) as “active organs of perception,” and noted how touch alone can provide an adequate means of social interaction and communication (Ibid.: 53, 134). Through close bodily contact a child’s early emotional bonds are established, laying the foundation for further emotional and cognitive development (Field 2003: 9). Before an infant can see, control of the tactile faculties is already established and a foundation for the future modeling of the visual world begins to emerge. The tactile attention an infant receives during its first months will set the stage for the kind of tactile receptivity that is felt toward others throughout the course of a lifetime (see Caplan 2002: 24). Early tactile experiences thus determine the relation we have to our own bodies and to the bodies of others, and the bodily connectedness we feel with those around us contribute to the formation of our own sense of self and belonging. Moreover, the impressions we receive through touch are both formed by and contribute to the formation of our own culturally-specific sensory paradigms (Howes 2005: 28). So touch, and the senses more generally, are both shapers and bearers of culture, and this is reflected in the broad diversity of human sensory experience and the patterns of predominance certain societies may place on

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one sensory faculty over another. For example, individuals in contemporary Western societies have come to rely excessively on verbal communication, often accompanied by visual cues, and the information we receive through tactility may be less significant in comparison with the degree to which tactile behaviors come into play in many non-Western societies. The British tendency to avoid interpersonal tactile contact—infamously dubbed by Heylings as the “no touching epidemic” (Older 1982: 161)— illustrates the extent to which the scope of tactility varies in the socialinteractive repertoires of people throughout the world. The Orang Rimba’s tactile relations, as the following sections will illustrate, exemplify the polar extreme in both its prevalence and importance in determining key social relationships and constituting the wider social order.

Touch and Early Development As mentioned above, early tactile experiences serve as the primary means by which a pre-verbal infant comes to experience the world. Well before the other senses have developed, an infant can identify a mother’s touch from that of other caregivers and, conversely, mothers have been proven in clinical settings to be able to identify their own infant out of a group only through touch, without the aid of vision or olfaction. Through their early bonding the mother and child develop an intuitive, almost extrasensory, kind of relationship, one that commonly operates beneath the level of conscious awareness (Pearce 1985: 25); and through this tactile dialectic two individuated entities become linked with one another and often operate as one sensory-emotional unit (Caplan 2002: 28). In most indigenous societies child rearing practices involve the raising of infants “in arms,” where the young are constantly in contact with the mother’s body for at least the first several months of life. Bringing the child into the full spectrum of the mother’s lived experience, a corporeal and sensory continuum is formed between mother and child; and through such continual bodily contact the infant’s senses are guided and come to be shaped by the bodily rhythms, movements, and direction of attention of their caregivers (Lye 1997: 304). In a study of ten hunter-gatherer societies Lozoff and Brittenham found that infants are carried or held for more than half the day until they begin to crawl. Skin-to-skin contact with the mother is continuously maintained while the child is either nursing or being held in the sling or other flexible pouch. Breastfeeding is on demand and commonly continues for at least several years after birth, thus prolonging the duration of bodily contact between mother and child (Montagu 1986: 371).

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Similarly, Orang Rimba infants are often carried around all day and gain their earliest impressions of the forest from the secure and elevated vantage point of their mother’s side. Even while collecting forest products or performing arduous tasks such as digging for tubers, an infant will commonly remain on its mother’s back or hip in a cloth sling; and when an infant is not being carried by its mother it will be held by other caregivers, such as older siblings. Thus an Orang Rimba infant is rarely left alone during the course of the day without some form of skin-to-skin contact with another person. As soon as children can walk they begin to explore the world of the forest through touching its various surfaces and textures, examining those local materials they may happen upon. Orang Rimba children openly touch and handle all organic materials in their immediate environment (with the exception of human feces); and it is not uncommon for young children, as well as adults on occasion, to run their fingers through the entrails of freshly killed animals. While I found the odor of raw flesh repulsive and, therefore, generally avoided handling butchered animals, the Orang Rimba found these scents and textures pleasantly familiar and often delighted in touching and openly examining animal carcasses in great detail. As a result, their hands and skin were often coated with an ubiquitous layer of organic material.1 Orang Rimba children also commonly taste those objects they come into contact with, uncovering their hidden qualities through a kind of “oral tactility” (Field 2003: 8). Through the tripartite relationship between vision-tactility-taste the textures of the forest unfold to the burgeoning senses of the child. These early impressions form the foundation for the future sensory and cognitive modeling of their forest environment. The senses of the child thus develop in congruence with the features of the forest, forming the basis for the high level of sensory-motor conditioning that will be required to make a living in later years (see chapters 5 and 6). Tactility combined with olfaction also plays an important role in the nurturing and incorporation of newborns into the domestic group. During the first days and weeks of life an Orang Rimba child’s still tender forehead is sniffed incessantly by parents and other camp members. Male infants receive preferential treatment as their bodies and genitalia are exalted and openly fondled by all (compare Endicott 1992: 285). The foreskin of a male infant’s genitalia is commonly pinched by the fingers and the residual odor is then sniffed from the fingertips with great fervor by adults, who will comment on the delectable scent (enak). A child’s anus may also be lightly touched while breastfeeding, which is performed either in the upright position or while a mother is resting on her back.2 Girls, by contrast,

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do not receive this kind of tactile attention due to the notions of virtue and purity associated with the female body (Elkholy 2001: 280).

Tactility and the Domestic Camp Skin-to-skin contact is a prominent feature in societies inhabiting tropical zones, where social life often occurs outdoors in an open context. For example, Draper has observed a state of near continuous physical contact among the Kalahari Bushmen, noting how group members assemble in tight knit groupings, or “knots,” where persons commonly lean up against one another, often with legs and arms intertwining. These kinds of tactile behaviors serve to reinforce emotional dependencies and a person’s general sense of belonging (in Montagu 1986: 319). The same is true among Orang Rimba domestic groups, where tactility plays a central role in expressing and reaffirming key social bonds. Touch and close bodily proximity often reveal more than language about specific emotional ties and personal loyalties—it seems to “say” more than speech about the quality of interpersonal relationships. Close bodily proximity, even when no physical contact is established, often indicates comfort between individuals or, in some cases, a desire to draw closer to another group member. Grooming is an important activity though which tactile bonds are expressed and reinforced between camp members. Grooming is most commonly carried out in the late afternoon hours, when people have returned to camp after a day’s work in the forest. People will assemble in small, tightly knit groups, much like the clusters or “knots” described above, either in their shelters or in the surrounding grounds, as they groom, delouse, and socialize with one another. Grooming relations are more durable among women, but men may also groom one another. Most commonly women groom other women and their male spouses, while the latter rarely groom the former, including their female spouses. This is due both to the subordinate and nurturing role accorded to women coupled with the dominant or “macho” veneer that men are expected to maintain. An absence of tactile communication can also be revealing, in many cases indicating a lack of intimacy between people. Such social distance is often a byproduct of the Orang Rimba’s sociopolitical organization, where personal relations are structured and determined by marriage and kinship affiliation. This is particularly the case when relations between adult males are concerned. For instance Tampong and Ajang do not delouse or groom one another and their bodily contact is generally kept to a minimum. Their interactions and general behavior toward one another reflects

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a mutual respect, but due to their marital affiliation as in-laws and as adult males, there is also an inherent volatility in their relationship, particularly since both are the leaders of very large families that can, potentially, form autonomous political units in themselves. Field notes the hegemony implicit in certain forms of tactile interactions, noting how persons of higher status are more likely to touch lower-status persons than vice versa. The latter generally avoid initiating tactile contact either as a sign of respect, or for fear of invoking a negative reaction or causing personal offense (2003: 26). Not surprisingly, these dynamics are also observable between Orang Rimba and Malays. Certain Malays who have developed a rapport with particular Orang Rimba males often touch the latter during the course of their interactions, perhaps in the form of an arm tap or by placing a hand on the shoulder. Orang Rimba males, however, almost never touch a villager, remaining mindful not to subvert the long established order that relegates the former to a subordinate posture vis-à-vis the latter. Tampong’s wives have developed close personal bonds with Ajang’s junior co-wives and despite their relations as distant in-laws I would commonly observe them delousing and grooming one another. They did not, however, exhibit such physical closeness or comfort with Ajang’s senior wife, Ma Tuo, due both to her direct in-law status through her son Buyong’s marriage to Bebunyung (daughter of Tampong’s senior wife Marapat), and to the high prestige she commands among the local Orang Rimba community as a competent hunter and accomplished midwife (bidan). Highly respected and often feared by her junior co-wives, her brash demeanor would further alienate her from the network of tactile relations enjoyed between these two sets of wives. While adults often find themselves restricted by prescribed kin roles, Orang Rimba children mix freely at an early age with few tactile boundaries, aside from those that would breach prescribed gender roles relating to unwed adolescent girls (gadis). Establishing bodily contact during horseplay and other social activities is done unselfconsciously between Tampong and Ajang’s young sons and prepubescent daughters. But delousing occurs mainly among children of the same gender or between males and females of the same parentage (but not always). Boys and girls will progressively distance themselves from one another, eschewing all physical contact as they approach their pubescent years. This taboo on touch seems to precede adolescence and thus serves as a preemptive measure to curb any potential urges that may develop in an adolescent male. While fathers, along with any adolescent sons, nurture and play with their daughters/younger sisters affectionately during their first few years of life,

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they eschew all physical contact as the latter approach their first menarche (Elkholy 2001: 280).

Assimilating into the Web of Tactile Relations During the early months of this project my incorporation into the Orang Rimba’s web of social relations was often facilitated through tactile means, particularly among the younger generation. Children commonly expressed their desire to spend time with me by maintaining close bodily proximity or establishing direct physical contact. During the course of our social interactions, or while simply passing the time together in my shelter, children would commonly lean up against me (often unselfconsciously) or sit so close to me that skin-to-skin contact was established. On occasion I received unsolicited neck massages and, over the course of the following months, most areas of my body, including my ears and toes, would undergo some sort of tactile inspection from one child or another. The hair on my arms and legs were subject to incessant examination, while those with whom I had developed the closest ties engaged in occasional grooming or “petting” of the hair on my head. The bachelor males I resided among often showed a genuine concern for my wellbeing, incorporating me into their daily affairs by maintaining a close physical presence and through various tactile overtures. The excessive tactile attention I received was perhaps a kind of compensation for our limitations in communication through normal speech, serving as a continual affirmation of my integration into the group and as a means of maintaining a degree of intimacy that may have otherwise not been possible due to our lack of a common language. On occasions when I would not see a certain person during the day, or while away from the field for longer durations, children and adolescent males, upon my arrival, would gradually make their way to my shelter, each taking their individual turns in reacquainting themselves with me. This would most often be facilitated through some sort of tactile gesture, each person expressing in their own inimitable way a desire to tactilely “catch up” with me. Nina, for example, often said very little, expressing himself more commonly by petting my head while sitting at the edge of my shelter, perhaps starting a conversation minutes later, if he spoke at all. Naturally I did not reach this level of intimacy with any Orang Rimba females. The boundaries of my tactile interactions were strictly confined to the male domain, to children and adolescent males in particular. Adult males, hardened by a lifetime of negative experiences in their dealings



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with Malay villagers and unaccustomed to continual exposure to outsiders such as myself were accepting of my presence, but remained physically distant, or at best tentative. On one noteworthy occasion, however, this tactile barrier was overcome through my interaction with an Orang Rimba adult male who had arrived at the settlement from a distant area to the south. The following anecdote illustrates the singular means through which I gained his acceptance: One evening while gathering outside the huts at Sungai Gelumpang two young adult males, both traveling on foot, arrived to the settlement. Tampong and his three wives approached the two men and, with no prior warning or indication that anything had gone wrong, began to wail aloud. As they continued to wail, now louder and more emphatically, others approached and joined in. Soon after most of the camp, Tampong’s family in particular, had gathered around these newcomers, adding to the drama as they all wept aloud in haunting polyphony into the night sky. It was a surreal scene to behold, to see such a strong collective emotional outpouring on what otherwise would have been a characteristically tranquil evening at the settlement. The men embraced as they continued to weep unabashedly and exchange greetings, while the women knelt down upon their approach and sniffed the hands of these men, as is the custom when women greet long separated kinsmen.  These were Tampongs’ long lost sons Perentik and Nadep, born to his first wife whom he subsequently abandoned in the Serenten watershed area nearly two decades ago. Although I did not realize this at the time, I had witnessed a custom known by the Orang Rimba as bubughatongpon, translated roughly as “group weeping.” A very similar custom had been reported among the Andamanese by Radcliffe-Brown near the turn of the twentieth century (1964: 117, 239). Such a greeting ritual, I would learn, is practiced universally by all Orang Rimba when long-separated family members are reunited.  Soon after their arrival the brothers erected a temporary shelter in a small patch of forest near the settlement, just a stone’s throw from the main logging road. Later that evening I would walk over with Dedi and Talaman, as they too had no prior relations or kinship affiliation with these two men and, like me, were curious to learn more about them. We sat quietly and attentively as the two newcomers basked in the attention showered upon them by Tampong and his sons, the youngest of whom had only heard stories of their long lost half-brothers. The new arrivals seemed apprehensive and genuinely perplexed by my presence here, remaining cautiously watchful of my every movement despite Tampong’s insistence that I was a legitimate member of the settlement.  An hour or so later, while the others had ventured into the nearby bush to collect wood for their evening fires, I took the opportunity to try to break the ice with Perentik. In my broken Orang Rimba dialect I asked him how far he had traveled that day, “berapo jahu kohway bayjalon haghi nio?” To

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my surprise I was met with a cold, blank stare. My eyes remained intently affixed on his, anticipating a delayed response, but I got none. I followed up with a more general statement, commenting on the far distance he must have traveled on his long journey here. I was, once again, met with a cold, blank stare. After a moment of awkward silence he turned to his younger brother Nadep and gestured for his tobacco pouch, calmly lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette as he cast his gaze out into the forest canopy above, leaving me with a feeling of disparaged impertinence.  The following day I accompanied Talaman and Dedi once again across the logging road to their camp in another attempt to establish relations with these newcomers. The general mood there remained jovial, as is common when guests visit from distant lands. I was invited by Tampong to join the men in their shelter, where I sat quietly alongside several bachelor males, unobtrusively looking on as the others joked, jeered, wrestled, and reminisced. Nina and Silingkup offered a welcoming gesture by running their fingers through the hair on my forearms, as they commonly did. Like other proto-Malay peoples, the Orang Rimba grow very little hair on their arms and legs, so they often marveled at mine, seeing me, they would jest, as a new and unknown species of primate.  In my absence Tampong had undoubtedly explained to his newly arrived sons that I had been living here for some months now, accompanying them on their forays into the forest and eating their food—a feat that would unequivocally preclude the possibility of my being a Muslim Malay. It also seemed that the newcomers had validated my presence here by seeing the tactile treatment I had been receiving from the others, their comfort with me indicating a degree of trust that would legitimize my presence as an integral member of the settlement. This, I imagined, is what prompted Perentik finally to establish contact with me, but he did so in a wildly unexpected way. Without prior warning or premeditation, he reached over my shoulder in a deliberate and natural motion and began delousing me. While in Indonesia I always kept the hair on my head cut very short and this, along with my frequent swims in the river, would minimize the possibility of contracting head lice. I nonetheless accepted his token gesture, remaining passively still as I nervously anticipated his next move. Half a minute or so passed before he reached for his trusty tobacco pouch, soon after finding himself consumed once again in the tide of conversation.

Prior to Perentik’s initial overture towards me, he had remained within close bodily proximity for some time, observing and familiarizing himself with my behavior and mannerisms. He finally made his move when he found himself comfortable in my presence and assured that I was indeed harmless. Moreover, he could plainly see that I was something of a novelty among the others at Sungai Gelumpang. While his tactile overture clearly caught me off guard at the time, it indicated a clear gesture of acceptance toward me and would lay the foundation for what would become an enduring friendship.



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Sleep and the Dissolution of Corporeal Boundaries While the frequency of my tactile involvement was most commonly dictated by the Orang Rimba, I was able to successfully interact in most contexts without much difficulty. At times, however, I would find myself overwhelmed, particularly in contexts involving excessive intimacy for extended durations, such as during sleep. Such intimate forms of tactile and bodily interaction are most awkward for people not accustomed to using the body as a medium for social bonding. Crossing this “tactile divide,” whereby one can feel comfortable with the body of another at close and intimate range involves nothing less than the opening up or “letting go” of one’s bodily inhibitions. It requires the extension of one’s corporeal boundaries beyond the restricted focus that would designate the body as a self-contained entity, lying separate and distinct from the bodies of others. As mentioned in chapter 2, I could not avoid sleeping with at least two or three adolescent males in my forest shelters, and many more in the hut at Sungai Gelumpang. Orang Rimba boys commonly sleep with their age mates or male siblings, using their sarong loincloths as bed sheets, which are unwrapped from the loins before bedtime and wrapped around their bodies to form a cylindrically-sewn sleeping bag. People often sleep so close to one another that individual bodies are often indistinguishable under the outer mosaic of blanketing sarongs. To witness a group of adolescent males sleeping during the night can be something of a spectacle, as they huddle together in contiguous clusters to form “piles” of commingling and intertwining bodies, with limbs and legs facing in every direction. Sleeping in groups is often an indication of close friendship, illustrating the opening up of corporeal boundaries with those people with whom strong emotional bonds and relations of trust have been established. Montagu’s distinction between “active” and “passive” touch is useful here in shedding light on the quality of bodily interaction that is typical among sleep partners. Active touch is characterized by tactile behaviors carried out by intentional subjects, whereby persons act upon other persons or objects in the world through the involvement of motor functions and the kinesthetic system more generally. Passive touch, on the other hand, is characterized by an interaction between external agents and unintentional subjects, such as the unwitting rubbing of a surface with one’s skin, or in social contexts when subjects are unselfconsciously interacting with others, such as often occurs during sleep (1986: 169). Through these passive forms of unconscious bodily contact, pre-personal connections between subjects are often forged and the conscious self, often absent during sleep,

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becomes indistinguishable from the other. Sleep generally involves the body’s withdrawal from conscious experience; or in Leder’s terms, a kind of corporeal and visceral “disappearance” from waking reality, as he elucidates in the following passage: Nightly, I give my life over to those vegetative processes that form but a circumscribed region of my day-body. Surface functions all but abandoned, I become a creature of depth, lost in respiration, digestion, and circulation. My experiential world rests upon the restorative powers of unconscious being. (1990: 59)

Sleeping in groups can thus be seen as a kind of collective withdrawal or “disappearance” from ordinary waking experience. Through such kinds of unconscious bodily contact, persons assimilate to one another as if forming a natural extension of their own corporeal boundaries. Just as the parts of the body conjoin to form an integrated system, so too can two bodies form an integrated “whole” through their mutual involvement in such intimate contexts (compare Merleau-Ponty 1962: 354). During sleep both sides of this corporeal dialectic, self and other, become mutually constituting entities, co-opting and inhabiting one another simultaneously. Leder (1990: 94) attributes this mutual dissolution of intersubjective boundaries to a kind of “natural empathy,” by which one’s body, through its engagement with another body, takes up the affective responses of the other. McNeely (1987) touches upon this dynamic in her observations of the therapist-patient relationship, noting how touching the patient can open up the possibility for unconscious exchanges of feelings, or what she calls “pre-verbal transference.” When the patient is regressed in a passive state, the conditions are set whereby the patient may attempt to “fuse” with the analyst, much as an infant would, expressing intense emotional dependency needs that patients are often scarcely aware of. During sleep the skin remains ever alert, responding to variations in temperature, pressure, movement and other stimuli; and through the skin’s direct contact with the external environment an immediate sensory experience is established whereby dermal messages are received directly by the brain, often without any conscious mediation. In such contexts the body remains aware on some unconscious level, despite the absence of thought or active cognition. When conscious states and accompanying motor processes are in a low or quiescent state, the body is relegated to a passive, yet receptive, pre-objective condition, surrendering to those extraneous agencies of our immediate social and physical environment. For illustration we can look at instances of extreme intimacy between people where the closest forms of bodily contact have developed, such as those experienced between spouses or, in the Orang Rimba case, sleep partners.



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In such intimate settings bodies are mutually aware and co-constituted through their pre-personal involvement, as movements, distributions of body heat and biorhythmic patterns are assimilated to and passively perceived by the body, without need for any subjective mediation. Heartbeat and breathing patterns may synchronize unselfconsciously and persons can, quite literally, become locked into a shared state of pre-personal bodily awareness. Either fortuitously or by design, I did not reach this level of corporeal involvement. I attempted to delineate my spatial boundaries by stretching out as far as my immediate sleeping area would permit, so as to “claim” as much physical space as possible. This would also afford me more flexibility to move about in the night in order to avoid being trapped between bodies. Dedi and Talaman would often sleep on either side of me and I would invariably wake in the middle of the night nestled near one of them or sandwiched between both their bodies. For temporary relief I would resort to nudging the nearest body, which might cause a minor adjustment in position and allow me to roll over or turn to wherever I might find a bit of breathing room. But despite my ongoing attempts at staking my corporeal boundaries through these hard fought nightly battles for precious inches of sleeping space, my physical appropriation was inevitable and my body, for better or worse, would come to be designated the “public property” of those children and adolescent males in whose continual company I found myself.

Human Sociality and Its Pre-Cultural Antecedents In this chapter we explored some of the salient ways in which intercorporeal boundaries are continually forged, negotiated, and co-constituted within the intimate confines of the domestic camp. We saw how tactile interaction cements key interpersonal relationships, providing a foundation for the closest and most enduring of social bonds. We also saw how tactile involvement can lead to a kind of non-cognitive bodily perception that occurs when bodies are in continual propinquity, such as during sleep. Through such forms of intimate bodily contact, subject and object temporarily undergo a mutual dissolution of being, whereby self and other are experienced simultaneously by participants through a kind of pre-personal, “intercorporeal” dialogue. But such forms of bodily engagement can also open up the potential for estrangement, as I experienced in the open context of the Orang Rimba’s forest camps, where the continual converging and conflation of corporeal boundaries, coupled with the stepped-up sensory output, proved to be a

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challenge to my culturally situated notions of bodily “boundedness.” In such intimate settings I experienced the revelation of my being as an object for others, my body at times regarded and acted upon as a public entity, subject to the free and open bodily exchanges that typify Orang Rimba social interaction. In most social contexts, however, alienation is not the inevitable outcome of being submerged in such close and intimate settings; beingwith-another need not undermine our subjective possibilities or relegate self and other to the status of mutually alien objects (Leder 1990: 94). Tactile interaction arises from an acceptance of the separateness of each individual and the implicit understanding that it is through such contact that true communion between self and other can be established (Caplan 2002: xxiii). Through the dissolution of corporeal boundaries at close and intimate range individuals tend to supplement rather than truncate each other’s subjective possibilities. This is particularly the case in societies where people are accustomed to using the body as a means of expression, where intercorporeal boundaries are continually negotiated and repositioned during the course of everyday social interaction. Through the polarity between nearness and distance, between supplementing another’s perspective with our own and mutual estrangement—a phenomenon Kierkegaard called “dis-relationship”—the parameters of our intersubjective experience are constituted (Leder 1990: 94–95). In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty specifically explores the phenomenon of touching along these lines. There is a gap, he shows, between ourselves as touching and as being touched, a divergence between the “sentient” and “sensible” aspects of our social existence. But these facets of our lived experience cannot be regarded simply as separate orders of our being-in-the-world; they are reversible and, furthermore, are co-constituting aspects of our social existence. Just as we noted in the previous chapter with vision, the experience of touching also cannot be understood in its entirety without acknowledging the tacit potential that we too can be acted upon by others in the same manner. But rather than involving a simple dualism, this divergence between touching and touched is precisely what allows for the possibility of overlapping and encroachment between these two modalities of experience; an encroachment without which intersubjectivity would not be possible at all. Our embodied subjectivity is thus never located purely in either our tangibility or in our touching, but in their mutually engendering possibilities, or to employ Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) phraseology once again, in their “chiasmic intertwining.” Once again the theme of being-for-oneself and being-for-others arises, as we find our individual capacities and interpretations of the world extended and augmented through our engagement with the bodies of



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others. Jackson captures the means by which our understandings and personal horizons are continually expanded through our bodily engagement with others: By using one’s body in the same way as others in the same environment one finds oneself informed by an understanding which may then be interpreted according to one’s own custom or bent, yet which remains grounded in a field of practical activity and thereby remains consonant with the experience of those among whom one has lived. (1989: 135)

Through the ongoing infringement and traversing of corporeal boundaries, a kind of sensory and bodily dialogue—what King (2004) in her work among great apes referred to as a “dynamic dance”—is set into motion; and it is through such dynamic forms of nonverbal bodily engagement with others that fundamental similarities in humanity are revealed. As we saw in chapter 2, private perceptions can become public through a kind of corporeal dialectic of the senses, giving way to shared modes of awareness by which relations of mutual empathy can grow, even in instances when there is no recourse to a common language. Bodily engagement with others, through tactility, enhances our collective experience, enriching those language-based modes of social interaction or, in my case, serving as a substitute for speech-mediated forms of communication. As I would learn within the intimate confines of the Orang Rimba’s domestic camps, our bodily awareness is a profoundly social thing, arising and evolving through our ongoing corporeal engagement with others. Through the opening up of bodily boundaries and the consequent forging of social bonds, tactility, in many ways, expresses more than language about the quality of interpersonal relations. Through the body’s innate receptivity we appropriate others as if to form a natural extension of our own corporeal boundaries and, in so doing, we open up the possibility for knowing another on a deeper and more immediate level. Inextricably ingrained within the fabric of both our biological and existential being, tactility belongs exclusively to neither culture nor nature. So essential to our biosocial functioning, Schanberg has gone so far as to write of tactility as “not only basic to our species, but the key to it” (Field 2003: 57). Language and concepts may convey meanings and enhance the quality of social interaction, imbuing intersubjective experience with a discursive and temporal-narrative quality. But such forms of interpersonal engagement do not precede those innate proclivities that draw us into social interaction with others: human sociality, to reiterate from chapter 2, arises as a natural consequence of being-with others, through our collective immersion in a common social and physical environment, prior to any intellection or formulation of events or ideas. As social primates, we

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know that collective behavior is a pervasive and innately-driven quality of our social existence (compare Reed 1986). As Wilson writes, “primates, especially gorillas, chimpanzees, and human beings, live as much to keep each other company as to live simply in each other’s company” (1988: 21). Sociality can then best be conceived as part of a broader developmental process, arising out of a wider nexus of relations. Rather than locating sociality in the self-present individual intentionally acting upon the world, sociality can be seen as the relational soil from which all social life grows (Ingold 1998: 95). The key to understanding sociality thus lies not in the circumscribed individual, but in the co-constituting nature of intersubjectivity that occurs as a byproduct of the body’s innate receptivity to the world.

Notes  1. The Orang Rimba’s almost indiscriminant appropriation of the forest environment, coupled with their continual exposure to wood burning fires, results in a distinct pungent bodily odor that villagers find repellent, which contributes to their “subhuman” status in the eyes of the latter.  2. This form of “erotic nurturing” may contribute to the prohibition forbidding adolescent boys to sleep with their mothers. Aside from allocating more time for care giving to younger siblings, the taboo, according to Sandbukt (1988a) may also act to curb incestuous desires. Field suggests that certain forms of erotic “kissing,” still practiced today in many societies, may be “relic gestures” stemming from our prehistoric past, when mothers weaned children by chewing and passing food to their infants mouth-to-mouth, not unlike the feeding habits observable in most bird species (2003: 56).

Chapter 4

Forest, Village, and the Significance of Movement

 Since Collin Turnbull’s 1965 Wayward Servants: The Two Worlds of the African Pygmies, the once popular myths of the “pristine forager” and “primitive isolate” have been effectively dispelled, and the degree to which exogenous forces have shaped the worldviews and lifeways of tropical hunter-gatherers has come to light in other parts of the world wherever these populations coexist alongside neighboring agrarian populations. To such an extent have outside influences helped contribute to our understanding of hunting and gathering societies that it is now commonly held that many of these populations live not “despite” their dominant villager counterparts but because of them (Woodburn 1988). The enduring economic ties between farmers and foragers in tropical zones have been well-documented in the ethnographic literature, often depicted as a “symbiotic” relationship—the forager offers needed forest products and wild game to the villager in exchange for goods such as metal, tobacco, and cultigens (Turnbull 1965a; J.T. Peterson 1978b). The Orang Rimba have followed a somewhat different historical trajectory than other Southeast Asian foragers. Rather than forming a symbiotic “patron-client” relationship with neighboring agriculturalists—an economic arrangement that appears to have developed in the past century or so with their incorporation into rural polities through their association with Malay intermediaries—the Orang Rimba have resorted to a strictly codified practice of avoidance due to fears of persecution. Today contact with local villagers varies from sporadic to steady, depending on the varying degree to which groups have been incorporated into the socio-

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economic networks of the wider Malay society. In past centuries, however, all Orang Rimba populations appear to have eschewed most forms of immediate contact with outsiders as a means of ensuring their personal safety and collective autonomy as a people.1 It is not surprising, then, that the values the Orang Rimba associate with forest dwelling are often formulated and expressed in contradistinction to village ways. A poignant division between forest and village domains is an ever-pervasive feature of Orang Rimba thought, and their ideals associated with healthy living in the forest find their source in a centuries-old ideology that elucidates a set of proscribed behaviors that need to be adhered to in order to maintain their forest-based way of life. A pervasive concern for personal and group wellbeing is tied to the need for movement in the forest; and by maintaining high residential mobility, the delicate dialectical balance between humans and the deities of the forest is also maintained. In practical terms, movement in the forest also ensures minimal contact with local villagers and, in recent decades, timber company workers. In this chapter I broaden my scope to examine Orang Rimba-Malay relations with the aim of shedding light on some of the enduring ways in which contact with outsiders has shaped their contemporary views of the world and, in particular, their notions of forest dwelling. Much of the following information was elicited through testimony, what the Orang Rimba consider to be common knowledge regarding the values and beliefs associated with their forest-based way of life—Orang Rimba “common sense,” so to speak. I begin by recounting an incident involving the untimely death of a newborn infant. Through this tragedy and the consequent lack of outside assistance, the indifference with which the Orang Rimba are often treated by local villagers is poignantly illustrated. I also give an account of my failed negotiations with the local timber company to build more huts at the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, an episode that would prompt Tampong and his group to revert back to full-time forest dwelling. As in the past I seized this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the Orang Rimba’s traditional way of life, on this occasion shifting my primary field site from the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang to the forests of the Sumai watershed. In the second part of the chapter I move on to a more in-depth analysis of the binary opposition forest-village. I look specifically at the dynamics and ideology of movement, further drawing out the disparity between forest and village domains by examining the notion of remayow (mobile foraging)—a central concept in Orang Rimba thought. Throughout this chapter I touch upon the more salient features of Orang Rimba cosmology that will be further developed in chapter 8.

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A Premature Loss of Life Early one morning Perentik and his younger brother Nadep departed for their homeland in the Sungai Serentan area approximately 100 km to the south. They would orient themselves in relation to the now familiar landscape of logging roads and plantations, paying particular attention to the horizons and the position of the sun. They started their journey on foot, wearing the same pair of denim jeans and t-shirts they arrived in days earlier, carrying only their few possessions, along with two sachets of rice wrapped in palm leafs. They hitched rides on logging trucks out of the P.T. IFA concession, just as they had on their voyage inward, and the rest of the journey remained tentative, as they would need to rely on the generosity of local villagers and the uncertainties of public transport. Once they reached the main road they could ride one of the many daily buses to the town of Maura Tebo, after which they could continue southbound on foot, navigating their way home through familiar terrain. Decades ago nearly contiguous forests, bisected only by local villages and the east-west Jambi-Muaro Bungo road, connected these two forest enclaves. The first Orang Rimba settlers of this area, as well as Tampong’s group in later years, had undertaken this migration almost entirely on foot, as their recollections of the long and arduous journey confirm. Perentik and Nadep returned to Sungai Gelumpang a week or so later while I was away in the town of Muaro Bungo. I arrived to find a group of thirty-five new people, most of whom had been informed of my presence here and were thus relatively unfazed by my arrival. The logging road just outside the settlement was now teeming with never before seen human activity. Once a dusty, desolate, and seldom traveled dirt road, the immediate vicinity of the settlement had now been transformed into a noisy thoroughfare of human bodies, with new faces emerging out of the nearby bush from every direction. Their adjustment to these new surroundings was quite natural, as children roamed about the logging road in play groups and women fetched water from the nearby Gelumpang River, or ventured to a nearby swamp to capture fish bare-handed—a technique at which Orang Rimba women are particularly adept (see Sandbukt 1988a: 134). Adult and young adult males had already begun to explore the surrounding areas by taking short excursions, capturing monitor lizards (kuya ghana/kuya pungo) or turtles (lelabi) by day and hunting mouse-deer (napoh) by dusk, their knowledge of the surrounding landscape growing each day. Before I could acquaint myself with the new arrivals I was informed of a tragedy that had occurred during my absence. An eye infection that had been plaguing Timpo’s infant for some weeks had finally turned septic

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beyond healing (a common occurrence in the tropics where microbacteria thrive and wounds, left untreated, are left to fester). Two weeks earlier I had offered to escort Timpo with her child to the Javanese transmigration village to seek the help of a local nurse, but I was flatly refused by Ajang due to the logistics of transporting a woman and infant on my trail bike. Also, the Orang Rimba were averse to seeking medical attention from the local Javanese nurse for reasons that were unknown to me at the time. Several days after my departure from the field the infant died in Timpo’s arms. While leaving the P.T IFA concession area the previous week, I paid a visit to the small medical canteen to inform the aforementioned nurse of the infant’s eye infection. She requested that the mother bring the infant to see her, despite my insistence that this was not possible. Instead, I requested that the nurse travel to the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, which was a mere three miles away and easily accessible by road under dry conditions. She refused on the grounds that she had too much important work to attend and no means of transport. This struck me as odd as she seemed preoccupied only with her domestic duties and, moreover, a white Department of Health vehicle remained parked just outside the canteen and was commonly used for precisely these kinds of medical emergencies. Weeks later while in the company of a trusted villager I expressed my disdain for the nurse’s ambivalence toward the ailing condition of Timpo’s infant. I was informed that she did not like treating Orang Rimba because she thought them to be too “dirty” (kotor) and, furthermore, she did not like to travel to the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang because she considered the conditions there too unsanitary to work. It was on these grounds that she did not feel a sense of obligation to treat Timpo’s infant, regardless of her life threatening condition. To make matters worse, a group of local Malays from a nearby village unwittingly dug up the infant’s grave while clearing land for a rice field. This left Ajang and his family with a feeling of collective despair, as this was the first time they had forgone their traditional mourning practice of melagun, which would have required the abandonment of the death-site for an unspecified duration. Responding to demands made by local villagers to conform to Islamic burial practices, they wrapped the infant in white cloth and buried her in a grave not far from the settlement instead of practicing their usual post-mortem custom of placing the body in a traditional forest shelter. Aside from the loss of his third wife’s infant, something else seemed to be nagging at Ajang. He appeared to be showing growing signs of agitation since the arrival of Tampong’s extended family members, who had now become the new social focal point. Drawn in by the contagious good humor and coltish spirit they brought with them, the rest of us would

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routinely frequent their camp just across the road to socialize and participate in their daily activities. This would leave Ajang feeling neglected or, at best, ordinary—a status he was unaccustomed to since assuming the leadership role here two years ago. One day while visiting their camp Ajang, unable to contain his discontent any longer, finally erupted: “engay aye bowson!” (I’m bored!). Visibly irritated and green with envy at all the attention Tampong was receiving, he stormed away and spent the remainder of the afternoon alone in his hut. Whether or not he could foresee the inevitable rift between their groups was unclear to me at the time.

More Orang Rimba, More Empty Promises With the arrival of five new families, Tampong was now the de facto leader of a much larger group, totaling some sixty-four persons. Their numbers would make it impossible to reside in the huts at Sungai Gelumpang but, in any case, these newcomers preferred to sleep in the forest, erecting traditional shelters in the nearby bush across the road as adjuncts to the shelters of Perentik and Nadep, who were now cohabiting with their wives and young children. By this time I had already developed a loose rapport with the P.T. IFA management through our occasional encounters along logging roads and in logging camps, where I would often buy supplies from their small canteens. One day while at the base camp near Pasir Mayang I was approached by an upper-level manager who had, through word of mouth, learned of the recent arrival of Tampong’s guests. After exchanging greetings and the usual small talk, he asked if I would be willing to serve as a mediator between the timber company and the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang. With the prospect of helping the latter voice their opinions and concerns I gladly obliged, and it was agreed that our first meeting would take place the following afternoon at the timber company manager’s office at the P.T. IFA base camp. The manager commenced the meeting by pointing out the difficulties in meeting the needs of the local communities residing within the P.T. IFA concession area, while at the same time fulfilling the expectations of those policy makers in Jakarta who are, as he admitted, generally out of touch with the local realities on the ground. I was clear in calling attention to the ongoing hardships the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang were currently facing, and explained their precarious economic situation, both in their perpetual dependence on local traders and in their inability to rely on their fragmented forests to meet their subsistence needs. The need for farmland for planting rubber trees (on land to which the timber company “legally” owned the rights) and health care were other topics raised.

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The timber company manager appeared sympathetic to the Orang Rimba’s needs and expressed his genuine desire that they become fully integrated members of the wider rural society. To this end he proposed the allotment of no less than one hectare of arable land for each family residing at Sungai Gelumpang, with the possibility of more if manageability could be demonstrated. The issue of health care, I was told, was not the responsibility of the timber company but, rather, that of the Indonesian Department of Health (Dinas Kesehatan). But he agreed to cooperate with the latter, providing them any information or assistance he could offer, including a possible visit to their regency office in Muara Bungo. The issue of housing was finally raised. Tampong’s group had now more than doubled in size and should these new arrivals decide to take up permanent residence at the settlement they would need more huts. It was agreed that five additional huts would be built and that their construction would be underway sometime in the following month. This seemed to be a pressing concern for Tampong, who wished to keep the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang as his home base for the time being while, at the same time, offering incentives for his newly arrived family members to stay in the Bukit Tigapuluh area. These newcomers, however, had no desire to live in Malay-style huts and, as mentioned above, preferred to build traditional shelters in the forest nearby. Nearly six weeks passed with no sign or indication that measures had been taken to start the construction of these huts, so I decided to pay the manager an impromptu visit and invited Tampong along to join in on our discussion and voice his concerns directly. The manager warmly received us, but was quick to inform us that the request to build these huts had yet to be approved by their main office in Jakarta. He added that he did not know when, or if, the construction of these huts would take place. Regarding the issue of farmland, we were told that management in Jakarta would not authorize the parceling out of land unless they could be assured that the Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang would remain permanently settled in the existing huts. Having sufficient farmland was more of a concern for Ajang as he, unlike Tampong, had every intention of remaining at Sungai Gelumpang for the long term. In fact Ajang’s group had used the upper Gelumpang watershed area as their home base for many years prior to the building of these huts, when much of the area was still covered with primary forest. Moreover, his foregoing of the melagun mourning practice (whereby the site of the deceased is abandoned) at the death of his infant was a further indication that his group had, in fact, already made the commitment to reside here semi-permanently. Rights to land have always been a contentious issue for both the Orang Rimba and local villagers and it was, therefore, no surprise that the timber company

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would not readily set a precedent by relinquishing the rights to land falling within their concession area. The manager also shifted his position regarding the issue of health care, reneging on his tentative offer to visit the Department of Health. But he maintained a cooperative front by insisting, instead, that representatives from the department’s regional office in Muara Bungo pay him a visit. His categorical retraction of all the offers discussed during our first meeting was clearly a consequence of his consultation with the central office in Jakarta, whose staff are concerned primarily with profits and patently out of touch with the lives of those local peoples affected by their ongoing practices. The local timber company manager was, in effect, merely filtering the response he received from his seniors in Jakarta. The outcome of this meeting left Tampong with a feeling of futility and, needless to say, our so-called negotiations broke down. This episode poignantly illustrated the ongoing struggles that both local villagers and the Orang Rimba have had to endure over the years, while highlighting the general mood of mistrust both groups hold toward the local timber company. From the point of view of the latter, the building of the huts at Sungai Gelumpang was sufficient contribution to the local Orang Rimba and it was now incumbent on them to “better” their own lives. Another noteworthy aspect of this meeting was Tampong’s peculiar behavior, in particular the extent to which he ingratiated himself to the manager’s every whim and gesture. I was dumbfounded to see him agreeing with all the manager’s assertions, even those that were contradictory to his original offers and clearly not in Tampong’s best interests. As mentioned in chapter 1, Orang Rimba commonly adopt a submissive posture while in the presence of villagers, particularly those holding positions of power or influence. Tampong, in particular, was apt to make a good impression on those local villagers who would visit the settlement by wearing his western-style clothing and offering them store bought cookies and coffee. His outward agreement with all the manager’s statements was, in fact, a commonly assumed posture during such encounters with powerful villagers. Rather than concentrating on his group’s future needs, his concerns were more immediate, namely to gain the approval, perhaps even the respect, of the local timber company manager. Back at the settlement I was further astounded to overhear Tampong recount our episode to Ajang and the others. With great fervor and force, he orated an unfamiliar tale of bravery and heroism before the rest of the camp. Gesticulating and miming his way through a series of fictional events, his public recitation would evolve into an epic tale, elevating himself to a position so lofty vis-à-vis the timber company manager that I wondered how the others could not see through such an incredulous account.

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Now standing in the center of the settlement, he continued ranting and raving as Ajang and the others looked on in reverence and awe—clearly Tampong’s desired effect. As his grand finale he fulfilled his ultimate fantasy by claiming aloud before his captivated audience to have nearly come to blows with the manager. Clearly these events were creations of Tampong’s vivid imagination and bore no semblance to the episode I had witnessed and participated in only hours earlier.2 Such fantastic tales of chivalry seem to serve as an outlet for personal frustrations, borne out of the Orang Rimba’s ongoing struggle for acceptance by the wider rural society. These exaggerated representations of reality reflect a kind of inversion of the negative “looking glass” self-image that plagues all contemporary Orang Rimba, particularly those groups finding themselves coming into increasing contact with outsiders who, without exception, relegate them to an inferior social status. While Tampong maintained a veneer of valiant indifference throughout the rest of the day, I sensed that this episode was a defining moment in his life. Later that night, when free to reflect on the events of the day in solitude while the others were sound asleep, he seemed to have an epiphany. Already awake for his usual mid-sleep cigarette, I and the rest of the settlement would be awoken by the sound of loud, vociferous shouting as he bellowed and moaned, at times unintelligibly, into the night. He had come to the stark realization that whoever remained at the settlement would have little chance of reaping any rewards or receiving any form of assistance or compensation from the local timber company. Clearly disheartened by two years of empty promises and perhaps even more so by a lifetime of disappointments in his dealings with the outside world, he decided to leave the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang once and for all and revert back to full-time forest dwelling. By this time my status as a semiintegral member of the settlement was secured and I would take this opportunity to join Tampong’s newly expanded group in their move to the forest, where I would reside for most of the remaining period of my fieldwork.

Forest and Village in Historical Perspective Two days after our inauspicious meeting with the timber company manager, stores of rice in burlap sacks and other essentials arrived in a large open-back truck. After loading up our belongings and exchanging a few unceremonious farewells, we rode off in the back of the trader’s vehicle en route to the by now familiar Sumai watershed in the foothills to the east. Tampong’s core group continued to focus their efforts on the collection of forest products, but Perentik and the other newly arrived adult males

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would instead spend their days hunting in order to procure meat for their families. While I had gained the Orang Rimba’s acceptance as a permanent resident of their forest camp I was still not permitted to follow the men on their hunts into the deeper forest. When I broached the matter to Tampong, he was quick to point out that I did not have the physical stamina to keep up with their fast pace and they feared that I could get lost, particularly once their dogs had picked up a scent, after which time the pace of pursuit increases considerably. Clearly my lack of physical conditioning and general ineptitude in the forest meant that I would lessen their chances of success. While all these reasons were valid from a practical standpoint, my growing knowledge of the Orang Rimba’s beliefs and attitudes toward the forest would lead me to suspect other, perhaps more hidden, reasons behind their insistence that I not venture too far into the deep forest. Perhaps they saw my presence in the forest while hunting as something of a hex, I speculated. Sensing this to be an underlying reason for their apprehension I did not push the issue. However, Tampong and the bachelor males found my desire to follow the men on their hunts endearing—if not naïve—and were thus most sympathetic and responsive to my inquiries into Orang Rimba causality and the proper conduct that should be observed while in the forest. While in the past I could only ask questions in abstract form— which normally elicited insufficient information or confused responses—I could now begin to examine Orang Rimba cosmology in greater depth by posing my inquiries within the framework of my own experience, within the context of the forest. This would be the beginning of a new education, one that would yield a deeper understanding of the Orang Rimba’s sacred connection to the forest. Forest-village binary oppositions often appear, in some form or another, in ethnographic accounts of tropical hunter-gatherers in other parts of the world (see for example Turnbull 1965a). But in the Orang Rimba context, an all-pervasive system of beliefs and values sets in opposition these two distinctive socio-ecological arenas of life and are so widely observed, and with such vehemence and rigor, that they fall well into the realm of the dogmatic. This is in large part due to a strict moral code passed down through the generations that draws its impetus from the bifurcation of humanity into two types: the Orang Rimba, who live in the forest and follow the hunting and gathering mode of life passed down from their ancestors, and Malays who live in villages and follow the dictates of Islam (Sandbukt 1984). Out of this root forest-village distinction flows a corpus of ideology and practice that is guided by a wide-reaching system of taboos and proscriptions that govern human behavior.

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Adhering to proper conduct in the forest while maintaining a safe distance from villagers and village ways ensures a healthy balance between humans and the deities of the forest; and in so doing, further perpetuates the long-standing disparity in lifestyle and worldview of both groups. Their diametrically opposed commensality practices (outlined in chapter 1) both arise out of and reaffirm their distinctive ecological niches and cuts right to the heart of both groups’ existence in both ecological and ideological terms. Recall the Orang Rimba’s eating of wild pig (bebi), turtle (lelabi), and snake (ulo)—foods that are prohibited under the codes of Islam (as is all forest game not killed using Islamic slaughtering techniques). Conversely, foods eaten by Malays such as cow, goat, chicken, and all other village-bred domesticates are equally taboo to Orang Rimba.3 The Orang Rimba’s staunch opposition to village ways has arisen out of centuries of hostilities and persecution by their dominant Malay neighbors and thus the extent to which they have maintained their resistance to rural Malay society can only be appreciated when placed in historical perspective. Below I provide a few anecdotal sketches that highlight several predominant themes that have, over generations, been a source of concern and anxiety for the Orang Rimba in their dealings with the outside world. In some cases these are dangers that still persist in the current sociopolitical milieu of rural Jambi, while other hazards are far less prevalent but have, nevertheless, inculcated in the Orang Rimba genuine fears from stories passed down by previous generations when these dangers were more pressing. Abduction of women by villagers or “wife stealing,” although less common these days, is a pervasive fear of Orang Rimba males. It is commonly held that an Orang Rimba woman can be lured or spellbound by Malay magic to abandon the forest and enter into a conjugal union with a villager. Conversely, Malays also fear Orang Rimba “love magic” (ilmu becintaan), which is intended for the same purpose—so the fear is mutual. It should also be noted that Orang Rimba also fear abduction of women by other Orang Rimba males. In fact, wife stealing occurs within Orang Rimba society with far greater frequency than cases involving villagers, mainly due to easier accessibility and higher incidence of interaction. When such cases occur between Orang Rimba males it is commonly held that the woman in question had been taken against her will through the use of magic and, therefore, concerted efforts are made to retrieve the spellbound wife through counter-magic or other, more coercive, means. But in cases where a woman willingly abandons her husband to live with another man, the conspiring male is banished from the area and he, along with his adulterous wife, are subject to public scorn and open death

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threats, primarily from the abandoned spouse or male members of the woman’s consanguinal family. In the rare event that an Orang Rimba woman leaves the forest of her own accord to take up residence in a Malay village, she is thereafter regarded as a “traitor” and, consequently, all familial ties are severed with her. Such forms of defection are seen by her family as the worst possible betrayal not only in moral terms (i.e., that she would abandon the sacred mode of life passed down from the ancestors), but also as a desertion of her familial duties, as she is regarded as a key ingredient in the composition of the family unit and local group, both in her child bearing capacity and in her inherent “binding” quality between men through her appropriation of the labor power of in-marrying males. Once residence has been taken up in the village an Orang Rimba woman is expected to denounce her past life in the forest as a prerequisite for her acceptance into her host Malay community. Child abduction by Malays is exceedingly rare these days but is nonetheless still reported on occasion. Malays who take Orang Rimba children from the forest to rear in the village may do so under the rationale that they are “civilizing” or “rescuing” the child from a wretched animal-like existence in the forest. Their efforts are viewed by other Malays as missions of liberation and, therefore, such individuals are widely regarded as upstanding members of Malay society for their perceived acts of charity. Incorporation of Orang Rimba into the village world not only involves the renunciation of their past association with the forest, but also requires their indoctrination into Islam. The process of religious conversion also carries the secondary function of facilitating a Muslim Malay’s quest for personal salvation in the afterlife. One reported instance of child abduction occurred some twenty years ago in the Bungo-Tebo regency. An Orang Rimba girl was taken from the forest by a local villager and brought to Jambi, where she was thereafter sent to Indonesian public schools and raised by local Jambinese Malays. She continues to reside in Jambi, working as a nurse in a local medical clinic. Over the years a deep seated sense of shame has been instilled in this woman through her upbringing in contemporary Jambinese society, and she openly disavows her past life in the forest as a child while expressing no interest in reuniting with her birth parents. In short, she has adopted the prevalent stereotypical Malay views of Kubu. Memories of such incidents remain alive among contemporary Orang Rimba and at an early age children become aware of the imminent dangers that the village world poses. Growing up they hear violent tales of past conflicts that, over time, engender a deep sense of fear and mystery toward the outer world. Their xenophobia toward villagers and outsid-

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ers more generally is further fostered through their social and physical insulation within their forest camps, where they are nearly always in the company of only close kin. Villagers seldom if ever visit these camps and it is rare that Orang Rimba women or children spend more than several minutes at a time with a Malay villager. Although contact has increased in recent years, there are still some notable exceptions where women and children (particularly females) are still forbidden to enter Malay villages altogether—their prohibition dictated primarily by the safeguarding inclinations of fathers and husbands. While it is common these days for Orang Rimba males to frequent local villages to buy tobacco and other supplies, it is often the case, as I have witnessed on several occasions, that shortlived moments of comfort are suddenly disrupted by an abrupt change in social climate, perhaps by the arrival of a group of curious villagers or timber company workers. These unexpected encounters are enough to create a panic response even in an adult Orang Rimba male, often leading to a strong visceral anxiety to return to the safety and sanctuary of the forest. On occasion, excessive contact between the two groups has led to unavoidable conflict, particularly when rights to resources are in question. During the course of my fieldwork a dispute with illegal loggers arose over access to forestland within the Bukit Duabelas National Park reserve in the Sarolangun-Bangko regency to the south. Reportedly, two Orang Rimba men were slain by a group of local Malays from a nearby village when the former requested a standard admission fee into the protected reserve. The customary agreement would have allowed the loggers to drive their vehicle into the park, while giving them access to certain timber species found therein. As these villagers were leaving the park the same Orang Rimba men, upon seeing the back of the truck filled with prized timber, demanded another payment. Unable or unwilling to meet their demands the vehicle was impounded on the spot for a brief time; and when an attempt was made to reclaim the vehicle a brief scuffle ensued. The loggers escaped with their vehicle and returned to the scene of the incident several hours later with a truck full of angry, marauding Malays. Fighting once again broke out, this time the Malay villagers initiating first contact, which left the two aforementioned Orang Rimba men with severe head and bodily injuries caused by repeated blows by hoes and shovels. Both men died of excessive bleeding hours later. Several Orang Rimba, who were privy to the slaying, along with the family members of the deceased, reported the incident to the chief (kepala desa) of the nearby Malay village where these men resided. The village chief fined the guilty men 1,500 sheets of cloth—an expensive fine by both village and Orang Rimba standards—but no other legal action was taken. Some days later the incident was reported to the local police, who in turn

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reported the matter to the regency police chief in the administrative town of Muara Tembesi. When I spoke with the police chief there some weeks later I was informed that no further action would be taken because both the Orang Rimba and Malays inhabiting this rural backwater area did not have the sense or intelligence to control their anger, nor sufficient knowledge of Indonesian national law—under which the Malay assailants would have been tried and most likely convicted on two counts of first degree manslaughter. Instead, the police chief concluded that both parties were incorrigible and, therefore, imprisoning the offenders, in his view, would have been futile. This police chief, a Javanese man stationed to this remote hinterland some months ago from Jakarta, attributed the conduct of both parties to what he saw as their innate atavistic compulsions, left unrestrained as a consequence of their crude cultural upbringing (kurang ajar). When questioned, the family members of the slain men expressed a desire to press legal charges but professed they had no means or knowledge of how to do so. Furthermore, they seriously doubted that anyone in a position to help would take their complaints seriously. Also, preoccupied with their daily subsistence activities, they could not afford the time or money to travel to the relevant district or regency offices. And so the incident passed, leaving the Orang Rimba in the area with a strong collective resentment toward the encompassing Malay society. I surveyed this field site only weeks after the slaying, but needed to cut my trip short due to the still festering hostilities toward outsiders harbored by the Orang Rimba communities here; hostilities that I feared could be misdirected toward any foreign presence.

Forest and Village: Existential and Conceptual Polarities Due to these aforementioned fears most contemporary Orang Rimba continue to cling steadfastly to ancestral taboos prohibiting prolonged contact with outsiders; and their ongoing hardships in their dealings with local Malays continue to reinforce their staunch opposition to village ways. In short, excessive contact with villagers and/or the adoption of village habits amounts to a kind of moral profanation; one that leads to a contaminated ontological state that can infiltrate the forest world and jeopardize the fate of the entire group. Centuries of persecution and subordination by local village polities have not only shaped the Orang Rimba’s perceptions of the encompassing rural society, but have also greatly colored their perceptions of the forest by giving rise to an array of malevolent deities that have taken on the physical and moral characteristics of village Malays (discussed in chapter 8).

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The respective socio-ecological niches and associated values of both groups are characterized by an ongoing tension that has, historically, set the tone for the Orang Rimba’s existential conditions in both practical and ideological terms. Cutting across all realms of thought and conduct this forest-village distinction always reveals, in some form or another, the binary opposition sacred/profane—the former being associated with the forest or “upstream,” while the latter is linked to the village or “downstream” (Sandbukt 1984: 91). These oppositions can be dichotomized as follows: forest - village sacred - profane Behelo - Allah upstream - downstream movement - sedentism forest dwelling - clear dwelling protection and sanctuary - danger and disease hunting and gathering - agriculture and animal domestication In reality these conceptual polarities are idealized, as both forest and village domains are in continual interaction and in fact are, in many ways, contingent on one another. Not only are these boundaries continuously shifting and encroaching upon one another, but they are also continually evolving in response to the Orang Rimba’s ongoing relationship with the outside world (a theme I explore in chapter 8). But however indistinct their boundaries may be at times, it is important to note the grave sense of danger and contingency these oppositions hold in Orang Rimba thought: any crossing or confusing of these two domains would be, according to the Orang Rimba, tantamount to bringing about the destruction of their forest world (Sandbukt 1984: 86). Esoteric knowledge, gained through communication with the deities of the forest, further ensures that the boundaries between these disparate existential domains are not infringed by providing the necessary information required for hunting and moving, as well as protection against unforeseen dangers emanating from both within and outside the forest. Serving a practical function in Orang Rimba society, these forms of sacred knowledge infuse the theological and esoteric with those more mundane and ordinary aspects of social existence. Religion is thus not a mere category of thought or body of knowledge that can be elevated above quotidian contexts or activities. Orang Rimba religion is both a blueprint for thought and action and an ontological condition; it is what they attend to on a daily basis and embodied in their forest-based way of life—religion is what they do.



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Despite my acceptance in their forest camps, following the men on their hunts seemed to trigger a wider, more sensitive, range of concerns. In practical terms, the Orang Rimba were not prepared to diminish their chances of success due to my physical ineptitude. But more importantly, they would not make the ill-fated crossing of forest and village domains, which could upset the delicate dialectical balance between themselves and the deities of the forest, on whom they depend for their wellbeing and survival.

Movement and Wellbeing When a group of Orang Rimba relocates to a particular patch of forest or watershed area the decision to move is most commonly made by adult males, but in theory anybody can make a suggestion based on personal knowledge of resource distributions or perhaps a desire to reunite with relatives in another camp. Monitoring the forest’s resources is of particular importance to those groups who have become more incorporated into the cash economy in recent decades and have thus intensified their forest product collecting efforts. These groups commonly set up camp in an area where concentrations of forest resources (often seasonal) are known to be found and, conversely, they may move camps either when these products have been depleted or when new information is received, perhaps via hunting teams, as to the abundance of resources in another forest area. Forest product collection and fruit and honey collection are economic activities in which the entire camp may participate. In cases where forest products such as jerenang (a prized tree resin used to make a valuable dye) and rattan, or certain fruits such as durian require climbing up trees, it is men or adolescent boys that generally do the collecting. Another subsistence activity that an entire camp may participate in is the collection of fish through poisoning and trapping. River passages are dammed and certain bark or tuber species are used to poison the river, after which time (sometimes up to an hour) impaired fish can be speared, caught barehanded, or swept to shore.4 For trapping fish, cylindrical rattan traps are used that allow for fish to swim in, but impede their ability to swim out due to the sharp inward facing barbs. The Orang Rimba’s vast knowledge of the resources found in their tropical environment is based on years, often generations, of continuous monitoring of a forest area, or what Bird-David calls, “keeping in touch with the forest” (1992). For example, the selective harvesting of jerenang in previous seasons ensures a steady and predictable supply in future seasons. Certain fruit trees, particularly prized durian species, can also be

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monitored with a high degree of seasonal reliability and, consequently, their ownership is strictly guarded by individuals (for both personal consumption and the high prices their fruits can fetch). Fruit trees also carry the added advantage of attracting animals that come to feed on ripened, fallen fruit, which in turn can provide good hunting opportunities. Costs and benefits are always weighed while determining which seasonal resources will be sought and movement to and from a forest area may often be determined by the availability of a particular resource. For example, if there is an abundance of rattan (ghouton) or jerenang in a patch of forest, a group may remain in the area for some time with the aim of extracting these seasonal resources in order to earn money. Conversely, if there is good hunting in an area or fruit trees such as durian and tampuy—both high-calorie globular fruits—they may spend less time on the collection of forest products for external exchange and live primarily off the land. As a consequence of uxorilocal marital arrangements women commonly stay in their natal forests throughout their lives, and this facilitates the inheritance of fruit and honey trees, which are handed down from mothers to daughters.5 Women also hold the rights of distribution of durian and other valuable fruits. While the availability of resources plays a significant role in determining a group’s trajectory of movement in the forest, studies have shown that fluctuations within a camp’s composition are more commonly dictated by social and political factors (Turnbull 1965a; Kelly 1995). The fission and fusion of hunter-gatherer encampments is generally a byproduct of specific social alignments as individuals and groups shift residence to avoid disadvantageous ties, or as a means of conflict resolution (see, for example, Pedersen and Waehle 1988). This is particularly true among Orang Rimba as the incessant mistrust between men over differential access to women often leads to tensions that may need diffusing. Recall Yayo’s ongoing problems with prospective fathers-in-law, causing him to shift residential camps on two occasions. Due to the potential for such conflicts, the Orang Rimba generally prefer sharing camps with only their close kin, and it is sometimes the case that persons more distantly related who arrive to take up residence in a camp may initially be regarded with suspicion. When two or more groups have taken up residence in the same forest area, their mutual presence is commonly revealed through word of mouth, or signs in the topography such as footprints, bent foliage, or other visual indications of human activity. Although most groups commonly avoid excessive contact with distantly related groups, reuniting with close kin is an important aspect of Orang Rimba social life. Closely related groups, whether meeting intentionally or coincidentally, may thereafter choose to reside and travel

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together for some days or weeks. In such instances forest game is expected to be shared across camps without exception, and they may remain together for as long as conflicts do not arise. It is more common that camps unite to form larger groupings during fruit harvesting season, when there is a greater abundance of food and a general atmosphere of festivity (Sandbukt 1988a; see also Sager 2008: 206–43). Detection by local villagers is another common reason the Orang Rimba maintain residential mobility in the forest. Even in the deep forest, timber company workers or villagers engaged in small-scale logging or forest product collecting may, through their daily activities of working in and surveying a forest area, happen upon Orang Rimba encampments. In such instances groups usually shift residence to a new area of forest where they feel they are at a safe distance from would-be intruders. Thus a degree of evasive mobility is also an important aspect in the Orang Rimba’s preference for maintaining residential mobility in the forest.6 As mentioned above, the everyday considerations of moving campsites are continually tested and given validity through communication with certain trusted forest deities. Often knowledge needed for movement is imparted to shamanic practitioners called dukon during trance states, when sources are revealed of sickness and danger commonly thought to emanate from downstream village areas or within the forest itself. The dukon’s efforts thus serve to ward off, or at least avert, such hidden dangers. For example tanah celako (cursed soil), a highly feared contagion emanating from beneath the forest floor, can cause death if not carefully avoided. Most Orang Rimba profess the causes of its harmful effects to be unknown, while others may claim the presence of a certain malevolent deity (orang skapir); but its prevalence can often be revealed to the dukon by an overpowering noxious odor that is said to resemble the smell of rotted flesh. In instances when tanah celako is detected, the Orang Rimba will pick up their belongings at once and move to another forest area. The reasons for movement are many and varied, but one common theme underpinning the Orang Rimba’s need for maintaining mobility in the forest is an incessant striving toward a desired state of wellbeing. While they share with village Malays a very similar lexicon for describing their emotions, one prevalent characteristic of their emotional life that sharply distinguishes them from their sedentary neighbors is a pervasive anxiety that stems from their fear of outsiders and all those unknown sources of danger that are thought to emanate from the downstream village world. Their ubiquitous concern for personal and group safety can seem extreme to an outside observer—at times verging on the hypochondriacal—and movement in the forest from one location to another often serves to remedy this anxiety. Thus ontological security is linked to the

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need for movement (compare Lye 1997: 204) and maintaining a trajectory of movement in the forest is tantamount to maintaining the mode of life passed down through the generations by the ancestors.

Remayow In his 1988 publication, Sandbukt offers an in-depth analysis of the Orang Rimba’s economy and associated modes of resource appropriation. Two fairly distinct subsistence orientations are described—foraging and swiddening. Residential mobility is maintained in both modalities, as swidden camps are commonly used as base camps from which forays into more distant forest areas are undertaken for unspecified periods of time. Foraging groups typically consist of smaller group sizes, often comprising one to three nuclear family dwellings, while swidden camps are generally larger in size, occasionally reaching up to one hundred people (Sandbukt 1988a: 126). A group may stay in a swiddening phase for several harvesting cycles, or however long the soil will yield returns before their plots lie fallow. In Southeast Asia food and its appropriation are often divided along gender lines. In general, we see a “complementary opposition” between male and female domains through symbolic and ritual divisions between rice (and other starchy staples) and meat. The former is often associated with the female domain while the latter is associated with the male domain (Janowski 2007: 9). Among the Orang Rimba we find some noteworthy variations on these symbolic oppositions. Unlike in many Southeast Asian farming societies where women are commonly the main decision-makers in the growing of rice and are responsible for many of the religious and ritual aspects associated with rice (Ibid.), in Orang Rimba society it is generally males who decide on where and when to open a swidden plot. Few structured rules, prohibitions or rituals are followed before opening a swidden field, but decisions are generally made by men in consultation with an elderly shaman (Sager 2008: 372–73). Once a field has been cleared (by men), the planting of seedlings and the authority of the field and its crops is generally the responsibility of women, often the wife of the owner of the field. Women watch over the fields, mostly to guard against pests, and they are also responsible for harvesting the crops, attending to the threshing, winnowing, and pounding of the rice (Sandbukt 1988a: 142–43). Many of the Orang Rimba I resided among in the Bukit Tigapuluh area had never in their lives reverted to a swiddening phase, and some have professed that they do not possess the necessary ilmu—a term used generally to connote both technical and magico-esoteric knowledge—to plant

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and harvest rice successfully. While groups in other areas may plant rice, the Orang Rimba generally do not consider themselves to be rice farmers, and thus do not invest the same amount of time or attach the same symbolic-ritual significance to the growing of rice as other Southeast Asian societies, who rely on rice as a main food staple. Rice is generally associated with a more sedentary lifestyle and, as such, occupies a kind of “intermediate zone” between forest and village—one that the Orang Rimba occasionally occupy, but with cautious awareness of the potential dangers that a sedentary lifestyle entails. In general preference is given to the planting of tubers over rice, and there is a strong conceptual division in Orang Rimba thought between swidden fields planted with rice and those planted with tubers (Sager 2008: 371). In general, the religious and symbolic beliefs applied to rice cultivation are subsumed under the symbolism that surrounds the cultivation of tubers. This may indicate, as archival sources seem to suggest, that rice cultivation was introduced some time later in Orang Rimba history (the Orang Rimba claim that their knowledge of rice cultivation came after their knowledge of tuber cultivation). Planting tubers requires far less energy and time for clearing and harvesting than does planting rice. In fact the rights to harvest rice (normally a female activity) are often sold to Malays. Tubers, by contrast, are generally grown in much smaller fields, often in ill-kept gardens, and may be planted surreptitiously. Their relatively low maintenance allows for higher residential mobility and the pursuit of other subsistence related activities (see Sandbukt 1988a: 145). Foraging cycles generally continue for much longer durations than swiddening cycles, and can last for several decades. From a logistical point of view, provisions for several weeks are required to make the transition from mobile hunting and gathering to swiddening, as groups need to forego other subsistence related activities while field burning, clearing, and planting (Sandbukt 1988a: 141). It is, therefore, much easier for a group to remain in a mobile foraging phase than to take up swiddening. Swiddening phases often come to an abrupt halt when a death occurs, during which time the entire camp flees the site of death and reverts back to mobile hunting and gathering. As mentioned above, maintaining a safe distance from villagers is a pressing concern for most Orang Rimba, particularly for more forest-bound groups. Swidden sites require the establishment of semipermanent encampments and are often easily located clearings in the forest. The Orang Rimba commonly feel more vulnerable in such a fixed residential arrangement, as they can be visited or happened upon by local villagers almost at will. Once again, evasive mobility must be taken into account

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when considering the Orang Rimba’s preference for maintaining a lifestyle predicated on movement in the forest (in both subsistence modes). The Orang Rimba refer to non-swiddening, or mobile foraging phases, as remayow. It is a term replete with meaning, as it signifies a condition of living that the Orang Rimba hold sacred; one that is embodied in the practice of movement in the forest and living off the land through hunting and gathering, just as their ancestors had since time immemorial. Mobility is a calling and a way of life; and the Orang Rimba openly recognize and speak of it as such. They hold an open veneration for life in the forest that is articulated in language and concepts, but also experienced viscerally by the body through the action of movement. Living in a state of bodily and sensory “connectedness” with the immediate environment and moving from place to place engenders a kind of spatiotemporal perception and openness that is shared by nomadic peoples throughout the world. But more than signifying a “gypsy spirit,” or simply a freedom to move from place to place, the notion of remayow also serves as a euphemism for individual and collective autonomy and a state of ontological purity (murni); one that is emblematic of their allegiance to their forest-based way of life. The Orang Rimba view their way of life in existential terms, according to which there are two worlds, or two possibilities for being-in-the-world: forest mobility and village sedentism. Their vehement opposition to village ways, reinforced by the persistence of their traditional forest-based way of life, serves to maintain and further regenerate the sacred mode of life passed down for generations; and in so doing, articulates and reaffirms their distinct identity as a people. Providing a sense of ontological security and collective wellbeing, movement in the forest is inextricably linked to an Orang Rimba’s sense of self and society. While surveying other field sites, newly acquainted Orang Rimba would warm up to me at the mere mention of the term remayow during our conversations about my past experiences among other groups. An immediate shift in their attitude could be observed, often from one of cautious apprehension to suspicious interest, as though I shared an essential understanding of, or even affinity with, their way of life. The practice of remayow thus embodies all that the Orang Rimba hold to be pure and enduring in forest dwelling and, as such, it lies at the extreme end of an ideological continuum, on which village sedentism and forest mobility represent polar extremes. Those groups who have settled in Malay-style dwellings, such as Ajang’s family, are often viewed by their forest-dwelling counterparts in negative terms for forsaking their traditional way of life, for making the ill-fated crossing into the village world domain. But even more condemning for Ajang’s group is their rejection by Behelo and the other deities of the forest, resulting from the abandonment

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of their traditional lifestyle in the forest and consequent habituation to village ways. Tampong’s group, on the other hand, would once again be embraced by Behelo and the deities of the forest by virtue of their reverting back to forest dwelling and their concerted severance from sedentary “Malay-style” living. By abandoning the timber company settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, Tampong made a conscious choice. He preferred to be free from the daily strains and expectations of local villagers. Moreover, in the sanctuary and familiarity of the forest he could exert more control over his fate without depending on the village world for what he considered a precarious and meager livelihood with an uncertain future for him and his children. Tampong’s hasty departure from the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang marked not only a change of physical residence but, more significantly, an ideological shift. After years of disheartenment, brewing over the course of a lifetime of acrimonious dealings with outsiders, he had made a clear and calculated decision to pack up his family and revert back to the timehonored tradition of remayow.

Crossing an Ecological and Ideological Rubicon In this chapter we explored the various ways in which the Orang Rimba conceptualize their traditional forest-based way of life. Their preference for maintaining mobility in the forest and the associated values they attach to forest dwelling, while comparable to hunter-gatherer values and ideals from other parts of the world, can only be understood when placed within the historical matrix of rural Jambi and, more specifically, within the context of their relations with their immediate Malay neighbors. Like opposing plots in an ongoing storyline, both groups have coevolved along mutually affecting trajectories; each domain—forest and village—continually feeding back and reflecting into the other through their ongoing intercultural contact. Ideologically, the Orang Rimba regard the village world as a kind of “parallel universe”—one that remains ever-present but must always be kept separate and conceptually distinct, so as to avoid the ill-fated contamination of their sacred forest world. But to the outside observer, and indeed in many practical contexts, forest and village domains are clearly overlapping arenas of life. While most dangers from the past are no longer imminent in today’s sociopolitical milieu, an ever-pervasive concern for wellbeing continues to permeate even the deepest recesses of Orang Rimba consciousness, as we shall see in chapter 8 where the forestvillage distinction is further drawn out on the ritual level through the exploration of shamanic practice.

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The ongoing pressures from external forces have instilled in the Orang Rimba an ever-increasing need to preserve their political autonomy and this ongoing concern is elaborated and given expression in an ethos of mobility and maintenance of a hunting and gathering mode of life in the forest. Through the practice of movement we see how practical and ideological facets of life are inextricably linked. As Kelly rightly points out, “hunter-gatherers know that they have to move to find food, even in an area of abundant resources, so they have come to value movement” (1995: 153). Thus movement, while remaining a necessary precondition for living in a tropical forest, spurred on by the exigencies of survival, can also be viewed as a kind of “ethos” that serves the function of cultural and ethnic preservation. In the Orang Rimba context, this ethos is defined in its contradistinction to village ways, but at the same time is greatly influenced by their ongoing relations with the outside world. As archival sources indicate (see Van Dongen 1906), the Orang Rimba’s “first contact” with the external world occurred in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. This led to their tutelage under specific Malay intermediaries ( jenang) and assimilation to a now archaic Malay hierarchy. This new arrangement offered greater economic opportunities for both groups, and eventually led to the kind of economic “symbiosis” that is widely reported between villagers and tropical foragers in other parts of the world. But their incorporation into the wider juro-political networks of their dominant Malay neighbors also served to legitimize their forest-based way of life by offering a modicum of protection from the persecution that was then rampant in the Sumatran interior. In this regard it can be said that the Orang Rimba have been able to retain a high degree of political autonomy because of their relations with external polities (compare Persoon 1989). Yet at the same time, their forest world ideology, drawing its impetus from its staunch opposition to village ways, clearly suggests that the Orang Rimba have lived despite—or even in spite of—their Malay counterparts. Although seemingly contradictory, both axioms are true—they are two sides of the same dialectic, one that is constituted through a shared history of both antagonism and expedience. It therefore seemed both ironic and befitting that Tampong and his group would abandon the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang and once again embrace their traditional mode of life, but now with a renewed conviction for a lifeway that is, in large part, inspired by what it is not— village sedentism. In his precipitous departure and consequent reversion to full-time forest dwelling he and his group had crossed both a physical and ideological rubicon—but this time there would be no turning back.

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ILLUSTRATION 4.1. Malay traders paying a visit to the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang. Clockwise from right to left: Tampong, Manja (partial view), Kirai, Nina, Dedi, Silingkup, Talaman, Ajang, Malay trader, Malay trader.

ILLUSTRATION 4.2. Tampong in Sumai River.

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Notes  1. Prior to their contact with Malay intermediaries, many Orang Rimba groups reportedly practiced a form of “silent barter,” whereby forest products such as rattan, dammar, bees wax, and honey were left in an area on the fringes of the forest where local villagers would retrieve them and leave products of their own, such as metal spear heads, machetes, and salt. During these exchanges both parties would remain a safe distance apart, approaching the site of the deposited goods to examine and assess their value and deposit their own—both sides never coming face to face (Boers 1838; 288; Forbes 1885; Van Waterschoot 1915: 221; Van Dongen 1931: 549; Loeb [1935] 1989: 281–82).  2. Sager, in his research conducted in the Bukit Duabelas area, also reports of exaggerated tales based on encounters with Malays. In the cases he recorded, he notes how even minor encounters with Malays often evoked exaggerated responses and an overstated sense of risk and danger when such incidents were recounted.  3. Attire and personal hygiene are other noteworthy areas where a strong disparity exists in the customs and habits of both groups. In the Islamic faith cleanliness is equated with purity and regarded as the highest moral virtue, while in traditional Malay society proper hygiene and physical presentation is seen as a sign of proper upbringing. A half-naked Orang Rimba in a loincloth is a horrific image to most village-dwelling Malays, particularly to those who seldom interact with them. Today a sense of shame is inculcated in the Orang Rimba who come to the village wearing their loincloths and, as a consequence, they have gradually adopted the Malay custom of wearing westernstyle clothing while visiting local villages. However such clothing, due to lack of care, quickly becomes soiled and torn. So while they attempt to maintain proper appearances in their use of western attire, their lack of hygiene often becomes apparent upon closer inspection. In recent years Orang Rimba women have started to wear brassieres. Still unfamiliar with proper conventions they were, reportedly, first worn outside their shirts while visiting local villages. Brassieres are still worn while in the forest by women for support, often without a shirt.  4. Reportedly in the Bukit Duabelas area it is believed that fish poison can affect the fertility of women, and for this reason women are prohibited from participating in this activity (Sager 2008: 65). There was no such prohibition among the Orang Rimba in the Bukit Tigapuluh area, where both women and men participated collectively in the poisoning and catching of fish.  5. As in much of Sumatra, Orang Rimba women inherit “the heavy” (nang berat), which most notably consists of prized durian trees, but also includes sheets of cloth, which hold the social value of increasing prestige and are also used for paying fines. Men, on the other hand, inherit “the light” (nang rehat), which consists mostly of a man’s personal belongings such as his spear, machete, and other personal items (Sandbukt 1988a: 140).  6. Lye (1997) has noted that environmental preservation is an important reason for the Malaysian Batek’s maintenance of movement in the forest in recent

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years. Monitoring a forest area to ward off incursions by outsiders is an increasingly common strategy employed by groups inhabiting tropical zones where traditional forests have been coming under threat by logging and other exploitative activities. In highly endangered forest areas such as in Sarawak, for example, the semi-nomadic Penan have for many years been witness to the destruction of their traditional forests by nationally sponsored timber companies. This has given rise to a collective awareness among contemporary Penan that has led to the organized policing of their last remaining forest enclaves, the main objective being to monitor and circumvent further incursions.

PART II

BODY AND WORLD



Chapter 5

A Journey to Kemumu

 Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system. —Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

In the chapters that follow I continue with the theme of forest dwelling, but I focus not on what the Orang Rimba believe or hold to be true about their forest-based way of life, but on observations of how they actually engage with and make a living in their forest environment. Just as in the chapters that comprised part one, I take as my starting point the “bodyin-the-world” as the primary locus of development. But here I shift my attention from those interactions that occur on the intersubective plane between individuals to those occurring through the body’s engagement with the non-human environment. By examining specific forms of humanenvironment interaction, ontogenetic developmental processes are revealed by which the non-human environment comes to shape the body and senses in highly specific ways. Identifying those salient processes at work requires the elucidation of those mutually affecting qualities of the body and the physical environment with which it habitually engages. As this and the following chapters will show, there is always a pre-personal dialogue between body and world, one that sets the vectors of the lived body through our ongoing interaction with the environment; and it is through such pre-personal modalities of action and perception that the nonhuman environment, over time, comes to condition the body and the senses in unique and highly specialized ways.

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The premise behind these chapters is based firmly in the underlying argument behind this book, that such tacit forms of bodily action and awareness are the primary means through which we find ourselves rooted in the world. Grounding our experience and forming the pre-objective foundations upon which all mediated forms of interaction arise, these more liminal modalities of experience serve as necessary conduits for mediating the relationship between the body and the environment and, in so doing, serve as essential catalysts for growth and development in the world. As we saw in chapters 2 and 3, the boundaries of the body are open and highly receptive to stimuli emanating from the surrounding social environment. The aim of these chapters, then, is to illustrate how these same open and transgressive qualities render the body equally receptive to the physical and sensorial characteristics of the non-human environment. The basic premise here is that developmental processes not only occur through the body’s interaction with other bodies, but also through its interaction with the non-human environment. The problem of being-with-others is thus part and parcel of the wider problem of being-inthe-world: both are integrated aspects of a broader developmental process of becoming-in-the-world. My aim in the following chapters, then, is to illustrate the critical ways in which the environment conditions the body and the senses, and to show how both undergo continual development and refinement in response to the rigors and demands of the tropical environment. I provide detailed examples—using idioms such as walking, hunting, and everyday perception—of the kinds of bodily-sensory conditioning required to live successfully in a tropical forest environment with the broader aim of shedding light on the more general processes at work. Specifically I am showing how certain specialized skills and bodily usages are acquired though everyday activities and continue to develop over the course of a lifetime. Even the most mundane activities such as walking in the forest feed back to condition the body’s kinesthetic and sensorimotor functioning in highly specific ways; while learned skills such as hunting require an even greater degree of bodily and sensory attunement, acquired through years of practice under the apprenticeship of more experienced hunters. Through these kinds of routine actions and habitual uses of the body, persons come to tacitly inhabit the world (Leder 1990: 89), as the body’s innate abilities and morphological structure undergo significant alterations during the course of a lifetime. Turning more specifically to this chapter, I begin by documenting my first journey to the Kemumu watershed area, a remote hilly region straddling the borders of Jambi and Riau Provinces, where much of the initial

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insights for this chapter were gained. In the remainder of the chapter I examine the bodily operations associated with walking in the forest: first focusing on its orthopedic and kinesthetic aspects, and second on the spatio-temporal and cognitive dimensions that come into play while navigating through the forest’s unpredictable topography and ever-changing visual configurations. While my inquiries are limited to human-forest interactions, these unconscious or “passive” modes of appropriation, I suggest, point to universal developmental processes that occur among all human populations in whatever environmental context they may find themselves living and actively engaging with—a premise that is further developed in chapter 6.

Yayo’s Blues Early one morning I set off on foot from the Sumai watershed accompanied by Silingkup and Nina. Traveling mostly along logging tracks, our journey would be expedited by hitching a ride on a logging truck that would take us to the junction of the westbound road heading to Sungai Gelumpang. When we arrived at the settlement we found the entire camp congregated in the common grounds, as they often did during the late afternoon hours. We passed the first several minutes sharing current news and gossip, but after some time I could not help but notice the conspicuous absence of Yayo. I inquired into his whereabouts and was surprised to learn that he had fled the area after, as Ajang described, his failed attempt at “stealing” his eldest daughter Kymah. During my previous visits Yayo had, on more than one occasion, expressed his ongoing frustrations concerning his ever-tentative status as a “prospective” son-in-law. He frequently complained of Ajang’s unreasonable demands on his time and insatiable appetite for money, cigarettes, and forest products—all of which he was expected to provide on a regular basis in order to fulfill his bride-service obligations. His increasing despair, on one particular occasion, would come to the surface during one of our many nighttime conversations in the bachelor hut. Lying on his back while gazing up at the ceiling above, he professed his diminishing fortitude and feelings of hopelessness in the face of his current predicament; a precarious state of affairs that he felt had no tangible reward in sight. So despite my initial shock at hearing the news of Yayo’s sudden departure, the conditions for the inevitable rift between him and Ajang had long been presaged by the subtle inner dynamics of their increasingly tumultuous relationship as potential in-laws. Eventually something had to give.



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Although both sides of the story differ in detail, I could ascertain that Yayo had, in fact, made an attempt to circumvent Ajang’s authority in the hopes of “convincing” or “coaxing” (depending on their differing interpretations) his nubile daughter to run off into the forest to elope with him (kawin lari). Evidently Yayo, feeling unable to or uncertain of successfully meeting Ajang’s ongoing demands on his time and energy, finally lost patience and proposed a plan for marriage directly to the girl. In the case of his cousin Buyong’s marriage to Tampong’s daughter Bebunyung one year earlier, such a proposal was enough to spur a clandestine rendezvous in the forest that would eventually lead to the public acceptance of their common will to marry. In this instance however, the effects of Yayo’s words were disastrous, prompting Kymah to report the incident directly to her mother Ma Tuo, who immediately alerted Ajang of Yayo’s guileful intentions. In no time the episode had become public news, and before Ajang could confront Yayo regarding the matter, the latter had packed up his few belongings and fled to the Malay village of Pasir Mayang. This infraction was Yayo’s last among prospective Orang Rimba fathers-in-law. He had now exhausted all internal possibilities of finding a spouse among his local kin; and in his desperation there seemed nothing left to do but defect to this nearby village, where he would be taken in by a trusted—if not opportunistic—Malay toke. Although his chances of finding a wife here were slim, given the fear of every potential Malay father-in-law of progenerating “stupid” (bodoh) grandchildren, the toke nonetheless assured Yayo that he would find for him a village wife. During the course of his tenure here his Malay patron provided him with free board and steady income, while becoming the exclusive buyer of his collected forest products. By this time in my fieldwork I was feeling a growing need to survey other Orang Rimba field sites. Now that Yayo was unencumbered by any bride service obligations I thought this would be a good opportunity to ask for his assistance in helping me establish ties with another, more forest-bound, Orang Rimba group. During one of my many evening discussions with Ajang and Tampong I recalled the mention of several Orang Rimba groups in the Kemumu watershed area that were, as Tampong put it, masih liar (still wild).1 Yayo’s mother, I would learn, resided in one of these groups, which was comprised of three related nuclear family units headed by two of Ajang’s younger brothers and Yayo’s cousin Gumbaye. Seeing a valuable research opportunity, I decided to pay a visit to Pasir Mayang on my way back to Muara Bungo to see Yayo and propose a visit to the Kememu watershed area. The following morning I arrived to the village on my trail bike to find Yayo sitting alone on a small wooden bench in the small yard in front of

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the trader’s house. As I approached his tiny wooden shack I could see him sitting upright, still and rigid, as he stared out at the asphalt road with an empty look in his eyes, seemingly oblivious to my arrival. He eventually recognized me as I approached closer and began to remove the helmet from my head. After greeting me with a hesitant nod, he continued to gaze out into the road, perhaps caught off guard by my sudden arrival. He appeared destitute and lonely in this new environment; his culture shock and sense of estrangement in this social setting became painfully apparent to me almost immediately. After several minutes of small talk—both of us carefully avoiding the issue of his hasty departure from Sungai Gelumpang—I proposed my idea to visit his mother’s group in the Kemumu watershed. This was welcomed with instant enthusiasm as I could now see a glimmer of hope in his eyes. After Yayo’s impassioned pleas to his Malay toke, including a verbal guarantee that he would sell him any turtles collected during our expedition, the trader, not without some hesitation, granted Yayo permission to accompany me to the Kemumu watershed area. But first he needed to fulfill his prior obligations to the toke, who was planning to drop him off in a nearby forest area where he would be commissioned for several days to search for turtles. It was agreed that I would return a few days later once he arrived back to the village of Pasir Mayang.

The Orang Rimba at Sungai Kemumu When I arrived three days later I found Yayo not at his toke’s residence, but in a neighbor’s home, sitting on the floor with a dozen or so village children watching Indonesian cartoons on television. Entranced by the vivid colors and animated characters, he gazed up at the bright screen with the same innocence and delight as the young children that surrounded him. Much like my incorporation into Orang Rimba society through cohabiting with the adolescent males, it seemed both natural and fitting that he would find his niche among the village children in this new and foreign setting—one in which he did not possess the skills or knowledge to survive as a normal functioning adult. He was now just beginning the slow and arduous process of assimilation into the village world—a world that must have seemed foreign to him only weeks earlier. In less than five minutes Yayo was ready, slinging over his shoulder his trusty spear (tombak) with a cloth sarong tied at its end, inside which he kept his tobacco and a small satchel of rice for the journey. After I reassured his Malay toke once more of Yayo’s genuine intentions to sell any collected turtles and other forest products solely to him, we set off on my



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trail bike to the banks of the Batang Hari, where we would ferry across to the P.T. IFA concession area. We would travel eight miles upstream on logging roads, but rather than turning onto the westbound road to Sungai Gelumpang, we would continue onward to the northeast for another twenty miles or so. It had rained the day before and the roads had now become treacherously slick, causing us to dismount on several occasions and trudge through the mud and deep murky pools of rainwater. These accumulated deposits of water often remained throughout much of the rainy season, rendering some sections of the road impassable for days and sometimes weeks at a time. We stopped at the Malay villages of Pemayungan and Semambu to break up our journey and to visit several trusted Malays who had known Yayo since his childhood. In many ways this expedition, and in particular his strong desire to see his mother, served as a much-needed trip down memory lane for the downtrodden Yayo, who seemed to be at an uncertain crossroads in his life. After accepting the generous hospitality of a local village chief (kepala desa) in the form of rice and dried fish, we headed out once again onto the logging road, with the hope of reaching our destination before nightfall. At dusk we finally arrived at a small logging camp on the banks of the Kemumu river, where we would try to ascertain the approximate whereabouts of Yayo’s mother’s group. A truck driver taking a rest at the camp canteen informed us of a small group of Orang Rimba located only a few miles to the north alongside a small overgrown timber track, a short distance from the main logging road. To our good fortune they had recently emerged from the deep forest to sell their jerenang to a local trader and stock up on supplies of rice, tobacco, and other essentials. After a twenty-minute journey through more rain flooded logging tracks we spotted a hunting dog foraging on the fringes of the forest; and soon after we could see the thick and steady stream of smoke billowing in the distance that would lead us directly to their encampment. As we approached the camp Yayo was immediately recognized from afar by his cousin Hassan, who approached us and soon after began to wail aloud (bughatongpon). Yayo embraced his elder cousin—who was the younger brother of Ajang and wed to Yayo’s eldest sister Terjun. She along with Yayo’s mother Malin now approached us, and both kneeling down to sniff Yayo’s hand as they wailed aloud in unison (bubughatongpon). Soon after his younger brother Sijuk appeared and embraced Yayo in a natural fashion. Only one year his junior, Yayo and Sijuk had shared most of their childhood together and were clearly delighted to be reunited once again. Minutes later Yayo’s age-mate and cousin Gumbaye appeared. He had wed Yayo’s younger sister some years ago, but the two had not spoken for

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over a year since Yayo fled the area after making overtures towards Gumbaye’s younger unwed sister. He was nevertheless greeted warmly, as they both embraced and wailed aloud, perhaps in reconciliation I imagined. Finally Yayo’s youngest unwed sister approached with a reserved smile, shyly sniffed his hand, and immediately retreated to the seclusion of her forest shelter. The fondness in Yayo’s eyes was apparent, but due to the proscribed taboos on excessive interaction between bachelor males and unwed girls (gadis), both siblings remained bashful and notably reserved in each other’s presence throughout the course of our stay here. Once the initial tide of excitement caused by our sudden arrival subsided, Yayo’s relatives began to cast their eyes in my direction. Night had now fallen, but despite the darkness they could all be sure that I was neither Orang Rimba nor Malay villager. By this time I was approaching the six-month mark of my fieldwork and my language proficiency had improved considerably. Speaking in their dialect I began to introduce myself and inform them of my relationship to Yayo and of my prior cohabitation with Ajang’s group at Sungai Gelumpang. This immediately evoked a barrage of questions directed toward Yayo who fielded their inquiries to the best of his abilities while trying to explain my intentions to reside here among them. After some discussion, it was agreed that I could share a shelter with Yayo, provided that he assume sole responsibility for me during the course of our stay here. After sharing a small bowl of mousedeer (napoh) with Yayo, we retired for the night in a small shelter erected by his mother and younger sister. The following morning we walked over to Hassan’s camp just across the logging road, a stone’s throw inside the forest. The mood there was lively and jovial, and I could see Yayo basking in the attention and sense of belonging he so longed for. By now it seemed apparent that Gumbaye had long since forgiven him for any past wrong doings. The former was married to one of Yayo’s sisters and they were thus not only first cousins but also brothers-in-law (see figure 5.1). As I panned across the camp into an adjacent shelter a young adolescent boy bearing a striking semblance to Talaman caught my eye. This was none other than his younger brother Binang, who had been adopted by Hassan’s family following the betrothal of Binang’s mother, Arjuna, to Ajang and consequent shift of residence to Sungai Gelumpang. Despite Arjuna’s pleas to keep the child, Ajang purportedly did not want the burden of another mouth to feed and it was agreed that one of her sons would be given to Ajang’s brother Hassan to rear. While this boy shared many of the same physical characteristics as Talaman, his taller stature and more robust physique would not have

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suggested that he was, in fact, the younger of the two brothers. He had lived all his life in the forest, maintaining a physically demanding, highly mobile lifestyle, subsisting on wild game and other forest foods. His large black pupils, dilated from years of living in the dim light beneath the forest canopy, emitted a calm radiant glow, revealing a soft unselfconscious gaze that one learns to associate with forest people. His skin was clear and his overall physical appearance revealed a sense of wellbeing that was largely absent among his settled kin at Sungai Gelumpang. In fact all the Orang Rimba here exuded a more vibrant and healthy appearance than their settled counterparts, who occasionally suffered from water-born skin ailments, as well as periods of rapid weight loss due to food shortages and chronic diarrhea induced by unsanitary living conditions. This group of Orang Rimba at Sungai Kememu had remained in a foraging mode (remayow) throughout the course of their entire lives, and their physical appearance was visibly shaped by their tropical forest environment. Their large and well-defined quadriceps and calf muscles had developed in response to years of walking through this hilly forest region, while their feet were flat and thickly callused as a result of a lifetime of walking barefoot over the rugged and uneven terrain. Continual exposure to the environment had also coated their skin with a ubiquitous layer of organic material, virtually camouflaging their bodies into the surrounding foliage. These were true forest nomads, bearing on their bodies the marks of a lifetime of living in perpetual contact with this rugged and demanding tropical environment. In their ongoing dependency on the forest to meet their subsistence needs, along with their continual avoidance of outsiders, the Orang Rimba at Sungai Kemumu represented a somewhat different economic and ideological orientation than the groups I had heretofore come to know. Despite these observable variations—which reflect the nature and extent to which different Orang Rimba populations have incorporated into the socio-economic networks of the wider Malay society—there are social continuities between even the most disparate of groups through the maintenance of kinship networks. Ajang’s group at Sungai Gelumpang and his brothers in the Kemumu watershed provide perfect illustration. While the former have settled in Malay-style huts and focus almost exclusively on the collection of forest products, they maintain consanguinal ties with siblings in Sungai Kemumu, as well as affinal ties through cross-cousin marriages (see figure 5.1).2 Through these kinship networks news and information are continuously conveyed between groups throughout the Bukit Tigapuluh region.

FIGURE 5.1. Cross-cousin marriages between Sungai Kemumu and Sungai Gelumpang.

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ILLUSTRATION 5.1. Yayo (far right) reunites with his relatives at Sungai Kemumu.

Into the Forests of Kemumu My first days among the Orang Rimba at Sungai Kemumu were predictably awkward, as my new hosts had yet to adjust to my sudden and continual presence among them in the intimate confines of their forest camp. While my association with Yayo tempered their initial suspicions of me, I still remained under their close scrutiny during my early days here. Yayo would do his best to alleviate this initial unease, inviting me to accompany him into the forest to collect turtles during the day, so as not to leave me alone in the camp with the women, who had never seen, let alone coresided with, an outsider such as myself. After a few days of collecting turtles Yayo sold his catch to a visiting trader rather than to his Malay toke in Pasir Mayang, due to the logistical difficulties of transporting live turtles long distances on my trail bike.3 He would later explain to his awaiting patron that we had eaten all the captured turtles due to a scarcity of food in the forests of Kemumu. This, however, could not be further from the truth, as the forests here teemed with wildlife and provided us with generous amounts of forest game on a near daily basis. Often Sijuk and Gumbaye went out hunting together and returned with no less than a wild pig (babi) and perhaps a smaller catch

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such as a porcupine (landak) or monitor lizard (kuya ghana/pungo). On other occasions, however, they returned with several pigs and spent the dusk hours hunting mouse-deer, thereby ensuring a continuous supply of meat for several days. As a rule a hunter gives his catch to his wife to distribute among the camp. Forest game will always be shared across camps in instances where other Orang Rimba are camped within walking distance (Sandbukt 1988a: 136). Not to share forest game is considered a sin (dosa) and would result in an imbalance between people and the deities of the forest, possibly impeding future hunting success or leading to other misfortune. Much like their Malay neighbors, those resources obtained by husbands are given to wives to manage and/or distribute and vice versa. While this implies equality, these gender-based sharing rules are, for the most part, asymmetrical in favor of females. This is mainly due to the fact that forest game is by far the most valuable and socially significant resource, and the responsibility for its distribution is allocated to a hunter’s wife. Wild tubers collected by women, on the other hand, are relatively insignificant in the proportion they comprise of the overall subsistence base, as typical excavations yield amounts insufficient to feed an entire family. As such, they are not subject to wide distribution (Sandbukt 1988a: 129–30) and are most commonly eaten on the spot as a trailside snack by women and children. Store bought rice has, for the most part, replaced wild tubers as a food staple; but while men theoretically hold the rights of distribution, it is through proceeds on forest product sales that rice is purchased, and these products are collected by both males and females. As mentioned in chapter 4, men and women not only participate in the collection of forest products, but also in the collection of fruit and honey, as well as in the poisoning and trapping of fish.4 After camping for four nights in the forest just a stone’s throw from the logging tracks that led us here, knowledge of the location of our camps had begun to spread among nearby villagers and local timber company workers. We now found ourselves increasingly coming into contact with uninvited outsiders—some curious passersby along with other, more entrepreneurial, locals hoping to secure Orang Rimba labor power for the organized collection of forest products. In less than one week they had finally grown weary of these unexpected visits, and it was decided that it was time once again to retreat to the sanctuary of the deep forest. Yayo planned on joining his relatives and, needless to say, I took advantage of this rare opportunity and accompanied them. With no nearby villages in this remote hilly region, I stored my trail bike at the compound of the nearby logging camp where it would be safeguarded by the resident manager there.



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The following morning we departed for the foothills farther to the north. In typical Orang Rimba fashion, the entire camp was up and ready to leave in under ten minutes; and in less than an hour we would find ourselves deep in the forest, the sounds of logging trucks whizzing by and the echoes of distant chainsaws now far behind us. We were in virgin country, surrounded in every direction by dense and uninterrupted vegetation, bisected only by crystal clear freshwater streams. Steep slopes converged on opalescent rocky riverbeds, which during this extended dry season only trickled water in some areas, leaving exposed small sand islands that made for pleasant barefoot walking. With no logging operations or traces of human habitation upstream, we could drink the stream water here with little danger from bacteria and waterborne diseases. The overall mood of this journey was upbeat and relaxed as we were now far from the Malay world, in a safe and familiar environment. Women and children paced the group by walking ahead in accordance with their natural abilities, as dogs dashed in and out of our formation, distracted by the multifarious scents of the forest. We would stop frequently both to rest and to read signs in the landscape revealing the whereabouts of past camps and the presence of resources in the vicinity. We arrived seven hours later, with just enough time to set up camp before nightfall. We were now deep in the foothills of the Bukit Tigapuluh mountain range—translated in Indonesian as “thirty hills,” but referred to by local Orang Rimba as bukit gayjo bebaylik (the hills that turn elephants back)—a reference to the steep slopes that prevent local elephant populations from traversing the Jambi-Riau border. This tract of contiguous virgin rainforest hosts one of the few remaining Sumatran elephant populations in the wild. Their presence is often revealed by signs in the landscape such as footprints, dung heaps, or broken foliage. This is also one of the last remaining sanctuaries of the elusive Sumatran tiger (mergho), its presence revealed more often by its tracks and the remains of animal carcasses than by actual sightings. This remote upstream region is a favorite forest patch among Orang Rimba hunters due to its abundance of wild game. Straddling the border of Riau Province to the north, the surrounding mountainous terrain and the foothills to the south had recently been declared a biosphere reserve through the efforts of a joint Norwegian-Indonesian resource management project (NORINDA). We were now in one of the last remaining pristine forest enclaves of South East Asia. I would divide the remainder of my fieldwork between this hilly forest region and the Sumai watershed area among Tampong’s group, alternating residence between both field sites over the course of the following months.

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Walking in the Forest Throughout the day’s journey I found myself struggling to keep pace with the rest of the group. Even young children, who walked at a slower pace than adults, moved with far greater efficiency than I did, easily maneuvering their bodies through the forest’s narrow trails and uneven walking surfaces. In my attempts to keep up with the group I found myself, literally, walking in the footsteps of those immediately before me in the hopes of developing some kind of method or technique that would enable me to walk more effectively. It was during this long day’s journey that I came to appreciate the Orang Rimba’s sure-footedness and orthopedic dexterity; and on subsequent forays in the forest I would come to truly appreciate the tactile aspects that come into play while walking in the forest. Walking is normally not thought of as a mode of tactility, particularly in western societies where shoes and other footwear are commonly worn, thereby creating a buffer between the walking surface and the feet. But for the Orang Rimba, as well as among many other societies where shoes are not habitually worn, walking can clearly be regarded as a tactile activity, or what de Certeau describes as “a style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation” (1984: 97). It is easy to overlook the tactile aspects of walking, perhaps due to the more obvious association we draw between the hands and tactility. Also, walking is an act that is generally performed perfunctorily and, as such, is often taken for granted as a mundane activity, one in which emphasis is commonly placed on the kinesthetic aspects of locomotion. This may be especially so in industrialized societies, where sidewalks and paved surfaces are generally walked over with footwear and the feet rarely come into direct contact with the earth (Howes 2005: 29). For the Orang Rimba, however, the feet are in almost continual contact with the forest floor and walking clearly involves the same skills and sensitivities that we associate with tactility: grasping, feeling, adjusting, and responding to stimuli emanating from the ground surface below. The forest is a highly fluid and dynamic environment and the ground is continually undergoing fluctuations in composition, density, and texture—all of which are perceived through the feet in motion. The ground is thus perceived kinesthetically and the kinds of kinetic patterns that develop through walking become habitualized at a very early age when a child first begins to discover the diverse and multi-textured surfaces of the forest floor. Orang Rimba children are encouraged to walk independently as soon as they can take their first steps and parents will impose on them a high

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degree of self-reliance, rarely carrying a child that is able to walk unless absolutely necessary. Children follow a steep learning curve as they join in the activities of their older siblings and peers, which generally require walking increasing distances from camp and deeper into the forest. Once boys have demonstrated a sufficient level of kinesthetic proficiency and physical endurance they are permitted to follow adult males on the hunt into more distant forest areas. It is during these early formative years that an Orang Rimba begins to take on the phenotypic and morphological traits of a forest person, perhaps the most noteworthy characteristic being the thick and highly resilient calluses that develop on the bottoms and sides of the feet. Formed through years of continuous barefoot walking, the thick outer dermis—often cracked and chapped around the edges of the feet—serve and even appear as an extended outer sole: a natural outgrowth of the body that allows individuals to withstand the rigors of the rough and uneven terrain. The feet generally appear wider than those of their village-dwelling Malay neighbors, not only due to the thick callus build-up, but also because of the natural development the feet undergo through continual barefoot walking. The habitual use of shoes and other constraining footwear, in time, restricts the development of the bones on the feet, which may lead to less dexterity in the toes (Tenner 2003: 58; Ingold 2007b: 6). Ingold (after Stewart 1972) draws attention to the prehensile qualities of unshod feet, noting how the fourth and fifth toes in particular develop a “prehensile curl” that enables such persons to walk with greater dexterity and precision (2004: 334). Due to the Orang Rimba’s tactile method of walking, the body’s center of gravity and general axis of movement is directed by the extensor muscles and tendons in the toes, which typically constrict and expand, particularly while walking up hills in order to grasp the bumpy, often root-strewn, surface of the forest floor. While the calluses on the feet provide a natural buffer and protection against sharp, protruding objects, the feet nevertheless develop an acute sensory response to the various characteristics of the ground surface below. While walking one encounters a multiplicity of ground consistencies (sometimes even within the same step), along with an ever-fluctuating variety of ground conditions—all of which present different kinds of sensory stimuli to the body that are detected and discerned through the feet. Indentations in the land that may be concealed by vegetation, protruding roots and vines, and the presence of twigs and other debris (which may or may not be visible), all require constant monitoring of the ground conditions below and the continual adjustment of one’s weight distribution at the moment of impact between the feet and ground (compare Ingold and Vergunst 2008: 8). So the kinetics and musculature of the body are in con-

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stant interaction with the forest floor, and people must not only be vigilant of where to step but must also know how to step (compare Lye 2008: 28). A direct sensory continuum between the body and ground surface of the forest is maintained through the feet, and during the course of walking in the forest persons become so habitualized to detecting the subtleties of the forest’s variegated surfaces that much of the information is received unconsciously. In sharp contrast to the Orang Rimba, the comparatively tender soles of my feet were clearly maladapted for long distance barefoot walking in the forest. My soft feet would occasionally evoke playful attention from children and adults alike, who would examine and comment on their “baby-like” appearance and texture. While walking along forest trails I would, at times, lose my footing while clambering up slippery slopes and uneven surfaces, occasionally stubbing my toes on protruding roots and other unseen obstacles lying on the forest floor. After a full day’s walk I would sometimes come back to camp with sore feet and an assortment of wounds and bruises. Even when I could manage to find my footing over the uneven terrain, I would often lose balance due to my inability to withstand the unequal dispersions of pressure on my feet caused by the various protruding objects on the ground surface below. Due to my slow-footedness I was also far more prone to leech attacks than the Orang Rimba. While in the forest I would have no choice but to walk barefoot. Wearing footwear in a tropical forest is generally a hindrance, as water and moisture are unavoidably trapped in, causing blisters to form on the surface of the skin around the ankles and on the feet, where friction occurs while walking. Even worse, footwear provides a warm burrow for bloodthirsty leeches that easily attach themselves to the inside of one’s shoes or socks, where they can remain undetected for several hours. Unlike myself, the Orang Rimba walk swiftly across the ground surface, thereby affording fewer opportunities for leeches to attach themselves to their perpetually moving feet. They move with a natural ease and finesse, demonstrating a degree of sure-footedness that combines both their specialized orthopedic aptitude with the kinesthetic conditioning that develops over the course of a lifetime of walking in the forest. While walking with this kind of responsiveness and tactile sensitivity is absent among people who are accustomed to wearing shoes while walking outdoors, it should be noted that Malay villagers, who also walk barefoot much of the time, do not exhibit the same orthopedic dexterity or level of morphological development. In the village, where ground surfaces are generally flat with few obstructions and incongruities, the feet are not required to anchor into the ground while walking, nor are the digits needed to clutch or grasp the ground for added traction. So the feet of a



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Malay villager differ greatly in appearance from those of an Orang Rimba, particularly in their shape and breadth. When walking along muddy logging tracks Orang Rimba footprints commonly leave behind distinct imprints that are clearly distinguishable from those of villagers, mainly by the broader than normal width and the deep depressions created, by the big toes in particular. On one noteworthy occasion I observed Malay villagers examining an assemblage of such tracks while walking along a muddy logging road. Commenting on their size and breadth, they attributed feral-like characteristics to these footprints, while speculating on the possible trajectory of movement of their human progenitors. The musculature in the legs is another noteworthy ontogenetic development that occurs in response to the rigors of the forest environment. The quadriceps and hamstring muscles in particular are highly conditioned by the specific manner of locomotion that the environment demands. This is particularly so in this hilly region of the Bukit Tigapuluh where walking up and down steep inclines is the norm and a high level of fitness is necessarily maintained, particularly by Orang Rimba men, who spend much of their time in the forest walking long distances while hunting or collecting forest products. For this reason, it is often possible to distinguish between groups in a foraging mode (remayow) and those in a swiddening phase (behuma). The former generally exhibit a leaner and more muscular appearance due to the greater physical strains associated with hunting and maintaining mobility in the forest, coupled with the reduced carbohydrate intake that often characterizes the diet of non-swiddening groups, particularly those that combine wild tubers with store bought rice in their diet.

Walking, Vision, and Cognition Aside from my physical ineptitude and tender feet, I would also find myself mentally drained after a day of walking in the forest for reasons that, at the time, were unknown to me. Walking in an urban context, or a “built” environment (Wilson 1988), where walking surfaces such as roads and sidewalks are clearly demarcated and maintained, does not require the same degree of watchfulness and concentration as does walking in a tropical forest environment. Urban dwellers take for granted the ease with which walking on flat, paved surfaces is performed, where little attention needs to be paid to one’s immediate surroundings, save while crossing busy streets and intersections. A tropical forest, in contrast, poses a unique set of challenges to vision and cognition, as objects often appear at eye level and thus require the

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continual monitoring of both those foreground and background features that are perpetually coming into one’s focal and peripheral field of vision. While walking requires the ongoing adjustment of one’s visual-spatial perception, a person must also maintain a continual awareness of foot placement. Moving along steep embankments, up hills, and along other uneven surfaces can result in the loss of footing, while certain hazards such as fire ants (known for their ferocious stinging bites), snakes, animal burrows, and poisonous plants can cause serious bodily harm if not carefully avoided. It takes a great deal of attention and vigilance to keep oneself perpetually attuned to the abundance of features that one encounters while walking in the forest. One must also remain continually aware of those characteristics in the environment that change over time. Forest trails are constantly undergoing alteration, sometimes intentionally, other times due to natural occurrences in the forest. River levels rise and fall in accordance with variations in rainfall, often rendering log bridges slippery and impassable, requiring new routes to be forged; while falling trees may block a trail and require traversing or opening up temporary detour routes. Not surprisingly, a machete is a vital piece of equipment in any man’s tool kit, as Orang Rimba commonly find themselves walking through thick forest areas, trudging through the foliage while cutting and slashing through the obstructing thicket as they open up new walking paths. The attention and presence of mind required to walk and navigate effectively, over time, habituates the senses to the forest’s rich detail and ever-changing characteristics. Through the continued interaction with the environment during the course of one’s practical activities, an Orang Rimba will fine tune their ability to read and interpret signs in the landscape; and those who spend more time in the forest will, through years of practical experience, embody those skills required to walk and navigate most effectively. Being able to read the forest’s visual cues is a skill that goes hand-in-hand with the acquisition of those skills required to hunt, gather, and extract its often hidden resources. While the Orang Rimba must be able to see the potential resources or “affordances” (Gibson 1979) in their forest environment, they must also, as we shall now see, acquire the necessary skills and bodily usages to turn these affordances into fruition.

Notes  1. The term liar as it applies to humans connotes a state of shyness or evasiveness rather than ferocity, which is connoted by the word buas, a term that is



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often applied to wild animals. Its corollary jinak is a term reserved only for domesticated or “tamed” animals (compare Sandbukt 1982: 12).  2. Yayo and his brother Sijuk provide further illustration, representing two polar extremes of incorporation into the wider social and economic networks of the encompassing Malay society. The former defected to a nearby Malay village where he earns his living by selling forest products to one trusted patron, while the latter maintains residential mobility in the forest, subsisting primarily in a hunting and gathering economy. His trade in forest products is restricted to earning just enough money to buy certain bare essentials such as tobacco and rice, while his continual shift in trade partners serves to curtail those economic dependencies that often develop with specific persons, thereby affording him a high degree of personal autonomy (compare Pedersen and Waehle 1988).  3. Turtles must be transported live to local ports, where they are shipped and sold overseas to markets in Singapore, Malaysia, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.  4. For a more detailed review of Orang Rimba economy and resource appropriation see Sandbukt (1988a).

Chapter 6

Becoming a Hunter

 Fieldnotes, Sungai Kemumu, 15 December 1998: As dawn breaks over a sleepy camp, the sounds of the encompassing forest gradually give way to the crying of infants and the morning chatter of children and adults. Shelter by shelter, people begin to awaken from the night’s slumber and soon after turn their attention to household chores in preparation for the day ahead. Ascending from the distant horizon, the sun’s nascent rays penetrate through the forest canopy overhead and refract through the morning dew and smoke from our smoldering fires. The sonic howls of gibbons in the distance echo throughout the forest, intermittently piercing through the sounds of human activity to create an immediate aural ambience that reverberates throughout the still awakening body.  The dogs awaken and rise to their legs at the scent of food as they stretch their lean, lanky bodies and shake off the night’s sleep. Soon after they roam the camp, foraging for scraps from our morning meal. As the men organize themselves in preparation for the day’s hunt, the dogs begin to whimper in anticipation, remaining ever poised and eagerly watchful of their master’s movements. As the hunters reach for their spears, their whimpers quickly transform into ecstatic howls. Their untamed yowling at once morph them back to their pre-domesticated roots and signal their unconditional compliance with the hunt they are soon to participate in. Both dog and hunter are united in a common purpose for the day.

Dogs are an integral component of most hunting pursuits. Although a very good hunter can track game on his own, employing the acute olfactory senses of a trained hunting dog is the most efficient means for tracking and capturing forest game. In many instances dogs may actually aid in the killing, particularly in cases when the hunter is trying to instill in younger dogs the courage to confront and tackle larger game. Familiarizing itself with the animal’s tactics and general behavior will build

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confidence, while the taste of blood, according to the Orang Rimba, will toughen up the dog for future hunts so that one day it will be able to corner and hold its ground with an adult boar or sow (which will feed many more mouths than a young piglet). So much assistance do these dogs provide that on occasion an exceptionally brave and adept woman—like Ma Tuo—will venture to hunt, capturing prey with a fair degree of success. During the course of my fieldwork, she and her junior co-wife, Arjuna, captured and carried back to camp a young piglet and a monitor lizard. Nearly nine months pregnant at the time, she gave birth to her tenth child two days later. For certain prey it is not always beneficial to hunt with dogs. Since the introduction of flashlights in 1978, the Orang Rimba have been employing a nighttime hunting technique involving the projection of light into the eyes of small nocturnal animals. Mouse-deer (napoh) are most commonly taken using this technique (Sandbukt 1988a: 131). This small ungulate freezes in its tracks as an innate response, its eyes affixed to the cast beam of light, thereby allowing for relatively easy capture. Hunting during the dusk and nighttime hours has also allowed the Orang Rimba to budget their time more efficiently, leaving open more daylight hours for the collection of forest products (Ibid.). During the early days at Sungai Kemumu I tagged along with Yayo. Sijuk and Gumbaye vehemently objected to any suggestion that I accompany them in the forest while hunting. We usually departed from camp together in the morning and walked into the forest for ten minutes or so, after which the men would take a short break to roll and smoke a cigarette. Soon after we would part ways, Sijuk and Gumbaye in one direction with their dogs, and I with Yayo in another to search for freshwater turtles. This pattern had become a daily routine to which I had grown accustomed. One afternoon while returning home from a day in the forest, we happened upon Sijuk, who had been hunting alone that day. He was on his way back to camp to round up volunteers to help him carry back the carcass of a tapir he had speared only moments ago. The animal had been asleep in the buttress of a large dipterocarp tree, when Sijuk quietly approached and speared it before it could get to its feet and flee. Yayo and I offered our assistance but the three of us were unable to carry the animal’s entire body back to camp due to its enormous mass and weight. Instead, we butchered the animal in situ, taking the choice cuts of meat back to camp in three large white burlap rice sacks (Orang Rimba commonly use these thirteen pound grain rice sacks as storage containers). The following morning we would return to butcher and collect the remainder of the meat. That evening while cooking the day’s catch, Sijuk walked over to my shelter and somewhat ceremoniously handed me a large portion of freshly

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cooked liver. Without hesitation I reached out and took the slab of bloody rare meat into my hand. After taking a large bite I heartily exclaimed “enak!” (tasty!), knowing well that such a response would evoke amusement among the camp. His generous offer of choice meat appeared to be a personal overture, signifying his gratitude for my assistance earlier in the day. Although I did not accompany him on the hunt and was not present at the time the animal was killed, he seemed to associate my carrying and eating of the meat with the hunting experience in general. This fortuitous episode, coupled with the trust I had gained with his elder brother Yayo, would lead to his eventual acceptance of me and prove to be the beginning of my apprenticeship under a great hunter.

Seeing and Hearing in the Forest Naturally, hunting requires an exceptional degree of watchfulness and sensitivity to the surrounding environment, which is replete with visual and auditory cues that guide and orient the hunter to his prey. River systems and their smaller tributaries and streams host riverine species and attract animals that come to drink. These leave behind signs of their presence for hunters to read and interpret. Incision marks found on foliage on the fringes of riverbeds reveal the feeding patterns and distribution of freshwater turtles. Most often their burrows are not very far from where they feed and they can be detected by prodding the metal cone-shaped tip found on the blunt end of the hunter’s spear into the riverbed’s muddy substrata where they burrow. The sound and impact of the metal cone-tip on the shell of the turtle will indicate its presence to the hunter. Tracks on the muddy ground surface in or near riverbeds reveal the size, group composition, and foraging patterns of wild pigs (babi) and other forest ungulates such as tapir (munsah) and deer (rusah) that traverse or come to drink. Faint outlines on the forest floor, hardly visible to the naked eye, indicate animal trails, or the movement patterns of monitor lizards (kuya ghana/pungo) and pythons (ulo sao). Mounds of foliage expose the dens of porcupine and other subterranean species, while large trees with above ground “buttress” roots provide temporary dens for large game such as tapir, wild pigs, and, on occasion, tigers. Fallen fruits attract herbivores that come to feed, and their excremental droppings often reveal their presence and movement patterns. The presence of elephants is similarly revealed by larger dung heaps. These are but a small inventory of visual signs that the forest yields, and being able to detect and interpret their multifaceted characteristics is critical to aiding the hunter in his active pursuit of game. An Orang Rimba

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hunter will often pause during the course of a hunt to examine these signs in the landscape, continually reassessing his strategy as new clues reveal themselves. He is continually deciphering critical connections and weighing the costs and benefits of pursuing some signs while ignoring others. For example, animal tracks that do not trigger an olfactory response from the dogs may actually be well preserved imprints left some days ago, and thus not worth pursuing. Conversely, the dogs may be fresh on the scent of arboreal species such as primates that are inaccessible. In such instances the hunter must reassume the lead and redirect the dogs. During the course of the hunt an Orang Rimba hunter may often find himself trudging through unknown territory, particularly when the dogs have ventured off the beaten path in pursuit of an animal’s scent. In such instances both the hunter and his dogs will roam through the forest without following any preexisting trail, guided only by narrow, often imperceptible, pathways forged by the movements of wild pigs and other animals. These paths may connect with others to form faint networks, visible only to hunting dogs and the trained eyes of experienced hunters. When slogging through such dense forest underbrush, hunters must be particularly watchful of hazards such as poisonous plants, animal burrows, leeches, snakes, and centipedes—in particular the red and black-striped variety that can inflict a painful venom-filled bite. It was not uncommon for Orang Rimba hunters to stop and point these hazards out to me while walking in the forest, in some instances taking me by the hand and physically directing me away from these potential dangers. The farther a hunter ventures off the beaten path the more important it is for him to note the position of his body in relation to the camp, so as not to lose his way. Dogs on the scent of game may crisscross through the forest following no preordained path, leading the hunter far astray. Physical orienting markers include river valleys, hills and ridges, the confluence and branching of river systems, and landmarks such as large dipterocarp trees, which are often visible from a distance. But these markers can occasionally confuse the hunter, particularly when unfamiliar patches of forest are visited. As travel in the forest is usually carried out during the daylight hours, hunters must always be cognizant of the position of the sun in order to arrive back to camp by nightfall. He must also pay careful attention to signs of impending storms, often presaged by warm breezes and the sudden accumulation of thick dark clouds overhead. Walking in the forest during a rainstorm is a highly dangerous undertaking due to the higher risk of wind and lightning that can strike down trees and cause serious bodily harm, or in some cases death. Living in the forest without the use of electricity and artificial lighting (save flashlights) habituates the eyes to see under a variety of different

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lighting conditions. As a result the Orang Rimba have developed exceptionally keen night vision. Aside from the typical domestic activities carried out during the evening hours, hunting for mouse-deer and collecting frogs are other noteworthy productive activities carried out at night. The Orang Rimba’s habituation to living under the diminished light beneath the shade of the forest canopy has inculcated in them an aversion to direct sunlight, particularly among those more forest-bound groups that spend little time in Malay villages (see Van Dongen 1906: 241). While vision generally provides more detailed information about the physical world than the other senses, listening plays a particularly important role in a tropical forest, where visibility rarely exceeds twenty yards and agencies in the environment are often heard but not seen (compare Feld and Basso 1996: 89; see also Gell 1995). The forest is replete with a dizzying array of audible signals and a hunter’s sense of hearing, over the years, becomes keenly attuned to the acoustic nuances in the environment. Hearing always plays a complementary role to vision in all hunting pursuits, their order of prominence alternating in accordance with those impending signals that present themselves to the hunter. Through concerted listening, the presence and approximate location of animals in the distance such as birds and primates can be discerned well before they enter one’s field of vision. Although these animals are generally not hunted by the Orang Rimba, their presence can be telling, aiding the hunter in his search for more desirable game. For example, the high-pitched calls of macaques may signal the abundance of fruit in an area, which can lure wild pigs and other ungulates that come to feed on ripened, fallen fruit. Their alarm calls, on the other hand, may signal to these animals the presence of the oncoming hunters or other predators. The calls of birds can also indicate the availability of seasonal resources that attract animals and, therefore, serve the same function in aiding hunters to their prey. Thus recognizing the habitual sounds and calls of animals can provide hunters with critical information regarding the availability of key resources along with the location, movement, and behavior of animals that may be foraging in the vicinity. Older and more experienced hunters are generally better able to discern and interpret animal sounds that may seem arbitrary to the novice. Through careful listening and continued practice the hunter is also able to emulate a wide variety of animal calls, which are used to lure prey into his general vicinity. The most common call mastered by Orang Rimba hunters is that of the mouse-deer (napoh), performed by creating a high-pitched squealing sound that is produced by blowing into a small folded leaf. To be silent in the forest is equally important while in pursuit of game, so as not to alert animals to the presence of approaching hunters. Hunting

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in the rain is a highly effective strategy because the hunter’s footsteps are drowned out by the sound of the falling rain, allowing him to approach an animal at close range. During the rain wild pigs will often build their leafmound burrows within above-ground buttress roots to keep dry. Once a hunter has located a den (often revealed by a large heap of leaves), he is able to approach the animal undetected and spear it at close range (Sandbukt 1988a: 133). While wild pigs generally have a very keen sense of smell and hearing, their vision is relatively poor, so this form of hunting may also be carried out at night, particularly when a hunter is aware of a den’s location and experienced enough to walk in the forest in the dark under rainy conditions. Conversely, hunting during the dry season can be less efficient as the sounds of dry leaves crackling underfoot can alert suspecting prey to the hunter’s presence (Ibid.: 132). Hunters must also take into account other nonvisual and nonaural cues from the environment such as the patterns and directionality of the wind. Most mammals have an acute sense of smell, so a hunter must be mindful to position himself downwind of his prey, approaching from a direction where his scent will not be detected. He must also take note of sudden changes in wind direction that may reveal his presence to animals in the vicinity.

Bodily Conditioning and Acquired Sensibilities The Orang Rimba are opportunistic hunters. They will capture almost any forest animal, including turtles, monitor lizards, ground birds, a variety of rodents including squirrels and porcupines, and less desirable game such as snakes and, occasionally, fish. Adolescent hunters most commonly focus their efforts on the easier to capture prey while older, more experienced hunters will focus on the larger and more desirable game such as wild pig (babi), several varieties of deer, large (rusah) and small (napoh), and tapir (munsah). As mentioned above, young boys follow older men on the hunt during their formative years. Their apprenticeship continues until they reach adulthood, as they progressively fine-tune their skills and abilities while gaining the confidence required to hunt independently one day. The true measure of a young hunter’s progress is in his ability to reach a proficiency level required to ensure a steady return rate of forest game. The conditioning of the body is gradual and develops over a boy’s adolescent and early adult years when he finds himself traveling ever-farther distances into the forest under the guidance of more experienced hunters. Over time his stamina and muscular conditioning develop to the high level required to keep up with older hunters, particularly during the final

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stages of the hunt when hunters are closing in on their prey and the pace picks up considerably. A young hunter’s proficiency with a spear, primarily involving his hand-eye coordination and forearm strength, must also develop over time, as the ability to spear an animal at close range can mean the difference between success and failure—and in rare cases, life and death if a hunter finds himself coming under counter-attack from a wounded and highly dangerous adult boar or sow. Laughlin describes hunting as “an active process which puts motion and direction into the diagram of man’s morphology” (1968: 304). Sijuk provides a perfect illustration of the morphological and kinesthetic development an Orang Rimba male undergoes in his endeavor to become a successful hunter. The musculature in his legs, particularly in the quadriceps, hamstrings, and soleus in the lower legs had developed through years of continual walking on hilly terrain. His feet are flat and wide, heavily callused and thus able to withstand the rigors of the rough and variegated surface of the forest floor. His abdominal muscles are pronounced and his overall physique lean and well-defined, not only due to his highly demanding physical regime, but also to his maintenance of a high protein, low-carbohydrate diet of non-fatty forest game. He embodied the ethos of forest dwelling in the natural ease and sure-footedness with which he moved about in the forest and his level of proficiency exemplified an aptitude and skill level generally found among older and more experienced hunters. He hunted nearly every day with a rate of return that was higher than I have seen among any Orang Rimba. He was a hunter par excellence. Aside from the high level of physical conditioning required to carry out the practical operations of hunting and the knowledge needed to identify and interpret signs in the landscape, a hunter must also possess the ability to measure an animal’s species-typical behavior; a skill that can only be cultivated through years of trial and error, by continually coming into contact with animals and studying their habits. For example, when the dogs have lost the scent of an animal and signs in the forest that were once visible become scant or non-existent, hunters must envisage a trajectory of movement based on their knowledge and their experience of the animal’s habitual tendencies. Finally, when he is closing in on his prey and the chase ensues, he must be able to gauge an animal’s response and anticipate the direction it will flee, which requires knowledge of the local topography as well as the animal’s innate survival reflexes. For example, a pig or deer may flee away from water and any open spaces in the forest, while subterranean species such as porcupines and turtles will habitually seek out the nearest burrow below ground. Being able to anticipate an animal’s next move in the heat of the chase can mean the difference between success and failure. Like fishing tales in western societies, it is not uncommon



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to hear Orang Rimba hunters, particularly novices, telling stories back at camp of “the one that got away.” The ability to reorient and change tactics, particularly when prey is cornered and at its most dangerous, is perhaps the greatest challenge a hunter faces. This involves not only the confidence and hand-eye coordination required to spear a fast moving and often aggressive animal, but also confidence in his own abilities and a personal understanding of his physical and mental limits. This can be most difficult to measure when the hunter is physically exhausted and running primarily on adrenaline and locked into a heated exchange with a counter-attacking animal fighting for its life.

The Hunt In experiential terms hunting is a far more unstructured and spontaneous affair than the above description might suggest. A typical hunt involves roving through the forest behind the dogs as they track an animal by scent to the best of their abilities. Hunters are continually combing through the vegetation, slashing their way through the thicket at eye level with their machetes, as they try to ascertain the pathways of animals, which are often little more than indistinct markings on the forest floor or surrounding foliage. This can be truly daunting at times as overhanging branches and vines are flung into one’s face, particularly when hunters are closing in on their prey and there is no time to practice the usual courtesy of holding in place protruding vegetation to allow others behind to pass safely. Walking in a single line formation is the most efficient means of moving through the forest’s narrow trails. While hunting with Yayo and Sijuk I often took the middle position with someone always trailing me, so I would not fall too far behind. As the dogs picked up the pace, however, my physical stamina often proved to be inadequate to keep up and I often found myself lagging behind, particularly during the final stage of the hunt when the dogs had closed in on the scent of an animal and the pace dramatically increased. In such instances I would be instructed to wait in a specified area so that I could later be located and retrieved, often by following Yayo’s high-pitched howls—a call used by Orang Rimba to indicate a person’s location and identity (Orang Rimba can generally identify each other’s calls as well as discern the presence of outsiders, either by an abnormal pitch or lack of response). During my early hunting experiences I rarely witnessed a kill first hand. Instead, I often arrived to the kill site to see the animal either dead or taking its final breaths. On occasion I would be instructed to wait near

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a captured piglet while the hunters pursued others that had escaped in the vicinity. These were instances when the dogs did not possess the courage to grapple with an agitated and highly dangerous sow attempting to protect her offspring. On one occasion when I arrived to the kill site of an adult sow, I was motioned to climb a nearby tree, which allowed me to observe the kill from a bird’s eye view. This was a protective measure taken to keep me out of harm’s way as I did not yet own a spear, nor did I possess the experience or practical skills to ensure my personal safety. As my physical conditioning gradually developed over the course of my fieldwork I found myself better able to keep pace throughout longer durations of the hunt. During my later days in the field my ability to efficiently move through the forest along with my physical endurance had increased considerably and, consequently, I was able to witness the final stage of the hunt more often. Seeing the drama of life and death unfold before my eyes was always a profound and terrifying experience, one that did not diminish in intensity regardless of the frequency of my observations. An adult boar or sow, when cornered and having exhausted all possibilities of escape, will suddenly and violently turn on the hunter. With no time to think or calculate a counter-attack strategy, the hunter is first and foremost reacting, consumed in what can best be described as a state of hyper-alert responsiveness, one that is fueled by a sudden rise in adrenaline that is tempered by years of practical experience. During these fierce standoffs the spear serves as a tacit extension of the hunter’s body, as he continually adjusts his moving body in relation to his prey, remaining close enough to spear the animal while at the same time maintaining a safe distance, well aware of the jaw strength and biting capacity of certain animals. The hunter must also be continually aware of the physical features and potential obstacles in his immediate surroundings as one wrong move, should he slip and fall, could result in serious bodily injury or even death if an attacking animal inflicts on him a fatal wound. Deep in the forest with no access to medical attention, hunters mauled by an attacking animal can die on the spot from excessive bleeding. To better ensure his safety a hunter must work in careful coordination with his dogs, measuring simultaneously the courage and stamina of the latter and the general disposition and will to live of the cornered animal. An adult animal will almost always pose a risk to a hunter, particularly when mounting a defense for its offspring. In such instances the dogs may initially retreat from the animal’s first advances, only to approach again from another angle. The hunter must recognize the ebb and flow of these fast-paced and often frenzied standoffs, and work within the ever-changing melee of activity, jabbing his spear through the constant repositioning of dogs and prey, as they jostle in and around one another. In instances



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when a large adult boar or sow effectively establishes its dominance during the course of these standoffs, a dog may be severely wounded or killed. In instances when dogs are outmatched by a larger, more dominant animal, a hunter is left to confront his prey alone; and it is during such face-toface encounters that a hunter’s skill and courage is truly tested and where he earns his reputation for bravery and proficiency as a hunter. During these chase and kill sequences one can observe in the hunter an acute sense of urgency as he balances the very fine line between his personal safety and assuring a successful catch. The level of concentration and personal will required not only to kill an animal but to emerge from such encounters unharmed cannot be overstated, requiring unreserved amounts of courage and, not least, nerves of steel. With no parallels in other, more quotidian, contexts the confidence and ability to maintain one’s cool under pressure can only be gained through years of continued experience. While these encounters normally last no more than a few minutes, they are highly concentrated moments, during which time the hunter becomes the effective embodiment of his cumulative knowledge, skill, and experience. The hunts I had the privilege of witnessing firsthand were both alarming and enlightening experiences, exposing the fine and often crossed line between life and death and, in some cases, hunter and hunted. The hunter is often pushed, physically and emotionally, to his wits end in what amounts to a battle of wills in the truest sense; and the ability to effectively summon and employ past knowledge and experience under such extreme duress is what distinguishes a novice from an expert and, moreover, a good hunter from a great one. At the moment the kill is consummated, the hunter’s sudden rush of adrenaline is released and his heightened bodily state coalesces with the gratified relief of the catch—a kind of epilogue to the drama of the hunt. These are often silent but celebratory moments, during which time a hunter will rest at the kill site to smoke a cigarette with great contentment, often joking and playfully ribbing his fellow hunters with extra delight. The exhilaration of the hunt and final culmination of the catch, the Orang Rimba say, gives a man his ultimate sense of purpose. A hunter may arrive back at camp weary and exhausted, but the personal gratification and fulfillment he experiences is ineffable, at once embodying and defining his sense of utility as an Orang Rimba man.

The Ideological Significance of Hunting Orang Rimba men derive great of personal satisfaction from their hunting successes and even enjoy the sense of adventure associated with the “thrill

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of the chase,” but sporting metaphors do not accurately depict the experience or practice of hunting. For an Orang Rimba hunter there is much more at stake than personal pride, for he knows well that his failure can result in a hungry camp. A hunter’s demeanor is therefore characteristically low-key and focused, as he approaches the day’s hunt with a sense of purpose and a healthy respect for the uncertainties and risks associated with his vocation. In typical hunter-gatherer fashion, he does not boast of his successes nor does he seek acknowledgement for his efforts (compare Woodburn 1982a: 441; Lee 1988: 265–66). The ultimate gratification a hunter experiences in his ability to feed his children supersedes the pride and prestige that is cast upon him by others. His true sense of self and personal utility is derived from his ability to provide for his family; and for this the hunter regards those agencies of the forest that he depends on for his wellbeing and survival with a sense of humility and unspoken veneration. Through the act of hunting the regenerative processes of life are continually enacted in the ongoing encounters between hunter and prey, perpetually reaffirming the former’s trust in the living environment. This vital link between humans and the forest is passed down through the generations as novices practice under the apprenticeship of older experienced hunters, who serve as informal mentors and repositories of vital knowledge. Children are exposed to the drama of life and death at an early age as they listen in on stories told by older hunters back at camp. Seasoned hunters familiarize themselves with vast expanses of forestland over the years and will impart to the younger generation information relating to past and present hunts, animal behavior and foraging patterns, local and distant topographies, trail conditions, and so on. Children are also among the first members of the camp to run out to approaching hunters to examine their kill, touching and examining captured animals in every imaginable way. They gain a personal understanding of the basic economics of survival by experiencing both the forest’s nurturing qualities during times of abundance and its intermittent indifference, living through the same hardships as adults when food is scarce. It should be noted, however, that children may go hungry but rarely to the extent of regressing to a condition of malnourishment. Hunger can thus be seen more as a motivating force in such contexts than an index of poverty. Symbolically, the act of hunting far surpasses the everyday exigencies of survival, affirming through its continued practice the Orang Rimba’s ideological links to the forest. Through the continual monitoring of the environment or, to cite Bird-David, “keeping in touch with the forest” (Bird-David 1992a), a wealth of information and knowledge is imparted to the hunter; and it is through maintaining a lifestyle predicated on movement in the forest that this ongoing “dialogue” between hunters and the

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agencies of the forest is achieved. Through his habitual actions and daily activities the Orang Rimba hunter embodies the spirit and ethos of mobile forest dwelling. Hunting in many instances forms the basis for movement in the forest and, reciprocally, hunting success is what enables and, in effect, constitutes the practical core of a mobile foraging phase. So the notions of remayow (movement) and berburu (hunting) carry the same ideological connotations and symbolic force—they are mutually engendering experiential and conceptual categories. Ideologically, non-movement is tantamount to a moribund ontological state as it involves perpetual sedentism, which implies full-time agricultural practice and living in Malay-style settlements. While many Orang Rimba groups practice some swidden agriculture, they still maintain patterns of movement in the forest, hunting and gathering while family members watch over their swidden plots (Sandbukt 1988a: 145). By maintaining a lifestyle predicated on movement in the forest, the Orang Rimba successfully avoid excessive contact with villagers; and living off forest game ensures their adherence to commensal practices that are distinct from those of Muslim Malays, further affirming their staunch opposition to village ways. While following the Orang Rimba on forays into the deep forest I, too, would be required to follow certain proscriptions. For example, on the occasions I wore western style shorts instead of a loincloth, I was forbidden to carry “village money” in my pockets, so as not to draw negative attention from certain forest deities, which could hinder our hunting success. Hunting failure is often taken as an omen, a consequence of poor relations with the deities of the forest, which can be triggered by excessive contact with villagers. This can lead to a contaminated ontological condition that can often be remedied only by moving to another forest area. Successful hunting, therefore, not only serves the practical needs of providing sustenance but also represents the continual revitalization of the sacred dialectical relationship between humans and the deities of the forest. The expedience of subsistence is inextricably linked to an Orang Rimba’s sense of wellbeing in ideological terms, and it is no surprise that many shamans (dukon) are (or once were) great hunters, for it is they who preserve and foster this vital link between humans and the forest with their ongoing communication with the deities found therein. While shamans maintain a dialogue with the forest in esoteric contexts, hunters also “keep in touch with the forest” through their ongoing movement within and monitoring of its resources. Both media of interaction are necessary to ensure the continuance of the Orang Rimba’s way of life.1 Hunting and movement unite the exigencies of survival with the teleological, the practical with the arcane. Hunting is an essential ingredi-

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ent in a broader, all-encompassing, ideological and biological cycle of life. It regenerates the connection between people and the deities of the forest, and this sacred connection is coterminous with the nurturing of humans through sustenance. So long as the forest remains “giving” and relations with the forest deities are friendly, personal and group wellbeing is achieved and order is maintained in the Orang Rimba’s forest world.

Integrating Body and World In the preceding chapters we examined some of the practical contexts in which the Orang Rimba acquire the necessary skills and abilities to effectively live and make a living in their forest environment. As we saw, successful living in a tropical forest requires the development of a specific set of skills and capacities; and performing even the most quotidian of tasks such as walking involves a degree of physical aptitude and bodily control that can only be developed through continued practice within the context of the forest. Through ongoing interactions with the environment the body’s physical and kinetic structure, along with its sensory and cognitive repertoire, develop in accordance with, and in response to, the characteristics of the forest environment, resulting in unique and highly specialized forms of ontogenetic adaptation. Hunting represents the highest degree of skill acquisition, as it takes years of practice to reach the aptitude level required to ensure a consistent return rate of captured game. With continued practice a hunter’s capabilities reach the level of proficiency required to meet the challenges and demands of the hunt, and his movements and actions become more fluid and responsive to the uncertainties he encounters. Over time a hunter’s senses, in particular his vision and audition, become attuned to and conditioned by the fine nuances and rich detail of the forest environment. By the time a hunter reaches his mid-adult years, he bears the imprints of the forest in his physical conditioning and bodily kinesthesia. He comes to embody the ethos of forest dwelling in those less tangible aspects of his development that find their expression in the skills and sensitivities that allow him to effectively detect and extract the forest’s living resources. A hunter’s education is not gained through structured learning, nor can his know-how and experience be codified into a body of technical knowledge. His education, instead, is more of a hands-on “action-centered” process, and most of what is learned is within the practical context of the forest. Through his immersion in the encompassing features of the environment, while following the movements and assessments of more expe-

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rienced hunters, the learning process a young hunter undergoes can best be described as an ongoing refinement of the senses, or what psychologist James Gibson called an “education of attention” (1986; see also Ingold 2000: 416). Over time those special skills a hunter develops become absorbed into the structure of the “taken-for-granted body” (Leder 1990: 32), manifested as a set of unconscious dispositions and “appreciations” that can be effectively summoned at will. Through the practice of hunting and living in a tropical forest more generally, we see how certain social practices shape the human body in highly specific ways, and how the body’s morphology and kinetic patterns come to be shaped by the forest environment (compare Pred 1981: 8). Mauss, in his “Techniques of the Body” (1934), was the first to elaborate on how the body comes to be formed via a wide range of social activities and, further, how these various body-shaping practices vary cross-culturally.2 Those sets of skills and capacities that we acquire during the course of our living in the world find their limitations only within the parameters of the biological body (compare Searle 1983: 143) and manifest themselves in a wide range of culturally-specific forms—the Orang Rimba hunter representing a particularly striking example. While the Orang Rimba inscribe their niche into the landscape through their ongoing subsistence practices, so too does their forest environment impose its particular characteristics on the human body. The vectors established by the lived body through its habitual patterns of action in the world and the cultural context in which they unfold and develop are mutually engendering processes (Leder 1990: 152). Such processes of appropriation occur during the course of the body’s engagement with the environment; and while the acquisition of skills such as those required for hunting often occurs under the apprenticeship of older, more experienced hunters, the novice hunter learns those techniques of the body through his own practices, in relation to the environment he engages and through the particular task at hand. Ingold makes a similar point when he notes that skills are not “transmitted” from person to person but, instead, are grown into the body (Ingold 2000: 356). Rather than being acquired from generation to generation, they are “regrown” in each generation (King 2004: 78). Such embodied skills, he writes, are not “added on to a preformed body [but] actually grow with it … they are fully part and parcel of the human organism, of its neurology, musculature, even anatomy” (Ingold 2001: 27). This is precisely why it is so difficult for an outsider introduced into a hunting society to acquire those skills and techniques necessary to hunt successfully, particularly at an adult age, beyond those formative years when such techniques are normally incorporated or “grown into” the body.

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While hunting provides a particularly sharp illustration of the body’s innate ability to transform itself in response to the exigencies of a hunting and gathering lifestyle, even the most quotidian of actions such as walking illustrate processes of development that are unique to living in a tropical forest environment and point to broader developmental processes at work. Through the body’s participatory interaction with the non-human environment, those characteristics of the environment that we habitually interact with become incorporated into our embodied skills and capacities, or what Gaston Bachelard (1964: 11) called our “muscular consciousness.” Through our habitual patterns of action we become extensions of the world around us and, quite literally, come to carry the forms of our dwelling in our bodies (Ingold 2000: 186). Our interactions with the world around us can thus be regarded as incorporative acts; acts that are absorbed into the body’s modus operandi in highly enduring ways and expressed not through explicit forms of knowledge, but in specific sets of skills and dispositions that we bear in our bodies. Leder’s notion of incorporation, a term derived from the Latin corpus or body—connoting to “bring within the body”—captures the processes by which such skills and bodily usages are acquired during the course of our active engagement with the world (1990: 31). We immerse ourselves in the focal and subsidiary features of the environment through our habitual actions and patterns of living, as our bodily interactions become extensions of our own agency in the world (compare Gill 1997: 64). Through the use of tools and technologies the body’s sensory and cognitive capacities are further enhanced, as we integrate various objects and instruments into the practical functioning of the body. The hunter’s spear, for instance, serves as an extension of the human body—a kind of “annexed” artificial organ with which to mediate interactions with the environment, in order to better extract its living resources. As such, the hunter and his spear represent a continuum between body and world, much like Merleau-Ponty’s oft-cited example of the blind man’s cane; each tool extending and augmenting the body’s exteroceptive and cognitive capabilities. In one instant their boundaries can be retracted and contained, in another they can be extended outward into the world, much as we experience when we direct our focal awareness and intentionality to the tip of a pen during the process of writing (compare Scott 1973: 26–27). We can envisage a feedback loop between body and world, by which our bodily uses and social practices become mutually constituting processes, undergoing continual development through our active engagement with the world around us. To live in a forest, for example, the body’s kinesthetic and sensorimotor repertoire must undergo continual refinement and adjustment to the multifarious topographic and visual-spatial

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configurations in the environment. Over time, the vectors of the lived body come to be set in concordance with those features of the forest as persons, through their habitual actions and practices, become extensions of the physical environment—they come to in-habit the forest in the most literal sense. Through years of practical engagement with their tropical environment the Orang Rimba come to see the forest as a source of sustenance—a giving place and a safe sanctuary from the dangers emanating from the village world. But while their views on forest dwelling draw their impetus from an age-old ideology passed down from their ancestors that defines their way of life in contradistinction to village ways, it is only through years of praxis and body-shaping activities within the context of the forest that the notion of a “giving environment” or “forest as sanctuary” can be actualized.

Notes  1. People often do not differentiate between natural and supernatural domains of experience, nor do they distinguish between magico-esoteric knowledge and practical knowledge.  2. Bourdieu’s (1977) later reformulation of Mauss’ habitus further elaborates on those processes at work, but he expands its meaning to include those sets of beliefs and dispositions that similarly arise out of our social practices and bodily interactions in the world. He employs the term hexis to connote the performative aspects of habitus, emphasizing the socially inculcated ways in which individuals move, carry and position their bodies during the course of their habitual actions and activities.

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ILLUSTRATION 6.1. Camp members converge to inspect a hunter’s kill. Children touch and examine the carcass with particular interest.

ILLUSTRATION 6.2. Women at Sungai Kemumu digging for edible tubers.

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ILLUSTRATION 6.3. Preparing a meal of mouse-deer.

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ILLUSTRATION 6.4. Orang Rimba hunters at Sungai Kemumu: Hassan, Sijuk (lying down), and Hussin. Talaman’s younger brother (squatting middle) was adopted by Ajang’s brother Hassan.

Chapter 7

Becoming in the Forest

 … the lived body is conterminous with place because it is by bodily movement that I find my way in place and take up habitation there. My body not only takes me into places; it habituates me to their peculiarities and helps me to remember them vividly. —Edward Casey, Getting Back Into Place

In chapters 5 and 6 I explored some salient ways through which the forest conditions the body and senses. While placing primary emphasis on the body’s physical conditioning and kinesthetic development, I showed how certain skills become integrated into the body’s practical functioning and continue to develop over the course of a lifetime. In this chapter I shift my focus from the acquisition of skills to explore how the forest comes to be embodied through movement, memory and perception. I begin by examining how the forest landscape is envisaged through recollection when determining a path of movement and during the course of navigation. Through “person-centered” approaches to perceiving and recollecting the non-human environment, the Orang Rimba habitually situate themselves within the context of the forest, often imbuing those significant characteristics of the landscape with autobiographical qualities. I also look at the more practical aspects of navigation in the forest, showing how vision and cognition become attuned to certain visual markers, resulting in unique and highly specialized modes of seeing order in their dense and variegated tropical environment. In the next part of the chapter I look at how the forest becomes appropriated during the formative years of the Orang Rimba child and how the development of the senses coincides with, and is shaped by, the child’s early explorations of the surrounding environment. These early impres-

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sions become integrated into the body’s sensory-motor repertoire to form the foundation of the child’s future sensory-cognitive modeling of the forest environment. A cursory overview of my own childhood environment illustrates the universality with which early interactions with the nonhuman environment come to shape our perceptions of the world, and how the past is re-lived in the present through memories that are triggered by our re-immersion into familiar settings. In the final part of the chapter I elaborate on the relationship between place and memory by looking at the salient ways in which memory and cognition are linked to the perception of the environment. Through memories and maintaining movement in the forest, the temporality of human affairs is intricately bound up in the temporality of the forest, and personal and collective identities come to be inscribed into the landscape in highly enduring ways.

Local Maps and Wayfinding During the early months of my fieldwork, while still residing at the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, I occasionally overheard stories about the Orang Rimba in the Kemumu watershed. On one particular evening, while relaxing in the center of the settlement with Ajang and Tampong, I tried to ascertain the approximate whereabouts of these more forest-bound groups. Ajang, always first to seize the opportunity to display his knowledge in the company of others, enthusiastically rose to his feet from where he crouched. In his typical oratorical manner he began pointing out over the northeastern horizon, as he described the local topography and some important confluences of the river systems in the area. Not to be outdone, Tampong interjected by offering the location of a nearby timber camp and two Malay villages in the area, while explaining in vivid detail the hilly terrain and abundance of wild game found in these pristine forests. Still unfamiliar with this remote northernmost region of Jambi Province, I needed a visual representation in order to situate our current location in relation to the Kemumu watershed. Following my natural inclinations I picked up a nearby stick and proceeded to etch a map into the ground. I attempted to plot out the location of the aforementioned Malay villages while sketching a rough travel route along local logging roads. I waited for some kind of affirmation, but instead was met with more finger-pointing, descriptions of the forest topography, and anecdotal information on the various Orang Rimba and villagers residing in the area. It soon became apparent that they could not see a correlation between the makeshift map I had carved into the ground and the forest area in question; nor could they draw a connection between the points on my rough sketch and

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the features of the landscape they had just described to me. Our mutual inability to communicate and situate each other’s conceptual maps was due in large part to my ignorance of the Orang Rimba’s person-centered ways of perceiving the environment. I had taken for granted my own tendency to represent the features of the landscape in abstract, objectifying the landscape and the features found therein from the vantage point of a disengaged observer. Following the western cartographic tradition, I had also assumed at the top of my map a constant fixed point “north”—an orientating marker that is alien to an Orang Rimba.1 Not familiar with my own culturally-specific modes of representing physical space, Tampong and Ajang could not envisage an area of land or forest without placing themselves in the picture; without recalling past movements of people and important life events that occurred in the area. Whereas I was seeing a bird’s-eye “snapshot” view of objectified terrain, occurring as an inert matrix of land containing fixed points in time and space regardless of perspective, they were envisaging the forest in diachronic terms, as a fluid representation of social space, one in which the past movements and activities of people defined the contours and distinguishing characteristics of the landscape. Pandya notes a similar conception of physical space in his observations among the forest-dwelling Ongee of Little Andaman. The world of the Ongees, he writes “is not a preconstituted stage on which things happen, but rather an area or region created and constructed by the ongoing practice of movement” (Pandya 1990: 777). Every location in the forest is not merely a fixed location in space but, rather, a relational point along a wider spatio-temporal continuum of human activity. In short, I had presented them with a “disembodied” map, one that bore no likeness to their past lived experiences or biographical understanding of the forest area in question. Ingold’s distinction between “navigation” and “wayfinding” is useful here. He identifies the former with cartographic notions of inert, objectified space as represented in Western navigational and mapping techniques; while the latter is identified with a more temporal perspective—one that is characterized by an “on the ground,” “person-centered” approach involving “feeling one’s way” while moving through an environment. While navigation by mapping is characterized by making one-to-one correlations—a kind of “isomorphing” between structures of the world and structures in the mind, the experience of wayfinding is always embodied and subjective, characterized by the temporal and personalized aspects we might associate with storytelling (Ingold 2000: 219–20). It was therefore no surprise that when asked about the location of a distant forest area, Tampong and Ajang proceeded to recount tales of persons and places and the significant events that took place there. Through their

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shared histories of living in and interacting with the forest they had come to view the environment in biographical terms, one in which a continuous stream of being-in-the-world is intricately bound up in the features of the landscape. Native maps, in this sense, can best be regarded not as representations of physical space but as “condensed histories” (Ingold 2000: 219–20) that arise out of years of interaction with the environment and become embedded in the memories of individuals over the course of their lives. Below I further explore these more biographical aspects of perceiving the environment, but first I take a look at some of the practical ways in which the Orang Rimba orient and find their way in the forest.

Perceiving Order in the Forest Most Orang Rimba live in long-established watershed areas. These are contiguous or semi-contiguous patches of primary or secondary forest that, over the years, become very familiar places through people’s ongoing movements and activities therein. Narrow foot trails are usually located alongside main rivers as they afford the easiest pathways for walking and navigating. Trails also meander up inclines and along ridges in areas where hills require traversing, and serve as connecting links between river systems that often originate from the same upstream source. These trail networks are usually well established and little attention needs to be given to the features of the surrounding forest during the course of a journey. However, when traveling through foreign or seldom-visited stretches of forest, or when hunting dogs have ventured off the established path in pursuit of game, it is necessary to take note of certain topographical features in order to gain a bearing on one’s location. Unlike the open spaces of most rural and urban areas, where horizons are often visible and serve as general orientation markers, visibility rarely reaches more than seventy or eighty feet in a tropical forest. While walking through the forest the Orang Rimba always note the presence and locations of natural landmarks such as rivers and their smaller streams, hills and valleys, durian trees, and human-made clearings such as swidden fields (in areas where groups may be in a swiddening cycle, or those belonging to local Malays residing downstream). These landmarks are used to describe the locations of others and their camps, or to assist in finding areas where animals and seasonal resources may be found. In recent decades, logging camps and logging tracks have also come to serve as orientation markers. Logging tracks often bisect large areas of the landscape and tend to have a demarcating effect on once-contiguous stretches of forest. Orang Rimba often

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walk along small, overgrown, bulldozer tracks in order to cover greater distances in a shorter period of time. Most critical to finding one’s way in the forest is the ability to orient the body in relation to rivers, streams and their adjoining tributaries. The Orang Rimba view the forest terrain as a complex mosaic of waterways that bisect the forest like a network of interconnected arteries. River systems are used as visual markers and serve as the principal means by which an Orang Rimba can confidently ascertain a particular location with a high degree of accuracy. It is noteworthy that tropical hunter-gatherers generally do not construct rafts or boats for travel along river systems, nor do they utilize riverine resources to their full potential through intensive fishing. In fact, large waterways are generally avoided, while only those more remote upstream areas located a safe distance from Malay villages are considered suitable areas to set up camp. While the Orang Rimba generally avoid downstream areas, they rarely venture to the headwaters of rivers, preferring instead to set up their forest camps in the middle or upper reaches of river systems where most wild game and other resources can be found. Not venturing too far upstream from local villages also provides easier access to local traders and external market goods. Directionality of water flow and the interconnections of water systems are the most common descriptive markers used to guide others through an area of forest. So essential are the vital interconnections between rivers and their smaller adjoining streams that even at a very early age children will be able to differentiate conceptually between rivers (sungai), streams (anak sungai, literally “child of river”), and smaller brooks (sakoh). While venturing into the deeper forest, children and adults alike will find their way back to camp by maintaining an awareness of the main waterways in the area, along with their interconnections and important confluences. They will learn to orient their path of movement in relation to the direction of water flow, always aware that their course of travel is either upstream (ulu) or downstream (ilir). Finding one’s way in the forest requires not only knowledge of local river systems, but also the ability to situate their interconnections and surrounding topographic features within a temporal sequence. During the course of a journey the physical features of the forest environment are continually transforming before one’s eyes. New visual patterns in the landscape continually reveal themselves as the body moves through the forest landscape; and even adult males with many years of experience in forest travel can occasionally lose their orientation while walking through unfamiliar forest areas. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the ever-changing features of the forest landscape such as fallen trees, overgrown walking tracks, animal trails, flooded over or eroded log bridges,

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and newly opened trails require continual monitoring while walking in the forest. By knowing the relation of the body to local river systems, while noting the order in which certain features in the environment pass in and out of sight during the course of a journey—a kind of temporal sequencing Gibson refers to as “reversible occlusion” (1979: 198)—Orang Rimba can orient themselves even in foreign or seldom visited stretches of forest. Those who spend the most time in the forest, in particular adult male hunters who routinely venture long distances on foot, generally have the most intimate and up to date knowledge of a particular forest area. As uxorilocal post-marital residence is the norm, in-marrying males who have shifted residence to less familiar areas must pay particular attention to the features in the environment when venturing into the forest. Knowledge of one’s local environment is naturally greater in areas where persons have grown up and spent the majority of their developmental years. In the following section I take a look at an Orang Rimba child’s life in the forest to illustrate how those early interactions with and perceptions of the nonhuman environment come to form the basis of the child’s future sensory and cognitive development.

A Child’s Appropriation of the Forest A child’s perceptual universe begins in the family shelter in the nurturing arms of parents and other caregivers. Well before a sense of selfhood has been established, the senses of the infant, still unable to objectify the physical world, incontinently absorb external stimuli from the surrounding environment. Through continued exposure to these external agencies the Orang Rimba child comes to embody the forest’s impending characteristics in ways that operate beneath the level of conscious awareness. During these early months of life children are carried into the forest in sarongs slung from the hips or backs of their mothers where their senses begin to undergo habituation to the surrounding environment. Bruner and other psychologists have shown that infants are able to innately discern particular kinds of stimulus from the external environment (Toren 1999: 97–98). Typically, a newborn’s aural faculties begin functioning well before the development of vision, so an Orang Rimba infant will be inundated by the sounds of the encompassing forest long before being able to visually discern what is being heard. They fall asleep each night to the sounds of cicadas, crickets, and all the other unseen life forms of the night. The sounds of the forest give shape to the child’s still burgeoning senses, resonating throughout the body long before the physical sources of such audi-

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tory information have been learned or named through language (compare Zuckerkandl 1956: 368–69). Many residential camps are built in dense patches of forest with minimal clearing and shelters are often surrounded by thicket in all directions. Branches and foliage often hang over, or even protrude into, these open dwellings. The forest thus often begins, literally, at the edge of the family shelter. Here children take their first steps in plain view of others, then gradually begin to explore the vicinity of the residential camp, traveling ever-farther distances as their self-confidence and knowledge of the encompassing area grows. They curiously examine their immediate surroundings by handling any and all objects within reach, learning to differentiate between the various physical forms and textures of the forest by touching and tasting whatever organic materials they may happen upon. Orang Rimba children are encouraged to walk independently at a very early age, and this enables them to join other children in their play activities, which will often be carried out in the surrounding forest area encircling the camp. So their active participation in the lives of other children also coincides with their discovery of the encompassing forest. Among Tampong’s group children of all ages were present, thus providing ample opportunities for them to seek out playmates within the same age range. Almost all play is initiated through tactile overtures and sometimes in a rough and tumble manner. A young child’s learning curve is therefore very steep, following a somewhat predictable formula. Youngsters leave the protection of their mother’s sides to join other children in their play groups. While wrestling, jostling about, or engaging in other forms of roughhousing (characterizing the play of both genders at an early age), they may fall or lose control of their physical capacities, causing them to panic and run back to the sanctuary of the family shelter. As children are generally regarded as public property, both by adults and other children, they must physically remove themselves from the play group in order to reclaim control of their bodies. Typically membership of these young peer groups fluctuates, as children retreat to the safety of their caregivers, only to rejoin once again at a later time, when their emotional wounds have healed. In the years that follow children move away from the nurturing protection of caregivers in the family shelter and into the forest, where they join older children in work-play activities such as digging for tubers, seeking out freshwater turtles (lelabi), collecting forest products, and hunting birds and small rodents with slingshots.2 As a child ventures ever farther from camp the biophysical universe begins to take on a more concrete form as the child learns the names of the increasing number of plant and animal species he or she encounters. Language acquisition thus coincides with

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a child’s awareness of the surrounding environment, as most languagelearning occurs within the context of the forest. The vast lexicon of plant and animal names is imparted not through structured teaching, but by accompanying older and more experienced persons in the forest, by listen-

ILLUSTRATION 7.1. Besunyi examining a fresh kill under the supervision of his elder brothers Nina, Silingkup, and Manja (left to right).

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ing to conversations and, most importantly, through direct observation. So the development of language is facilitated through the child’s cognitive and sensory interaction with the forest, and it is only through these more immediate forms of interaction that the environment later comes to be reified in objectified form through the use of language and concepts (Bloch 1989: 113; see also Vygotsky 1962). Children eventually learn to walk proficiently along forest trails unsupervised by adults, exploring greater distances with ever-growing confidence as their senses increasingly become attuned to the forest environment. Sound is the most common indication of life in the forest, where much is heard, but never seen (Feld 1996: 89); and during these early years of exploration a child’s audition undergoes continual attunement to the acoustic environment. They learn to recognize the sounds of animals and their calls, which they will playfully practice imitating before others back at the camp. In later years they use these calls along with their accumulated knowledge of animal behavior while hunting in order to lure a wide variety of prey, mouse-deer (napoh) being the most common (recall from chapter 6, the calls of this animal are emulated by creating a high-pitched squealing sound that is produced by blowing into a small folded leaf). These kinds of early interactive experiences establish and, in later years, continually reaffirm the common sense of sociality the Orang Rimba hold with the non-human life forms of the forest.

ILLUSTRATION 7.2. Children playing in a forest camp.

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ILLUSTRATION 7.3. Women and children in a forest camp: children roam freely in the surrounding forest.

A child’s depth perception also develops in accordance with the intricate and seemingly endless collage of three-dimensional configurations that typify a tropical forest environment. Children learn to see the minutest details in the landscape that, to the untrained eye, go unnoticed. Over the years, as a child’s knowledge of the environment grows, the forest begins to take on an increasingly familiar form, and what may seem like a chaotic amalgamation of sound and foliage to a non-forest person is perceived by an Orang Rimba as a sentient and cohesive life-world: one that Orang Rimba learn to associate with the nurturing and life-giving qualities of home. Standing in sharp contrast to the quietude and inanimate spaces of the village world, the interactive and sentient qualities of the forest provide coherence to an Orang Rimba’s lived experience—a sense of ontological security that is first established through an early pre-verbal identification with the animate agencies in the environment. It is during a child’s formative years that these first sensory links are established, and the child’s future sensory-cognitive assimilation to the forest is founded on these early pre-personal and pre-linguistic interactions. Over time the child’s modalities of perception become highly specialized as the senses continue to undergo attunement to the nuances and rich detail of the forest environment. Progressively learning to perceive those “affordances” in the environment that are necessary for survival, the child begins to see the forest in a particularly Orang Rimba way.



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In short, a child’s life education is coextensive with their education of the forest and their discovery of the forest is coextensive with their discovery of the self. The forest areas where Orang Rimba spend their formative years always holds special significance in their early development, leaving indelible impressions and deep-seated memories that are invoked whenever persons are reunited with these familiar forest areas. These kinds of early human-environment interactions occur wherever humans live and interact with the nonhuman environment, pointing to universal processes that occur in all human societies, as I illustrate in the following section.

A Fieldworker’s Phenomenology of Place Most people can recollect physical landscapes from their past, in particular where they spent their early formative years. I can recall in vivid detail my early childhood environment, growing up in a small rural town in northern New Jersey. For the first ten years of my life my family and I lived on a quiet cul-de-sac in a small hillside community, each neighbor separated by three or more acres of land. It was a tight-knit community, comprised of eleven homes where neighbors knew one another and daily life was often conducted outdoors, in plain view of others. A typical summer day or an afternoon after school would be spent roaming the grassy lawns of the neighborhood, forming impromptu playgroups with other children. Neighborhood pets also wandered about freely from yard to yard as properties were not separated by any kind of fencing or natural barriers. I can recall on many occasions following deer or chasing butterflies across several properties, feeling equally at home anywhere within the general proximity of the neighborhood. The neighbor next door kept a pony in a small stable, while a large cornfield adjoining another neighbor’s property across the street attracted the attention of playing children, pets, and other, wilder, forms of life. It was not uncommon to see deer feeding in our backyard in the early mornings, or to spot other wildlife such as raccoons, groundhogs, porcupines, jack rabbits, opossums, chipmunks, skunks, garter snakes, and an occasional wild turkey or grey fox. Our backyard was buffered to the north by a narrow belt of forest, stretching several miles westward to form a walking path that led to the town’s elementary school, post office, public library, firehouse, and municipality buildings. Locally referred to as Patriot’s Path, this stretch of forest comprises a small segment of a longer belt of noncontiguous deciduous forest spanning across thirty-two miles of rural landscape, intersected by a network of rivers and smaller tributaries. I

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frequently wandered through these forests as a child, examining my surroundings and venturing ever-farther distances with age, not unlike Orang Rimba children in their early explorations of their forest surroundings. This region is also rich in American history, as the nearby town of Morristown served as George Washington’s headquarters during much of the American Revolutionary War. Nearby at Jockey Hollow remains the site of his Continental Army’s winter encampments that were used during the winters of 1777 and 1779–80. Many of these older monuments and structures remain intact, and the old English architecture one sees here and throughout Morris County is redolent of past times, visually preserving the area’s New England history. The sprawling rural landscape, interspersed with crystal clear streams and large patches of dense variegated woodlands that host a wide diversity of plant and animal species, coupled with the relaxed pace of human life here, would hardly suggest that the island of Manhattan lies just thirty miles to the east (as the crow flies). The close proximity to New York City and other metropolitan centers makes this area an ideal suburban location for an ever-expanding urban population, leading to inevitable real estate and infrastructure developments. Despite the recent population expansion my old neighborhood has, for the most part, retained its rural character over the years. The trees in our yard that I once sat beneath for shade and climbed in my youth, many planted long before my birth, have all grown, giving the neighborhood a matured or “aged” appearance. Seeing these trees after so many years evokes sentiments not unlike those feelings of nostalgia experienced when seeing a familiar person from one’s past. The seasonal climate, crispness of the air, falling leaves of autumn, and colors of spring; the passing scents of wet peat moss and freshly cut summer grass, along with the distinctive topographic features of the landscape, have left such lasting impressions on me that even decades later vivid remembrances are triggered whenever I revisit this part of rural New Jersey. By simply breathing in the air and taking in these familiar sights, sounds, and scents, memories of my past and the conscious states I once experienced are effortlessly evoked. These kinds of “flashback” experiences illustrate the salient ways in which the past is re-lived or “opened” in the present by revisiting the landscapes from one’s past. Reuniting with past places brings us back to what we once were.

Place, Memory, and the Temporality of the Landscape These kinds of embodied recollective experiences that draw their source from the perception of the environment have been widely reported in the

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anthropological literature, particularly among foraging and agriculturalist societies where human-environment relations take on an enduring quality and the non-human environment is laden with impressions from the past (for review see Tilley 1994). The Orang Rimba commonly evoke memories of those forest areas in which their formative years were spent, or where important life experiences had taken place. The forest is an integral component to any story, serving as a tacit backdrop onto which life events unfold: where a meeting between groups had taken place; where a pig was killed or an elephant sighted; where past encampments had been erected and subsequently abandoned; where the presence of tanah celako (cursed soil) had been encountered; where an area with trees that may have harbored dangerous goblins (hantu kayu) was happened upon, or a swamp known to be the residence of entrusted deities was visited. Most noteworthy to my fieldwork experience were the autobiographical memories evoked by Tampong during our many forays into the deep forests of the Sumai watershed area. He would often point out the locations in which his children were born and where other important life events occurred. These places were replete with meaning and mnemonic power and he would, on occasion, go out of his way to stop in these locations for a rest and to smoke a cigarette, taking a moment to recollect and reminisce. By spending a lot of time in a particular forest area, certain locations in the forest become embedded in individual and collective memory to form a past-present continuum in the lived experience of people. When these kinds of memories are evoked they are not abstracted out of time but, instead, are formulated spatially in reference to places in the forest such as rivers, trees, campsites, and other topographic features. So for the Orang Rimba, place encapsulates time in the lived memories of people (compare Casey 2000: 214), and each place in the forest serves as a mnemonic reference point for the recollection of important life events and experiences. Places in the forest are also given precedence over calendrical time in the sequencing of past events (compare M. Rosaldo 1980: 48). For instance, the relative ages of children (which are not measured in calendar years) are often determined in relation to the forest or watershed area in which they were born, and occasionally with reference to the seasonal or subsistence-related activities that people may have been engaged in at the time. So the forest serves as a repository for past and present impressions, where personal and collective memories are sedimented and continually accessed via people’s interactions with the environment (compare Morphy 1995: 188–89). As Casey notes (2000: 182), recollection without place is often disembodied “thought about the world”; and it could be argued, as Tilley has (1994: 33), that stories acquire their mythic value and historical relevance if they are rooted in the tangible details of the environment.

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These kinds of “environmentally-induced” memories are not instantiated by calling up an internal image in the mind’s eye but, instead, are enacted by engaging with an environment that is itself “pregnant with the past” (Ingold 2000: 189). I recall while walking through the forest how Orang Rimba tales would emerge quite organically, as if the memories of people were implanted in the features of the landscape. Certain areas of the forest, in particular those places where significant life events occurred, seemed to be charged with past meaning and impressions, to be unfolded or “read” by persons through their re-introduction into these familiar settings. These kinds of recollective experiences are “embedded” in the perception of the environment; and meanings, rather than being attached to those significant places, are “discovered” through our sensory engagement in the world (Ingold 2000: 148, 208). Revisiting familiar places can have an animating effect on the senses, injecting new life into the body’s present condition, whereby the past and present merge into a single embodied recollective experience. The body, often pre-cognitively, experiences a continuum between past and present, between abstracted time and lived space, pointing to the enduring mnemonic power that familiar places hold and the universality with which memory and cognition are inextricably bound up and continually enacted through the perception of the environment. The Orang Rimba are keenly aware of the inherent power of places to trigger memories, and it is based on this collective understanding that people abandon forest areas where someone has died, so as not to trigger sad recollections of the deceased.3 For the Orang Rimba the forest is replete with important places, each serving as a mnemonic node of awareness lying along a vast network of locales that contain potentially unlimited information. These embedded sources of information are appropriated as personal knowledge that is constantly being renewed and reformulated through people’s continued interactions with the forest (Lye 1997). Walking along familiar trails keeps people “in tune” with the environment and creates a spatiotemporal cogency that links the past and the present to particular locations in the forest (Tilley 1994: 32). Forest trails also serve as conduits for movement, as spatiotemporal “templates” that circumscribe habitual patterns of movement by delineating human pathways through an otherwise diffuse and undifferentiated landscape (Jackson 1989: 146). The more people who participate in the creation of these paths the more significant they become, not only for determining future paths of movement, but also for the establishment and maintenance of relationships between people and between people and places. Thus by maintaining a trajectory of movement, humans and the forest interact to create a co-constituting system. In chapter 5 we saw how walk-

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ing in the forest assimilates the body and senses to the fine nuances and topographic features of the environment, while at the same time structuring the body’s kinesthesia and muscular development. Walking in the forest also has the reciprocal effect of inscribing human action and intentionality into the landscape through the creation of trails, footpaths, campsites and other man-made features. So the forest environment is created by human agency, but also feeds back to condition habitual patterns of movement and behavior—it is both externalized as a physical environment for action, and internalized as a personally embodied locus of experience. So people’s incorporation into the physical world is always a bidirectional process: people both absorb and are absorbed into their lived-in environments. Through our ongoing bodily and sensory engagement with the world, impressions from the environment are assimilated into our embodied being, transforming it from within, as the temporality of the environment merges with and transforms our own temporal being (Leder 1990: 165). This is precisely why encountering familiar places awakens something within us, as we experience what Merleau-Ponty called a “re-opening” of the past in the present (Fischer 1969: 193). In such instances being and the world are simultaneously co-opted into a broader feedback loop, forming an existential continuum along the same forward trajectory in time. Body and world can thus be regarded as co-constituting phenomena, drawing their mutual existence from their reciprocal openness; while people, through their ongoing and often incontinent appropriation of the world they engage in, can be regarded as an active extension of their lived environment. As we saw in the case of Orang Rimba children, the nuances of the forest come to be embodied at a very young age through early interactions with the environment. The senses undergo development in accordance with the forest’s impending characteristics and continue to develop through quotidian interactions and, later in life, through the acquisition of specialized skills. And just as those skills people learn and eventually come to embody are “grown” into the body, so too the forest is “grown” into people through their habitual patterns of action and perception therein. Thus when people refer to themselves as “Orang Rimba” (or “Orang Hutan” in South Sumatra Province), they are not only making reference to ethnic identity, but also to what they perceive to be their very essence as a people—the enduring substance of their being-in-the-world. The self-referent “Orang Rimba” could thus be construed not only in literal terms, as “forest people,” but also in more consubstantial terms as people composed of forest.

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Embodied experience in the world necessarily involves emplacement in the world (Casey 1993: 104), and those places in which people dwell and habitually engage act dialectically to produce its human inhabitants (Tilley 1994: 26). For the Orang Rimba, “keeping in touch with the forest” by maintaining a lifestyle predicated on movement is what keeps both the forest and humans whole; and to lose contact with the forest is tantamount to losing one’s own sense of self and history. Movement in the forest (berayow) involves following in the footsteps of those pathways inscribed by others, and following those pathways in the forest is, both metaphorically and literally, coterminous with following the lifeways of the ancestors. So place and identity are one and the same, both share a common history, and co-evolve as one ecoontological system. Over the course of generations of human-environment interactions those inhabited landscapes come to be woven into the lives of people; and through habitual patterns of action and perception in the world, the lives of people also come to be woven into the landscape (Tilley 1994: 29–30). We are thus both part of the world and coextensive with it; and our bodily interactions in the world can be seen as extensions of our own agency in the world (Gill 1997: 64), as those places we inhabit come to constitute, as Edward Casey (1993: xvii) eloquently put it, “the environing subsoil of our embodiment” and “the bedrock of our being-in-the world.”

Notes  1. While the Orang Rimba do not identify north, south, east and west as fixed points, they do see these points relationally, as they often use solar positioning to navigate while traveling along logging roads, or near villages or other open spaces where the sun is visible.  2. Girls generally spend more time than boys caring for younger siblings and helping their mothers with domestic chores, while adolescent boys seek opportunities to follow older men on hunting forays. Permission to accompany men on the hunt is left to the discretion of the hunters involved, who consider the boy’s age and abilities, and assess the risks involved and distances being covered. In instances where food is scarce and hunting success is imperative, younger boys may not be permitted to tag along, as their inadequacies could jeopardize the success of the hunt.  3. The taboo on uttering the names of the deceased similarly serves as a collective and socially sanctioned means of suppressing painful memories of the deceased.

Chapter 8

Shamanism and the Textures of the Universe

Cc … in a forest, I have felt many times over that it was not I who looked at the forest. Some days I felt that the trees were looking at me. —André Marchand, Charbonnier’s Le monologue de peintre

In chapter 7 I illustrated how personal biographies and collective identities are inscribed into the landscape and how memories are continually revisited through everyday interactions in the forest. In this chapter I further illustrate the co-constituting qualities of body and world by taking an in-depth look at Orang Rimba cosmology and shamanism in particular. Through shamanic practice another, more esoteric, modality of perception is revealed; one that illustrates the power of thought and imagination through which new meanings are infused into the forest. I show how exogenous forces greatly influence the Orang Rimba’s perceptions of the environment and how these external influences play out in the shamanic imagination. Through continued interactions with the outside world, new meanings are woven into the forest, and these meanings are given expression during the course of shamanic rituals and feedback to condition everyday perceptions of the forest and notions of causality. The forest, in this sense, comes to be “enculturated” and “historicized” through shamanic practice, as the world—commonly apprehended directly—and “thought about the world” merge into one coherent experiential reality. A noteworthy feature of hunter-gatherer cosmologies is the sense of common sociality that people share with nonhuman agents in the environment (for review see Bird-David 1992; Ingold 2000: 40–60). People confer on their environments life-giving and interactive qualities that constitute

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tute what Anderson—working among circumpolar reindeer herders and hunters—aptly described as a “sentient ecology” (Ingold 2000: 116–17). Nelson, for example, describes the Koyukon of northwest Alaska as inhabiting an environment that is aware and sensate—“a forest of eyes” that constantly watches over humans (1983: 14) Similarly, the Orang Rimba perceive their forest environment as a sentient lifeworld, one in which humans and nonhumans enjoy a common sociality occurring within a broader nexus of social relations. They imbue the forest with animate, life-giving qualities, and human-environment relations often take on a dialectical or interactive quality, resembling in many ways those intersubjective relations found between people—a phenomenon Ingold calls “inter-agentivity” (2000: 47). For the Orang Rimba “keeping in touch with the forest” not only involves monitoring the non-human environment during the course of hunting, gathering, and forest product collecting, but also involves maintaining an open dialogue with a host of deities and other supernatural agencies residing in the features of the landscape. Maintaining harmonious relations with particular forest deities is essential to ensuring the wellbeing of persons and the regeneration of those live-giving qualities that the forest confers on humans. The forest deities continue to provide sustenance by offering vital esoteric knowledge, so long as the Orang Rimba adhere to certain prescribed behaviors, both within the forest and in their compliance with ancestral taboos prohibiting excessive contact with the external village world. Shamans are the most potent and able mediators between humans and the forest, serving as conduits between the quotidian world and the deity world. Through their efforts, hidden aspects of the Orang Rimba’s cosmological order are revealed, offering a window into a more esoteric, yet equally salient, modality of forest perception. Through shamanic practice, qualities of mind are infused into features of the environment as consciousness is cast out into the forest during the course of shamanic rituals, at once collapsing the boundaries of the somatic body and the experienced world. While in a trance the shaman’s inner being fuses with the unseen dimensions of the forest to form a dynamic continuum between mind, body, and world; their boundaries merging and continually shifting during the course of shamanic rituals. As such, shamans are both constituted and constituting beings, embodying vessels for the absorption of those supernatural agencies of the forest and mediating vehicles through which the environment is meaningfully created, re-created, and transformed. Their transcendental explorations into the liminal dimensions of the forest reveal the multifarious composition and structure of the forest universe—a social place where people, deities, spirits, plants,

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animals, and a variety of other, often imperceptible, life-forms coexist in an animate, all-encompassing lifeworld. Their visions inform ordinary people about the inherent qualities and current state of the universe and condition how people perceive the less tangible dimensions of the forest. Through Orang Rimba shamanism we also see the enduring ways in which local historical factors have taken hold of their perceptions of the forest. Unique to the Orang Rimba in the Bukit Tigapuluh area is the kaleidoscopic merging of the ordinarily disparate categories of forest and village in the shamanic imagination. In quotidian contexts these two domains are continually overlapping and encroaching on one another; and as we saw in chapter 4, despite their ongoing interaction with the outside world, the Orang Rimba are very mindful in their efforts to keep these two arenas of life conceptually distinct. In the ritual context we see how forest and village domains merge in the shamanic imagination, particularly during trance states when deities and other numinous life forms of the forest are induced during the course of shamanic rituals. I illustrate how their age-old dualistic worldview, while retaining its general binary structure throughout the years, is continually altering in response to exogenous forces, finding its expression in various forms of shamanic trance imagery. As the form and content of the shaman’s visions are often inspired by local historical factors, the kinds of imagery conjured by shamanic practitioners necessarily varies across field sites, with each area’s cosmological features and deity manifestations taking on their own unique set of characteristics. Knowledge and information received through a shamanic trance is given credence by the fact that the Orang Rimba do not subordinate these esoteric modes of dialogue with the forest deities to more quotidian contexts and, furthermore, often regard these more numinous forms of communion with the forest as more real than their ordinary waking experience. For the Orang Rimba practical and ritual realms are mutually affecting categories of experience—one realm guides and informs the other. Shamanic experience thus also serves as a kind of societal coping mechanism, one that effectively tempers and counterbalances the pervasive hegemony inherent in their relations with outsiders. Insights gained during trance states provide an individual and collective catharsis for releasing those imminent fears and anxieties that have taken root throughout the course of their historical relations with the outside world, while offering prescriptions for further action. Shamanistic practice is thus vital for achieving ontological security and for the overall “groundedness” of social being. It should be noted that the ethnographic data presented in this chapter were gleaned from a variety of contexts and in a somewhat piecemeal fashion from various Orang Rimba enclaves. During the course of gathering

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information I found that the collected data varied, sometimes considerably, across field sites. My restricted access to Orang Rimba shamans also limited the kinds of data I was able to collect. Even in the Bukit Tigapuluh area, where I enjoyed close relations with the Orang Rimba, my access to shamans was somewhat limited. Information regarding certain aspects of Orang Rimba shamanism will therefore necessarily remain obscured and incomplete due to their strict ancestral taboos prohibiting (or in my case limiting) access to shamans and certain kinds of shamanic knowledge.

Allah and Behelo: Divinities in the Landscape By mid-July the rains had yet to arrive and were now long overdue. I would pay short visits to the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang while on my way to and from other, more distant, field sites in the Bukit Tigapuluh area. The prolonged dry season had made the heat at Sungai Gelumpang all but intolerable during the mid-afternoons and during my visits there I often spent the better part of my afternoons soaking in the Gelumpang River to avoid the sweltering heat. One afternoon while cooling off with Dedi and Talaman I noticed that they were both lathering their bodies with soap. Although they had always used soap, as did Tampong’s sons while they resided here, I had spent the greater part of the last eight months residing among more forest-bound groups who did not bathe on a regular basis (let alone use soap), so seeing the two of them bathing in this “Malay-like” fashion, on this particular occasion, struck me as noteworthy.1 Seizing this opportunity to initiate a discussion I asked why Silingkup, Nina, and the others at the Sumai watershed had suddenly stopped using soap. Without hesitation Talaman replied very matter-of-factly, “lain Tuhan” (different God). He added that his friends had gone back to alami (loosely translated as “nature”), and that they were now subject to the rules prescribed by the forest god Behelo. I gave a tentative nod, indicating that I understood but not quite (as I often did when wanting to keep a subject open), which prompted his older half-brother Dedi to interject. He proceeded to explain how they had stopped living under the protection of Behelo ever since they settled in Malay-style huts and began interacting with villagers on a regular basis. This triggered my puzzled response, “hopi ado Tuhan lagi?” (so now you have no God?). He replied, “hopi! sio ado Tuhan kampung namo Allah” (No, here we have the village god Allah). Taken aback by this last declaration I reminded him that nobody here prays to Allah and, even more damning, I pointed out the several occasions we had all eaten wild pig together. They both looked at me quizzically and after a moment’s pause began to explain how the village world



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is under the protection of Allah and not Behelo; that Allah is the god who rules the tanah kampong (village land). The Orang Rimba’s notions of forest dwelling, along with their traditional opposition to village ways, while often expressed in social terms through the adherence to certain prescribed behaviors and ancestral taboos, is ultimately conceived through and governed by their association with the land. The following journal entry recorded in the Sumai watershed will provide a more precise illustration of the conceptual formulations of Allah and Behelo as they relate to Orang Rimba perceptions of the landscape. Field notes, August 15, 1998: This morning while searching for turtles with Silingkup and Nina I noticed that the visibility on the logging road had reached an unprecedented low. Employing the age-old slash-and-burn technique, fire has been the most efficient means of land clearance used by local timber companies for transforming forests into plantation land. But now with the extended dry season, spurred on by the El Nino global weather phenomenon, thousands of hectares of forestland have been burning out of control throughout the island of Sumatra and other parts of Southeast Asia. The river levels have also reached an all-time low due to the lack of rain, leaving exposed once deeply submerged animal burrows. In response to these extreme conditions, we have been opportunistically focusing our efforts on the collection of freshwater turtles—both for our own consumption and to sell to a local trader.  Here in the Sumai watershed the forests have remained relatively unaffected by the forest fires. But the dispersed smoke from fires set in other concession areas has been steadily drifting into the area, stagnating into a perpetual haze that has settled into pockets formed by the open spaces where the forest has been opened up and bisected by logging roads. But due to the filtering effect of the dense forest canopy, the smoke has yet to penetrate into the deeper forest where we have been camped for the past two weeks.  On our way back to camp, I asked the boys if they knew why the smoke was all around us but not in the forest. Silingkup replied simply, “Behelo.” I responded by asking if Behelo was protecting the forest from this encompassing blanket of smoke. He and Nina replied in unison, “auw” (yes). Still curious and seeing this as an opportunity to prod further into the matter I randomly walked toward the center of the logging road and asked, “ado Behelo nio?” (is Behelo here?). They both confidently replied, “hopi” (no). As our eyes panned across the surrounding landscape together, my visual perception now attuned to theirs, I could not help but see the correspondence they were drawing between our conversation and the surrounding topography. As they looked around and pointed out toward the surrounding forest, it seemed as though they were envisaging the forest god Behelo in spatial terms, using the tree-line around them as a kind of visual mnemonic. Wanting to test the validity of my premature hypothesis I walked several feet away toward the margin of the logging road just outside the boundaries of the forest and asked once again, this time anxiously anticipating their response. After a brief pause, they both replied in unison, “hopi,” Wanting to

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resolve the matter once and for all, Nina took me by the hand in his typical nurturing manner and walked me to the nearby bush just inside the fringes of the forest and exclaimed, “ado Behelo nio!” (Behelo is here!).

This brief episode would be one of those rare and valuable fieldwork moments, when windows into worldview are opened up, however briefly, and breakthroughs in understanding are reached in quantum leaps. I could now gain a deeper appreciation of the Orang Rimba’s religious identification with the forest and how inextricably agencies and ideas are inscribed into the landscape. Unlike Judeo-Christian “otherworldly” notions of God, the Orang Rimba’s conceptions of Behelo are formulated in spatial terms, identifiable with the features of the forest, and confined within its geographical boundaries. Within this vast and variegated lifeworld the regeneration of life is assured for both humans and nonhumans, so long as communication remains open with the forest god Behelo and all the other deities of the forest falling under his auspices. The regeneration of human life not only depends on the continued dialogue between persons and the deities of the forest, but also requires that the forest remain undisturbed by outside influence. The dissection of the forest by logging roads, as illustrated in my brief encounter, represents a discontinuity of the forest’s vital life forces and, further, indicates a kind of pollution by those corrosive forces emanating from the village world. Consequently, where forests are fragmented, even by smaller and less imposing bulldozer tracks, the surrounding area is thereafter regarded as hopi bungaghon (impure). Such areas are thereafter thought to be outside the realm of Behelo’s protective efficacy, which is evidenced in the greater prevalence of malevolent spirits. The forest god Behelo is also envisaged in fluid terms, as an omnipotent and dynamic agency, best likened to an “aura,” one that is integral to and, as I would learn, the effective embodiment of all the forest’s multifarious characteristics. Sandbukt, drawing his observations from the Bukit Duabelas area where he conducted his fieldwork, describes the Orang Rimba god as the “ultimate force in the universe.” Referred to by the more generic term “Tuhan” (literally “God”), he draws parallels between the Orang Rimba’s description of this supernatural life force with the paradox of Allah. Both are described as formless and faceless entities that are omnipresent yet “outside the realm of the perceivable” (1984: 89). As I stood there at the fringes of the forest, my hand resting on a large dipterocarp tree, it dawned upon me that Behelo was, in fact, a euphemism for all that is associated with the animated lifeworld of the forest: Behelo is the forest. The Orang Rimba’s sacred forest domain thus ends, literally, at edge of the tree line. As a corollary, they conceive the Muslim god Allah as an everpresent natural force embedded in the physical features of the

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open village landscape, with each god’s efficacy and influence necessarily circumscribed by the borders of their respective domains. Once the Orang Rimba leave the sanctuary of the forest, no safety or sanctity is implied or expected, for once in the open spaces of the outer world, they are assumed to fall under the protection of the village god Allah. Here we see a conspicuous disjunction between Orang Rimba and Malay conceptions of divinity as they relate to their perceptions of the environment. While the Orang Rimba conceive Allah as a supernatural deity that, like Behelo, resides within and is coterminous with the features of the landscape, Malays do not associate Allah with the physical features of their rural environment. The doctrines of Southeast Asian Islam are, instead, derived from Koranic teachings and infused with local Malay adat law and custom. For Muslim Malays, God represents an unknown dimension of reality, to be revealed in the afterlife to those who follow the dictates of Islam in this life. This misconception on the Orang Rimba’s part would contribute to the psychological trauma experienced by those groups that have taken up residence in settlements outside the forest, who have found themselves suspended somewhere between the geographical and ideological domains of Allah and Behelo.

Halom Nio and Halom Dewo : The Coarse and Refined Textures of the Forest The Orang Rimba perceive their forest world as a multi-layered universe, inhabited by a vast array of life forms, all of which fall under the tutelage of the omnipotent and omnipresent forest god Behelo. Divided into the halom nio (this world) and the halom dewo (deity world), the former connotes the mundane or visible dimensions of physical space that humans inhabit during their quotidian existence, while the latter refers to the more obscure and often imperceptible dimensions of the forest inhabited by a pantheon of deities and other hidden life forms (Sandbukt 1984: 88). The Orang Rimba distinguish between these two dimensions of forest life through the concepts kasar and haluy, translating roughly as “coarse” and “refined.” The former refers to those bodies of life that are visible to the naked eye such as plants, animals, humans, and other physical matter, while the latter refers to those life forms comprised of “spirit matter” that require special attention to perceive. Although life within each of these realms of existence is comprised of different characteristics (sifat), the Orang Rimba do not regard them as mutually exclusive dimensions but, rather, as different nodes along a continuum of perception. It is through the cultivation of a specialized “seeing” ability that the halom dewo reveals

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itself, both to ordinary persons and to the shaman. In fact, the halom dewo is regarded as an existential domain that is somehow more real than the mundane world of the halom nio; and due to its pristine and flawless characteristics, it is conceived as a more perfect world (Sandbukt 1984: 88). While life in the halom nio is ephemeral and everchanging through cycles of birth and death, life in the halom dewo remains eternal, so long as the forest remains physically intact. All life in the forest—deities, spirits, plants, and animals—are recognized as sharing a common sociality with humans; and what unifies all these life forms, those originating in both the halom nio and the halom dewo, is the notion that all sentient beings possess a kind of breathing soul or nyawoh. Both Malays and Orang Rimba regard nyawoh as an essential life sustaining force, as is common throughout much of the Indonesian archipelago and peninsular Malaysia. But it is not envisaged as an ectoplasmic entity residing within the body as Western notions of the soul are often construed. Rather, nyawoh is conceived as the breath within all living things that represents, and indeed is, coterminous with life itself, often (but not always) generated and sustained through the process of respiration. Just as Western science treats the pulse or heart beat as an index of life, an Orang Rimba regards the prevalence of nyawoh as a similar index: loss of life is loss of nyawoh.2 The question of death is something of a mystery to many Orang Rimba and there seemed to be no consensus regarding the afterlife among those I questioned. The groups studied by Sandbukt reported that only those persons who have developed the special shamanic seeing ability will be able to find their way to the halom dewo in the afterlife. Thereafter they belong to a class of deities referred to as malaikat (1984: 93), a term Malays use for angel, but conceived more generally by the Orang Rimba as a ghost or spirit of the dead. Those who have not attained shamanic status, on the other hand, will only reach halfway to the halom dewo in a dark and dismal world referred to as hentew (Ibid.). While the Orang Rimba in the Bukit Tigapuluh area also believe in forest malaikats, they are less certain as to who becomes one in the afterlife. Most Orang Rimba I questioned professed their uncertainty as to what happens after a person dies. While they agree that some shamans may have an afterlife, their descriptions were often vague and in some instances the notion of becoming a malaikat in the afterlife was a horrific one. The Orang Rimba believe in a “body soul” or “traveling soul” (haluy badan) that is described as an invisible entity with the same morphology and characteristics as the corporeal body. According to Sandbukt, it is this entity that survives after death, transforming into the appropriate class of deity once the corporeal body has decayed (1984: 93). The Orang Rimba

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universally believe that it is the haluy badan residing within the body that travels to the halom dewo during dreams and shamanic trance states. This metaphysical entity shares some similarity with the Batek “shadow soul,” as described by Endicott (1979a: 94–95); an entity which resides within every living person and travels out of the body during dreams, during which time important information is gained through communication with other shadow souls in the forest. The Orang Rimba often apply a moral dimension to their beliefs in the afterlife. Tampong was often adamant in asserting that good people can become benevolent deities in the afterlife while those who lived an immoral life would be relegated to less desirable positions in the pantheon of deities. For example, a person who has committed serious sins of adultery could be forever transformed into stone or head lice. Thus while deities almost always take on the morphology of humans and may be referred to as “orang” (Sandbukt 1984: 89), there is no rule limiting their form to humans. Dead persons can also reincarnate into animal forms, their haluy badan inhabiting the bodies of tigers, pigs, snakes, and a wide variety of other creatures. It is said that a tiger deity is able to comprehend the Orang Rimba’s dialect and will kill and eat humans who commit heinous crimes such as incest. The less tangible or haluy dimensions of the Orang Rimba’s forest world are potentially open to persons of all ages and both genders; and both children and adults alike posses at least a modicum of this special ability to connect and interact with the halom dewo (compare Lye 1997: 135). This is achieved most commonly through dreams, but on occasion through direct perception. It is not uncommon for young children to see visions while walking in the forest or in their dreams, during which time specific deities and other supernatural agencies communicate vital information regarding human affairs. As is common throughout the island of Sumatra and peninsular Malaysia, dream symbolism plays an important role in social life, often portending future events or providing vital information needed to avert hidden dangers (compare Endicott 1979a: 94–95; Lye 1997: 114–16). But the information received from the halom dewo during dream states, although often evoking vigilance, is not slavishly obeyed without consideration. Dreams are subject to a variety of interpretations and it is common for people to present a synopsis of their dreams for evaluation by others in the camp. I witnessed on many occasions people in Tampong’s group, both young and old, sharing their dreams before the camp as all present attentively listened on, occasionally offering their interpretations and possible courses of action. Another means through which ordinary persons can tap into the halom dewo is through the use of magic. The Orang Rimba do not differentiate between natural and supernatural domains or realms of experience, just

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as they do not regard the halom dewo as any less tangible or real than the halom nio. In fact the term for magic, ilmu, is used interchangeably to refer both to esoteric knowledge and to ordinary knowledge that is applied in quotidian contexts. Magic can also cross forest-village boundaries. Orang Rimba purchase spells from Malays, while the latter greatly value and occasionally fear Orang Rimba magic. It is not uncommon for Malay villagers to pay visits to Orang Rimba camps and ask those males in polygamous marital unions for their “love magic” (ilmu becintaan). Recall from chapter 4, this is a kind of magic used by males to lure women into succumbing to a man’s will, often through a kind of involuntary hypnosis. Another important class of magical spells is specially intended for the purpose of healing the sick (ilmu penyakit). These spells often originate from the forest deities and are transmitted to the shaman while in trance. They may eventually find their way to a select few who thereafter will possess the limited ability to heal. These spells are often in the form of incantations that are accompanied by blowing onto the affected area (dejempi), a process which serves to revitalize the sick both through the power of word and through the life-sustaining breath associated with nyawoh (compare Van Dongen 1906: 252; see also Tambiah 1968). Spells can be given or sold, but knowledge is carefully safeguarded from those who are deemed untrustworthy. When magical spells prove to be ineffective in curing the ill, the Orang Rimba simply avoid contact with those affected. So preoccupied are the Orang Rimba with the fear of illness, in particular contagious diseases, that any outbreak could cause individuals, even within the same nuclear family, to avoid contact with the afflicted person for days. Sandbukt has observed such quarantine taboos for several weeks at a time. In such cases family members, including spouses, would meet intermittently in forest clearings while maintaining a safe distance from one another that Sandbukt describes as “structurally reminiscent of a formal encounter with Malays” (1984: 90). I have also observed similar quarantine taboos, both between persons within the same camp (the sick person normally erecting a shelter some distance apart from the rest of the camp) and among Orang Rimba from different areas upon chance encounters in the forest. In the latter case both parties interacted from a distance, never coming closer than thirty feet or so from one another.

Deities and Other Supernatural Agents of the Forest Orang Rimba generally agree that the world is flat and divided into the upstream (ulu) and downstream (ilir) (Sandbukt 1984: 89). The farthest

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reaches of the former represent seldom visited mountainous regions (gunung) where resources are scarce, while the latter represents the inhospitable and open spaces of the village world. As one continues farther downstream, the edge of the world is eventually reached. These upstream and downstream distinctions find their corollaries in the kinds of deities associated with each region. The upstream deities are generally regarded as benevolent or at least inert, while downstream deities are almost always malevolent and potentially harmful to humans (Ibid.: 90). Each Orang Rimba forest area will host a pantheon of deities that may be exclusive to that specific region, but there is also some overlap of deity manifestations between field sites. For example, orang de penyakit, a greatly feared downstream deity that causes death through disease, is found both in the Bukit Duabelas area where Sandbukt conducted his fieldwork as well as in the Bukit Tigapuluh area (see Sandbukt 1984: 90). However, Sandbukt reports a class of malevolent downstream deities called silum-on that are not found in the Bukit Tigapuluh area. These deities are said to dress like Malays and live in Malay-like villages in swampy areas associated with palm-rich indentations in the landscape. They are regarded as highly dangerous, always poised to wreak havoc upon the Orang Rimba through a variety of means available to them (Ibid.: 88). In this particular area, deities are always designated by the prefix orang, connoting “human.” Their outward appearance is always human-like and they commonly wear fine Malay clothing and live in Malay-style villages that are hierarchically organized on the traditional Malay structure with kings, nobles, headmen, commoners, and slaves (Sandbukt 1984: 89). This is clearly a reflection of the Orang Rimba’s geopolitical encapsulation and consequent assimilation to an archaic Malay hierarchy. While this form of social organization is no longer extant among villagers, the Orang Rimba in this area continue to adhere to a modified version of this hierarchy with headmen (temmengung/penghulu) and other elected title holders of various ranks. Consequently, their forest deities follow a similar pattern and are also hierarchically ordered. By contrast, the Orang Rimba in the Bukit Tigapuluh area do not always designate their deities by the prefix orang and, moreover, their deities do not always assume human morphological characteristics. The local geopolitical realities of this area reflect a host of impinging factors that are specific to the region. Historically, they have not been encapsulated by local Malay populations like those groups found in the Bukit Duabelas area. However, the ongoing incursions by timber companies and a continual influx of transmigrants have affected the Orang Rimba’s perceptions of their forest environment in a way that influences the kinds of deities

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encountered by the shaman in the halom dewo. This will be illustrated in the following section when shamanic trance is explored. The Orang Rimba widely believe that the most potentially harmful agents are those originating from the soil beneath the ground surface of the forest. In chapter 4 I introduced the notion of tanah celako—a kind of “cursed soil” that can be revealed to the shaman by an overpowering noxious odor that is said to resemble that of rotted flesh. Any time a forest camp is established or a swidden field opened (among swiddening groups) the Orang Rimba take special precautions to avoid these hidden “danger zones” beneath the ground surface of the forest. Another harmful force emanating from beneath the forest floor is the greatly maligned orang skapir. Sandbukt describes these subterranean creatures (called by a variant term orang kapir) as “unimaginably depraved and polluted beings” and notes that they worship humans in much the same way that the latter worship the forest deities (1984: 88). The term skapir or kapir finds its etymology in the Arbic word kafir which translates literally as “infidel” or more generally as “heathen” or “pagan.” In Islamic cosmology humans are considered supreme over all other creatures and, furthermore, followers of Islam are regarded as superior to non-followers or “infidels.” Sandbukt notes how the Orang Rimba are well aware of the sub-human status accorded to them by Muslim villagers and interprets the orang kapir/skapir in “looking-glass self” terms, attributing their polluted status to what he sees as a “reflection of common Malay attitudes toward the Kubu” (1984: 88). In the Bukit Duabelas region Islamic concepts are more commonly appropriated into the Orang Rimba’s system of beliefs, due to their centuries of encapsulation by Muslim Malay polities. Here Sager (2008: 259–60) describes a downstream deity called Haji, or “village angels” (Orang Meru). Haji is an Islamic term that is used by Malays to refer to a person who has made the holy pilgrimage to Mecca (Haj being the term used for the pilgrimage itself). Similarly, the Orang Rimba here make pilgrimages to these downstream deities where they selectively draw upon village knowledge to heal sickness and wash away accumulated sin (Sager 2008: 260). While the Orang Rimba establish a sense of empowerment over Malay villagers through these “pilgrimages” in the halom dewo (as the latter generally do not have the resources to carry out similar pilgrimages to Mecca), what is most noteworthy is the ways in which they have adopted not only Islamic terminologies, but also important ideas and associated practices (e.g., carrying out holy pilgrimages to clear accumulated sin), while adapting them to meet their own unique needs vis-à-vis their relations with those more powerful Malays with whom they have been in contact. Such appropria-

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tion of Islamic terminology and concepts is not unique in the Southeast Asian context, finding parallels among other indigenous groups throughout the region (see, for example, Endicott 1979b; Howell 1984). Other kinds of malevolent deities are also thought to emanate from beneath the ground surface. The most common of these is setan tanah (literally “devil of the soil”). These deities are harmful in lethal proportions and should never be disturbed while walking in the forest. Among some Orang Rimba setan can also be a generic term used to refer to a class of deities that are thought to be incarnations of dead Orang Rimba who had lived dishonest or unvirtuous lives. These deities can occasionally be found in the mountains, where it is said that they have been banished to live in eternal solitude. They do not proactively seek to inflict harm on humans but, rather, live a quiet life in a dormant state, preferring not to be disturbed. It is when these deities are accidentally encountered in the forest that retribution is sought, often resulting in sickness and/or death. Orang Rimba have likened these encounters to happening upon a nest of bees or the acts of revenge sought by a villager when his land is encroached upon or seized. Whole villages can exist in the halom dewo, hosting entire populations of deities. Sager describes the downstream deities of rice (orang de padi) that reside in an all female Malay-style riverbank village called Imom (a term in the Malay language connoting an Islamic religious teacher) in the Bukit Duabelas region. They are described as tiny beings that are as numerous as the grains of rice they watch over. While they are often described as benevolent they are said to reside alongside, and often intermingle with, the orang menyakit, deities of sickness with whom they often enter into relationships. These rice deities are believed to exercise some of the magical powers associated with Islam (Sager 2008: 167) and are also believed to possess a soul (semengot padi).3 Recall from chapter 4 the strong conceptual distinction the Orang Rimba make between swidden fields planted with rice and those planted with tubers, with preference generally being shown for the latter (Sager 2008: 371). Here we see an elaboration of the age-old association the Orang Rimba make between rice, sedentism, and sickness. The ambivalent and potentially harmful potential of those deities associated with rice illustrates the intermediary and often ambiguous position rice occupies in Orang Rimba symbolism and thought. As a village staple that has, in many areas, replaced their traditional staple base of wild and cultivated tubers, the association they hold with rice can best be described as one of cautious acceptance, as is illustrated in the downstream deities of rice occasionally intermingling with the orang menyakit, deities of sickness (recall from chapter 4 that it is from the downstream region that sickness and death are believed to emanate).While the orang de padi deities of rice

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are always female, those deities associated with the soil from which rice and other crops grow (orang detanohmon) can be either male or female. Unique to the Bukit Tigapuluh area is the deity population of Subon, located near the Sungai Kebong area (not far from the Sumai watershed). They are a form of setan tanah of the most malignant order. They commonly live beneath rice fields where they are said to raise wild animals such as pig and tapir, but much like the Malay villagers they descend from, they do not eat these animals. According to local legend, these “hybrid” deities were conceived when a villager from Sungai Kebong lost his way in the forest with insufficient food supplies. In his last moments of life he was approached by the female deity subon and given an ultimatum, to either marry her or die of starvation. To save his life the villager chose the former and their offspring now comprise the population of deities inhabiting this backwater area. Unknown to me at the time, these deities were disturbed by Ajang’s second wife Timpo while collecting jerenang (dye) in the Sungai Kebong area during the early weeks of my fieldwork. Their hazardous encounter was presumed to be the cause of the aforementioned death of her infant some weeks later. While some malevolent deities reside beneath the ground surface, most others move about freely both above and below ground, unrestricted by geographic or topographic features. They can reside beneath the ground at times, while at other times ascending to the surface, particularly when summoned by the shaman. Inuman is such a class of deity residing in the swamps between the Gelumpang and Sumai watersheds. Commonly encountered by Tampong’s group, these deities share the same morphology as humans and each owns an enormous reticulated python (ulo sao), which is said to be the size of a logging truck. While these snakes are able to attack and suck the blood out of humans with their enormous fangs, they are well trained by their inuman masters and therefore not inclined to harm humans. Tampong in particular is known to enjoy good relations with this class of deities. Benevolent deities are generally more willing to interact with people, often asking for food, tobacco, and personal assistance. In some cases these deities can form marital unions with Orang Rimba (Sandbukt 1984: 92), with male shamans often inhabiting female spirit helpers as guides and vice versa, incorporating their powers and vital essence during trance states (compare Balzer 2003: 242; see also Roseman 2003: 189). It is common for experienced shamans to establish as many of these matrimonial alliances as possible in order to ensure both the wellbeing of the camp and their own personal safety during transcendental journeys into the halom dewo. While deities often share the same general morphology as humans, they are able to transmogrify into an endless variety of life forms due to

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their halus characteristics. They can also possess animals and use their bodies as temporary media for communication with humans, as is illustrated in the following anecdote: One late afternoon while camped upstream from the Sungai Mengkakoh, Ma Tuo heard the sounds of a large animal rustling about in the foliage just outside the camp. Alarmed, she immediately rose from her forest shelter and walked into the bush, when suddenly an adult tiger stopped her dead in her tracks. Crippled by the initial shock of the encounter, she stood motionless for several seconds. As they both gazed into each other’s eyes in what seemed to be developing into a heated standoff, the tiger slowly approached her, stopping ten feet or so from where she stood.  Ma Tuo signaled her good intentions by addressing the tiger by the customary title datuk (grandfather).4 The tiger now began to speak to Ma Tuo in a typical tiger growl. As an experienced shaman she readily understood the tiger to be warning her about a small goblin approximately the size of a young child hiding inside a nearby tree. I was later informed by Ajang that these kinds of goblins live like Malays in large numbers and eat forest game they have hunted. They have also been known to devour unsuspecting people on occasion. Ma Tuo graciously received the tiger’s warning but immediately pleaded with the latter to leave so as not to further frighten the others in the camp who, by now, were increasingly in a panic. Complying with her wishes the tiger retreated and made its way to a large-buttressed tree about two hundred yards or so away in which an entire colony of these goblins were residing. The tiger then instructed the goblins to sing aloud in order to alert the Orang Rimba to their presence—which they did, thereby prompting the camp to move to another site at once.

In this instance the tiger had been under the possession of a benevolent deity that, after assisting Ma Tuo, released the body of the tiger, which immediately transformed back to its original wild state and ran off into the forest. So there is no fine line between those life forms of the forest that fall under the incorporeal category of halus, such as deities, and those more tangible or kasar forms of life such as humans and animals. Such forms of deity possession are seen by the Orang Rimba as a temporary transfer of life-force or essence (sifat), all occurring within the malleable and everfluctuating composition of their forest environment. Not all goblins are malevolent like those described above. There are species that are ambivalent toward humans and still others that may seek out human companionship with the aim of enticing the latter into permanent residence among them. These small creatures are just one of a broader category of forest life known as hantu. While forest deities are invisible to the untrained eye and often share the same morphological characteristics as humans, hantu are generally visible to the naked eye and can take on the morphology of any species, including creatures that have no counterparts in the animal kingdom. For example, the hantu gunnung (monster of the

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mountains) is a bipedal creature that is said to be as tall as a tree. Its coat is thick like a gibbon and its nails and teeth are long and sharp. This same creature is described among South Sumatran groups as hantu tinggi (tall monster) and in many aspects resembles North American and Circumpolar depictions of Sasquatch and the Yeti. Both sexes are distinguishable by their genitalia and are known to be carnivorous, occasionally eating humans. Although hazardous to humans, it is said they can be easily warded off with fire. Like the above described deities, the characteristics of most hantu also differ across field sites. Here I have provided a basic sketch of the various kinds and classes of supernatural life forms encountered both in the halom dewo and the ordinary forest world of the halom nio—my aim being to draw out some general similarities across field sites in order to shed light on the general ways in which the Orang Rimba perceive the more numinous dimensions of their forest world. We also saw in their use of Islamic terminology to describe certain life forms of the forest how they, like other foraging peoples throughout the world, are also “foragers of ideas”, which they appropriate from external sources and adapt for their own purposes (compare Bird-David 1988), a theme I return to in the conclusion of the chapter. Below I elaborate on the ways in which exogenous forces have had an impact on Orang Rimba thought and perceptions of the forest within the ritual context of shamanic trance. But first I provide a sociological context for the requirements and general characteristics of Orang Rimba shamans.

Dukon: Conduits between the Halom Nio and Halom Dewo As mentioned above the sentient life-world of the forest is potentially open to everyone. However, true shamans are rare. A real shaman (dukon) is born with the special abilities and creative faculties to perceive agencies in the forest that are generally imperceptible to ordinary persons. The shaman serves as an intermediary between the quotidian world of the halom nio and the more liminal world of the halom dewo. Orang Rimba dukon do not choose their vocation; they are, in a sense, chosen by the deities of the forest by virtue of their receptivity to those life forces emanating from the halom dewo. As this inimitable skill or ability is further cultivated through years of experience, it is more common for an adult male to be regarded first as an ordinary dukon during his earlier years of practice. Only later in life, after having proven himself to be an able practitioner, thereby gaining the trust of his fellow Orang Rimba, can he be regarded as a dukon godong (powerful shaman). To be elevated to the status and reputation of a dukon godong is quite rare and therefore, these individuals are often sought out

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in other camps by those in need. Persons seeking the services of a dukon are generally expected to pay a small fee or tribute, normally in sheets of cloth or tobacco. Much as in the arena of politics, religious and shamanic practice is primarily a male endeavor. This is particularly so among the more stratified groups such as those found in the Bukit Duabelas region. Sager notes that among these groups shamanic knowledge is sought by adult males as a means of gaining access to knowledge, power, and prestige (2008: 149). In the Bukit Tigapuluh area, where almost no institutionalized hierarchies exist, groups are relatively more egalitarian and shamanic knowledge is more open to females. Despite this greater gender equality and more equal access to esoteric knowledge, shamanic practice still remains, for the most part, a male undertaking. This preference, it would appear, is largely due to those qualities of bravery and leadership that Orang Rimba shamans are required to possess, coupled with the lifestyle that shamanic practice demands. Shamans are expected to exhibit great resilience and fortitude, both in their ability to induce potentially harmful forces and to ward off any possible attacks of sorcery. Shamanic knowledge is often sought through journeys into the deep forest and, in consequence, these revelations are more commonly experienced by men who venture into the forest on a more regular basis. It is thus not surprising that great hunters (or formerly great hunters) are often great shamans as well. Also as shamans are often summoned from distant camps under all kinds of conditions such as rain and during the night, the shamanic lifestyle is more amenable to male patterns of behavior. Atkinson (1989) makes a similar case in explaining shamanism among the Wana of Sulawesi. Shamanic knowledge is equally accessible to both genders, she notes, but shamans are nonetheless almost always males. Much like the Orang Rimba, the Wana attain shamanic knowledge during the course of journeys into the deep forest. Knowledge acquisition thus requires movement across vast expanses of forest, and these sojourns are more likely carried out by men (Atkinson 1989: 281–83). The political dimensions inherent in shamanic practice are also worth noting, particularly in that Wana women do experiment with certain aspects of shamanic practice, but to the extent that group leadership is involved they are generally uncomfortable asserting claims over others (1989: xii). In short, attaining shamanship among the Wana, “conform(s) more closely to the contours of male rather than female experience” (Atkinson 1989: 281). Similarly, Orang Rimba women defer to men in matters of adat law and religion, and only men are elected to positions of power. Men, particularly after marriage, are expected to be providers and protectors of women, and those men that become shamans are regarded as community leaders

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and, in a sense, protectors of the whole group. Women often perform a perfunctory role as helpers (beyu) during shamanic rituals, but in certain rare cases they can also become shamans. These exceptional women are, as a rule, post-menopausal and are usually widowed and not permitted to remarry. The reasons for this are most likely rooted in widely held associations between female essence and fertility and vital supernatural life-forces in the environment. These associations are particularly evident in hunting and gathering societies, where human social life is often predicated on the maintenance of harmonious relations with the nonhuman environment.5 In the Malay tradition as well as in the wider Southeast Asian context, female characteristics are often regarded as more desirable for facilitating spirit induction (see for example Atkinson 1989: 280-83).6 It would thus appear that those same qualities that render the female essence amenable to shamanic practice in some societies can be regarded as potentially hazardous or less efficacious in others. In the Orang Rimba case the political dimensions that come into play with regard to shamanic practice should be re-emphasized. As noted above Orang Rimba shamans are regarded as community leaders and women that do become shamans are, without exception, widowed, and are not permitted to remarry. With no living spouse or male affines to assert claims over them, these women are freer to seek shamanic knowledge and assume roles as community leaders. In general it can be said that with age comes increased respect in Orang Rimba society, for both genders. Elderly females, then, can become dukon under certain circumstances, and in rare cases, particularly among those less stratified groups, can become dukon godong. In all cases, a dukon godong must maintain a pious lifestyle in order to remain an able practitioner. This entails, among other things, avoiding excessive contact with the outside Malay world (recall from chapter 4 the loss of Ajang’s once active “seeing” abilities as a consequence of his settlement in Malay style huts at Sungai Gelumpang). In addition to avoiding all unnecessary contact with villagers, a dukon must also maintain a commitment to helping others, which implies an unspoken pledge never to practice or engage in any forms of black magic (ilmu jahot). As the most potent and effective mediator between the Orang Rimba and the forest deities, a dukon godong can tap into the halus (refined) dimensions of the forest and see and hear with far greater precision and clarity than ordinary people. It is said that a dukon godong is able to invoke thunder, lightning, wind, and rain during moments of intense communion with the forest. He is able to co-opt potentially harmful deities of the forest by appealing to their benevolent characteristics, during which time long lasting pacts between the two are often made. The deities of the forest

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in a sense, “tamed” by the dukon while in a trance and it is through these highly concentrated moments that the latter is pushed to the extremes of his extrasensory capacities, during which time he must be careful not to venture too far outside his corporeal limits so as to prevent his inner “traveling body” (haluy badan) from being engulfed by the forces of the forest. So potent and unpredictable are those forces in the halom dewo that it is said that if villagers were to spend too much time in the forest, the forest deities would wreak havoc upon them, potentially causing insanity or death. A Malay dukon, who serves a similar function in the village world but more often specializes in healing the sick, may be able to communicate with the forest deities and can generally avert hidden dangers. However, within the forest domain he is naturally less efficacious than an Orang Rimba dukon.

Bedeki As mentioned above, most groups do not have a dukon godong residing within their camp. During the latter months of my fieldwork, however, I was fortunate enough to be present when an elderly female dukon godong from the northern region of Sanglap, in Riau Province, resided with Tampong’s group for several weeks. During this period she did not permit me to reside in the same camp due to my alien (or at best uncertain) social status. Not wanting to risk the possibility of “contamination,” which could hinder her capabilities and compromise the wellbeing of the entire camp, she was also sure to avoid all direct contact with me. To remedy the situation I resided with the bachelor males upstream a short distance away. Although I was unable to witness a shamanic trance first hand, I gained much of my knowledge through discussions with those present during such rituals, which occurred almost nightly. The adolescent males among whom I was living would routinely report back to me with information regarding the dukon’s state of being, deities contacted, and the content of what was communicated, while entertaining my questions well into the night. Through these nightly discussions I was able to supplement my already existing knowledge of Orang Rimba shamanism, gained through encounters with dukon at other field sites, as well as through conversations with ordinary Orang Rimba throughout the course of my fieldwork. Shamanic rituals often start in the evening hours. A raised platform or balai is erected, often in the center of the camp, which serves as a temporary shelter for the dukon for the duration of the ritual (Sandbukt 1984: 91). Here we see another example of the Orang Rimba’s appropriation

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of Malay terminology applied to the forest context. Malays use the term balai more generically to refer to a town meeting hall, a place to meet to deal with official matters or hold community meetings. In the Orang Rimba case, these platforms are commonly roofless structures and may be slightly larger than an ordinary forest shelter in order to accommodate others participating in the ritual, after which time they are abandoned and dismantled, or left to disintegrate (Ibid.). Shamanic rituals may last a few hours, but in cases when a sick person requires healing or help is needed in ameliorating a crisis, they may continue throughout the night. These all-night occasions are often divided by small interludes of an hour or so, allowing the dukon and other participants a respite in between sessions. They may continue on and off into the morning hours or until some form of resolution has been reached. These all night rituals have also been reported among groups in South Sumatra Province, but they are far less common these days, as most of these groups have settled into villages, and their ties to the halom dewo have, as a consequence, been greatly diminished or severed altogether. On rare occasions deities are contacted through song, but this is more prevalent among South Sumatran groups. Among the groups in the Bukit Tigapuluh area communication is most commonly carried out through unintelligible speech. This kind of “speaking in tongues” is accompanied by intense concentration, through which a gradual releasing or “letting go” of the body’s faculties is achieved. As the dukon slips into trance (bedeki) he may experience a kind of vertigo, outwardly manifesting in his visible disorientation and lack of bodily control. So as not to drift too far into the halom dewo, the dukon must be aided by an assistant, or penginang. In some cases the dukon will need to be physically supported by the penginang, particularly when a given deity temporarily inhabits his corporeal body, causing him to lose his strength and, in some instances, physically convulse. As mentioned above, during these highly concentrated moments the dukon is pushed to the extremes of his extrasensory capacities, during which time he must be careful to stay within his own limits. The penginang’s most vital responsibility, then, is to look after the dukon while in the trance state and assure that his conscious state does not travel too far outside his corporeal body, so as to prevent his traveling body (haluy badan) from drifting too far into the halom dewo. To this end he continuously monitors the dukon’s bodily condition, always keeping him partially anchored in the halom nio with soft suggestive words and occasionally by physical prodding (particularly when the dukon is deep in trance and most vulnerable). The penginang also holds other, more socially-oriented, responsibilities such as tending to the fire at the foot of the balai and providing the dukon with tobacco, which may be smoked throughout the duration of the ritual.

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He also serves as an intermediary between the dukon and other participants, particularly when the former is deep in a trance and unreceptive to stimuli around him. The penginang fields all inquiries, occasionally administering magical remedies to the sick while blowing onto the affected area (dejempi). These remedies are bestowed directly onto the dukon by the forest deities and can be subsequently passed on to others via the pembinang. With increasing focus and intensity the dukon slips further into trance. He now experiences the agencies of the forest from outside his corporeal body, often from a bird’s-eye view, as his haluy badan hovers above the forest canopy (compare Pandya 1993). The purpose of these transcendental journeys is to seek out deities who can connect with the dukon’s haluy badan (Sandbukt 1984: 93). The latter will attempt to “charm” a deity into engagement with laudatory praises, often while assuming a subordinate position vis-à-vis the contacted deity. Through such ongoing encounters, long-lasting friendships can develop between the dukon and a select group of forest deities and, as mentioned above, matrimonial links can also be established in some cases. As the dukon continues to slip deeper into a trance state his body fluctuates between moments of intense trembling and controlled poise. During these highly concentrated and often violent inner struggles, the dukon experiences a kind of dissolution of personality, during which time he becomes an ontologically ambiguous being. He can both possess and be possessed by forest deities—the latter being more hazardous to the dukon’s wellbeing, particularly when malevolent deities are unwittingly attracted. Only dukon godong have perfected the skill of connecting directly to chosen deities residing in the halom dewo. A typical dukon commonly finds himself commingling with an array of other supernatural life forms in the forest before contact with a particular deity is established—and in many instances he may not have complete control over which deities will be contacted, his body serving more as an open vessel for any incoming agent. The dukon may encounter deities in their human state or those that have taken on an animal form, as we saw above in the instance of Ma Tuo’s tiger encounter. In all cases the dukon engages in a direct dialogue with the contacted deity, often through esoteric and often personalized speech, however unintelligible to others (compare Endicott 1979a: 131; see also Hallowell 1964: 66). When a contacted deity is channeling through the body of the dukon, the drama of the ritual is experienced by all participants, made apparent through an open dialogue, appearing outwardly as a kind of strained ventriloquism. The dukon’s haluy badan, in a sense, has now become a deity, in substance and essence (sifat), if not in shape and form.

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After the ritual the penginang assists in sending those contacted deities back to the forest while bringing the dukon’s haluy badan back to his corporeal body. This is particularly important after all-night rituals when the dukon is exhausted and thus increasingly disoriented and in need of guidance. So susceptible to harm is the dukon when his haluy badan has left his corporeal body that it is believed that he can violently transform into a tiger or marauding elephant should he not be properly brought back to the halom nio, or should the ritual be interrupted by the presence of an outsider. Although such an instance has never been reported, the Orang Rimba claim that if an outsider comes across a dukon who is in a trance state the dukon must be immediately awakened by the penginang. Should a young and inexperienced dukon not come to his senses fast enough he could die immediately. The Orang Rimba take such a collusion of forces very seriously and throughout my tenure among this particular dukon she remained adamant in prohibiting me from witnessing her while in a trance. Cryptic messages are received during these trance states and, as with dreams, they are to be deciphered communally by members of the camp. Social concerns, such as fears of witchcraft inflicted by other Orang Rimba or the looming presence of Malays, are common themes, as are subsistence-related concerns such as game and other resource distributions. Most pressing for the Orang Rimba, however, are concerns relating to health and wellbeing. Immanent dangers such as tanah celako (cursed soil) and the presence of potentially dangerous hantu or certain malevolent deities residing within the area signal a bad omen to the dukon. Omens of impending doom can be carried during encounters with both benevolent and malevolent deities, the former often in the form of guidance and advice, while the mere presence of the latter often signals the possibility of imminent danger.

Blurring of Forest and Village Domains As mentioned above those deities residing in the forests of the Bukit Duabelas area characteristically dress like Malays, reside in Malay-like villages, and follow a traditional Malay mode of social organization. Rather than employing everyday informal speech, the dukon and the forest deities communicate to one another in classic Malay. The elevated status accorded to the Malay language, coupled with the Orang Rimba’s willingness to accept guidance from deities that are Malay-like in appearance, illustrates a kind of inversion of forest and village domains. This apparent infiltration of Malay characteristics into the halom dewo is clearly a reflection of the

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Orang Rimba’s encapsulation by Malay polities and their long history of tutelage under Malay intermediaries (jenang). Their incorporation into the wider juro-political spheres of their dominant Malay neighbors, over the years, has served the function of preserving their way of life by offering protection from the persecution that was once rampant throughout the island of Sumatra. This ritual merging of these ordinarily distinct dimensions of experience arises out of local historical circumstances, resulting in the kind of positive significance given to those Malay characteristics employed during the course of shamanic communication with the forest. Here practitioners wear a cloth sarong wrapped around the waist and draped over the shoulder during shamanic rituals, along with a knitted turban (topi) on the head. As it is the same attire worn traditionally by Malay nobility, the Orang Rimba regard such clothing as the attire of the gods. The Orang Rimba in the Bukit Tigapuluh area, however, have had to deal with very different geopolitical realities than those groups in the Bukit Duabelas area. With only four Malay villages and one Javanese transmigration project in the area, amounting to a total population of less than 4,000 people, the Orang Rimba in the Bukit Tigapuluh area are not geographically encapsulated in any sense. Despite external pressures to assimilate and submit to the tutelage of certain powerful Malays, who often seek to establish trade relations with them, the Orang Rimba have not been restricted in their access to other external sources and have been able to change trade partners as circumstances demand. This has allowed them to maintain a relatively high degree of political autonomy despite external pressures to subordinate them. While a semblance of institutional order is sought by the appointment of headmen (penghulu) a strong egalitarian ethos pervades, as is evident by the fact that whenever disputes arise they are rarely effectively resolved. In the Bukit Tigapuluh area the Orang Rimba have been preoccupied with a different set of concerns vis-à-vis their relations with the outside world than those arising out of geopolitical encapsulation. While their forests remain among the most pristine on the island of Sumatra, they are currently undergoing drastic transformations as timber and plantation companies continue making inroads that have visibly altered the landscape over the past several decades. The Orang Rimba’s increasing contact with these external forces, which have brought with them further encroachment through a continual influx of new settlers, has in recent years infiltrated the most subliminal recesses of Orang Rimba consciousness. Dukon in this area commonly offer lurid depictions of their encounters in the halom dewo with a class of malevolent deities that drive in logging

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trucks and deliver raw timber downstream. They are believed to sell these logs to an unknown downstream source located at the edge of the world, while destroying everything in their wake. Such depictions take on a particularly ominous tone, considering that many Orang Rimba encampments are located within earshot of the sounds of chainsaws; and as mentioned above, timber and bulldozer tracks have made inroads right into the heart of the forest for the purpose of extracting prized tree species. In recent years deities of the most malevolent order have been appearing as white-faced men driving Land Rovers. They are said also to ride in airplanes and to speak an unknown dialect—clearly a reflection of the local timber company management that has been, until recent years, French-owned and operated. When these deities are contacted the dukon must remain particularly vigilant and watchful for the unpredictable and often hazardous collusion of benign and malignant forces. These white-faced deities are very rarely encountered and, as such, have not yet been given a name. The low frequency with which these malevolent beings appear in the dukon’s imagery reflects the Orang Rimba’s sporadic interaction with these European men, who very rarely visit the P.T. IFA concession area, particularly in recent years since management has been transferred to Indonesian-based companies. Here we see a particularly poignant illustration of the prevalence of exogenous forces reflected in the shamanic imagination. Much like the yinyang symbol used in Chinese Taoism, where each opposing hemisphere retains its distinctive character but is slightly diluted by elements of the other, Orang Rimba shamanism reflects a similar antipodal inversion, in this case of forest and village dimensions of reality. The prevalence of certain destructive elements emanating from the village world in the Orang Rimba’s cosmological perceptions also signals their ongoing struggle to keep forest and village domains ontologically distinct, underscoring an impending sense of danger that is perpetually looming on the horizon of contemporary Orang Rimba society.

Shamanism as Collective Catharsis Orang Rimba shamanism illustrates an enduring and ongoing dialogue with the forest and the wide array of deity manifestations and other numinous life forms residing therein. But it is a dialogue of a highly specialized order, operating in a world outside the grasp of common language and the ordinary faculties of perception. The life forces of the forest, instead, are “felt out” by the dukon by circumventing the conventions and restric-



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tions of ordinary speech through which typical modes of intersubjectivity operate. In fact, it is through the annihilation of the Self that the dukon achieves a deeper state of communion with the more esoteric world of the halom dewo. Possession trance thus exemplifies the fine line between direct communication with the less tangible or more refined dimensions of the forest and the quotidian world of the halom nio, which is generally apprehended through more ordinary modes of perception. Orang Rimba generally agree that everyday speech is too coarse (kasar) a medium through which to attract and communicate with the deities of the forest. In the Bukit Tigapuluh area individual stylizations of speech, a kind of speaking in tongues, serves as an alternative mode of communication. In the Bukit Duabelas area where the Malay language is used to communicate with the deities of the forest, a more refined version of classical Malay is adopted. Through possession trance, facilitated by these various modes of communication, a more perfect world is brought to light as the forest reveals itself in its true form to the cultivated senses of the dukon. As mentioned above, the Orang Rimba do not view the halom nio and the halom dewo as mutually exclusive planes of existence but, rather, as different nodes along a wider continuum of perception. While the characteristics of the former are evident to the ordinary senses, the latter requires a special seeing ability or the cultivation of a kind of “enhanced perception” (Sandbukt 1984: 96). Therefore, the dukon is not merely seeing “visions,” for what unfolds before him during these trance states is a reified dimension of existence, one that is reinforced by Orang Rimba assertions that the halom dewo is more real than the halom nio. By the same logic, trance states are regarded as more real than ordinary waking states and the information transmitted to the dukon while in a trance is necessarily regarded as a more vivid representation of the world—reality in crystallized form. Practical and ritual contexts, as well as physical and metaphysical realms of existence, are mutually constitutive categories in Orang Rimba thought—one realm guides and informs the other; or to reiterate from chapter 4: religion is what the Orang Rimba do. Thus the Orang Rimba I questioned categorically, and often vehemently, opposed any suggestion that their fears of the outside world may be subliminal seeds inadvertently planted in the shamanic imagination. For the Orang Rimba, perception is reality and therefore what the dukon “sees” is a reified version of reality—a life-world that is ever-present but only made open to the cultivated senses of the dukon and others with the special ability to perceive the refined (halus) dimensions of the forest. Both forest and village domains seamlessly merge in the shamanic imagination, illustrating an all-encompassing state of being-in-the-world that embodies

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those daily fears and anxieties that arise out of their lived experiences in quotidian contexts. Shamanic experience also serves as a kind of collective catharsis, offering individuals a sense of ontological security in the face of impending danger and abject inequalities of power. Atkinson’s (1992) recognition of the historically and culturally contingent nature of shamanism is relevant here. She notes how practitioners and followers often utilize elements of their religion for dealing with issues of power and oppression vis-à-vis regional hegemony. Orang Rimba shamanism perfectly illustrates this in both content and form. The dukon releases collective trauma through confronting those malevolent forces of the forest, particularly those that take on familiar morphological characteristics derived from the outside world; and in so doing, he is able to maintain a delicate balance between the purity of the forest and those dangers emanating from the village world. With each transcendental incursion into the halom dewo, the dukon experiences the disintegration and reintegration of his personhood. In his cathartic awakening, a state of communion and conciliation with the deities of the forest is attained; one through which the dukon feels empowered over those potentially hazardous forces of the forest—which are often none other than the impending structures of hegemony emanating from the external world. He emerges reborn onto a higher plane of awareness, through which he is able to give expression to those collective fears and anxieties that people experience in the presence of a looming outside world and, ultimately, placate them through his mediating efforts. In this sense Orang Rimba shamanism serves a practical function, as people bring religion to bear directly on the problems of existence. As Guenther writes, religion “eschews its disengagement from social existential reality [and] instead … turns toward that reality” (Guenther 1999: 93; compare Roseman 2003: 191). Repressed thoughts, feelings, and images are brought to the conscious level, resulting in an abreaction (Lévi-Strauss 1963: 198–204), through which people are able to come to terms with their everyday problems and fears. The dukon thus serves both as a vessel for the absorption of collective trauma and as an enabling vehicle through which ordinary persons can assuage those potentially hazardous forces, thereby achieving a state of ontological security. In this regard Orang Rimba shamanism carries adaptive significance, taking on those “societal coping mechanism” characteristics that Malinowski attributed to religion (Guenther 1999: 93). Evans Pritchard’s assertion that “religion is what religion does” is apt in the Orang Rimba case, as the dukon is able to channel and transform those supernatural beings and life-forces of the forest for the benefit of humans (Biesele 1993: 42–43; Peters and Price-Williams 1980; Guenther 1999: 426).



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Foraging for Ideas in an Ever-Encroaching Modern World In this chapter I have attempted to provide an overview of Orang Rimba cosmology while delineating some of its key features. Orang Rimba shamanism embodies an all-encompassing framework of values and ideas that gives order and meaning to their lives, while also providing a causal link between persons and events in the world (compare Endicott 1979a: 25). But such ordering is contingent on the impending forces of history, as those supernatural beings of the forest reside within a nexus of local ideas and perceptions; their manifesting forms deriving from local realities on the ground. Such historical factors have, over the generations, greatly affected the ways in which the Orang Rimba view their forest environment and their relations with the forest deities (compare Lye 1997: 145–146), evidenced in the ways in which different sociopolitical circumstances across field sites have led to varying perceptions of the forest and different formulations of the deity manifestations residing therein. This great diversity in cosmological perception points to a common characteristic of hunter-gatherer societies, namely that these societies tend to be open and “amorphous,” exhibiting what Kohler (1998) called a “penchant for acculturation,” or an innate tendency for adaptation to the beliefs of other neighboring peoples. Ever receptive to outside ideas, such societies, as Guenther (1996d: 73–74) put it, not only forage for their subsistence, but also “forage for ideas,” continually borrowing exogenous concepts and practices, and appropriating them to suit their own unique historical circumstances. Ideas, concepts, and beliefs are locally adapted and newly interpreted in local contexts to meet the immediate needs of people (Marshall 1962: 233), who add further complexity and ambiguity along the way. Guenther writes of the Nharo Bushmen: One fundamental feature about Nharo belief, and one shared with the belief patterns of Bushmen in general, is its multifarious, inchoate and amorphous quality. There is wide variation in the accounts provided by different Nharo individuals when they describe the appearance and qualities of a supernatural agent. Nharo supernaturalism seems to be a confusing tangle of ideas and beliefs, marked by contradiction, inconsistencies, vagueness and lack of culture-wide standardization. (1986a: 216)

Due to the “multifarious” and often “inchoate” qualities of hunter-gatherer patterns of belief it is impossible to elicit a standardized culture-wide system of belief, as new meanings are continually being appropriated into the pre-existing matrix of ideas, ever-evolving in response to local historical circumstances on the ground. Guided by the vicissitudes of history, ideas “pass from one group to another, from one system to another … across linguistic, environmental and cultural boundaries” (Barnard 1992a: 261).

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The Orang Rimba, like the Nharo and other hunting and gathering societies, are also foragers of ideas, adopting exogenous ideas and concepts and adapting them to meet their own societal needs. As I have shown in this chapter, the great breadth of cultural diversity among Orang Rimba populations is a direct byproduct of the wider sociopolitical milieu in which these groups have found themselves operating and evolving. As local realities on the ground differ across field sites, so too do those cosmological perceptions that are brought to bear on the problems of existence. While the Orang Rimba see forest and village domains as distinctive realities, they are perpetually overlapping arenas of life, intersecting in both quotidian and ritual contexts. Orang Rimba cosmology can thus be seen as an amalgam of internal and external influences, with both intracultural variations and extracultural accretions. But those exogenous beliefs and concepts that find their expression in Orang Rimba thought and practice are not superimposed onto an indigenous substratum of ideas but, instead, are seamlessly infused into pre-existing categories of thought in such a way as to constitute a coherent system of beliefs in its adherents. Even those Islamic concepts that have found their way into the Orang Rimba psyche are often indiscernible from native ideas and concepts, their various manifestations playing out in the shamanic imagination and continually evolving in response to local historical factors on the ground. As such it is impossible to delineate a comprehensive “system” of beliefs, as new meanings are perpetually coming into being and always in the process of becoming (Toren 1999: 100). In this brief exploration into Orang Rimba cosmology I have attempted to reveal a dynamic and ever-evolving worldview; one in which perceptions of the environment and the place of people operating therein are continually undergoing permutations over time as populations, over the course of generations, have found themselves moving along different local and regional historical trajectories. These intercultural contacts have often been the source of much anxiety, as increasing contact with outsiders has often resulted in encroachment and other pressures on the environment. In recent decades the Orang Rimba, along with their Malay counterparts, who also depend on the land for survival, have been increasingly staking their claims to the land in response to the ongoing incursions by transmigrants and local timber companies, who together have facilitated the steady fragmentation and/or destruction of their traditional forests. This has resulted in ongoing social tensions that have underscored a hegemony of which the Orang Rimba and Malay villagers are acutely aware. This has led, in some instances, to a rare cooperation between both groups in the hopes that their “strength in numbers” can better protect their interests vis-à-vis the local timber company.



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The validity of popular constructions of forest as “home,” “symbol for political struggle,” “wildlife sanctuary,” “dark woods,” and countless other depictions all depend on context, time, and vested interest. Places, as Rodman notes, are not inert containers of human activity—they are “politicized, culturally relative, historically specific, local and multiple constructions” (1992: 641). A single formulation of place is thus untenable, as they are as diffuse and differentiated as the range of identities and significances accorded to them (Tilley 1994: 15).With the increasing transformation of the Orang Rimba’s forest environment yet another ideational construct has been imposed on the forest by those profit-minded timber companies and development planners who view the forest as a valuable source of raw timber and arable plantation land. To the Orang Rimba the forest still remains a pure and sacrosanct place. But while “sanctuary,” “safe haven,” and “refuge” are still common tropes used by the Orang Rimba to describe their forest environment, a growing awareness that the forest is coming under increasing threat from the ever-looming forces of development has altered their views of the forest and forest dwelling in general. As the outer world, fueled by the forces of encroaching development, continues to close in on their once isolated forest enclaves, the Orang Rimba have been pressed to make rapid changes in their world view—changes that, as we saw, are reflected in the deepest recesses of Orang Rimba consciousness and thought.

Illustration 8.1. Elderly Orang Rimba dukon (shaman).

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Notes  1. As mentioned in chapter 2, traditional forest-dwelling Orang Rimba do not bathe on a regular basis. Although some groups, such as those living in the Bukit Duabelas area, have adopted the habit of bathing due to their sustained contact with Malays, traditional forest-dwelling groups often avoid coming into contact with water and generally exhibit a strong aversion for the use soap and other “village” toiletries, which they consider contaminants. Malays, who do bathe on a daily basis, often cite the Orang Rimba’s lack of bathing to draw out the differences between the two groups. The Orang Rimba who have taken up the habit of bathing will do so only among the same gender, with males being particularly mindful not to approach the river while females are present.  2. The idea of nyawoh in some aspects parallels the Baka concept of molili, described by Woodburn as vitality or “essence” that leaves the body upon death (see Woodburn 1982b: 195). See also Chewong’s concepts of ruwai and njug in Howell (1984: 54).  3. This is a widely held belief throughout the Indonesian Archipelago and Southeast Asia. In his The Golden Bough (1914), Sir James Frazer devotes an entire section titled “The Rice Mother” to a comparative study of the rituals and beliefs associated with rice throughout the region. Other early references on this subject in the Southeast Asian context include Blagden (1897) and Skeat (1900).  4. The tiger holds an important place in Orang Rimba mythology and symbolic thought. Whenever such encounters occur it is customary to address the tiger as either datuk or nene (grandfather/grandmother) as a sign of respect, which is intended to pacify the animal. To directly refer to the tiger by its generic title mergho is considered too rough (kasar) and could potentially offend the animal, thereby putting humans at risk. When in the forest, villagers also follow this custom. Throughout Southeast Asia similar kinds of tiger symbolism are widespread, a common feature being the belief that tigers can possess a human soul and often share a common ancestry with humans (see Bakels 1994 for a review in the Sumatran context).  5. Among the Hadza, for example, poisoned arrows are thought to lose their efficacy if the hunter’s wife is menstruating (Woodburn, unpublished paper 1996: 188). The Nharo and other Bushman groups follow a similar belief, and during menarche a woman’s capacity to attract certain animal spirits is believed to be much stronger. As among the Hadza, a menstruating woman not only holds the power to diminish men’s hunting success, but is also considered hazardous to the group generally (Guenther 1999: 8, 166, 175). Among Bushman societies more generally, structural parallels are commonly drawn between human and animal essence, and the female essence is often likened to certain game animals and their meat. This is particularly so during menarche when a woman’s powers to attract these life-forces are thought to be considerably more acute (see Guenther 1999: 175 for a more complete description). Similarly, Heyne reports that among the Chinese Reindeer-Evenki the magic

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powers of female shamans are greatly diminished during menstruation and after giving birth (Heyne 2003: 45). For this reason shamans among the Evenki and in many native Siberian and northern circumpolar societies are females without children.  6. In northern Thailand, for example, women are said to be “weak-souled” and thus their bodily boundaries are more readily penetrated by external supernatural elements (Matzner 2002). Male mediums must exhibit female characteristics to be regarded as able practitioners and are often either transvestites or transsexuals. Consistent with many Southeast Asian societies, practitioners in northern Thailand exhibit very high degrees of gender flexibility and are able to harness and manipulate sexual energies during the course of shamanic rituals. Within the cultural traditions of Siberia and other northern circumpolar Inuit societies, some of the most diverse variations on the theme of gender flexibility are reflected within the context of shamanic practice (Balzer 2003: 242). Not only are sexual energies routinely manipulated and transformed, but practitioners often undergo gender transformations, both behavioral and morphological (Balzer 2003: 243). To such an extent do these gender transformations come into play among Inuit and native Siberian practitioners that D’Anglure (after Czaplicka 1914) has called for their classification into a “third gender” (2003: 238).

Chapter 9

Melangun

 This chapter is framed broadly around an ethnographic account of death in an Orang Rimba camp. As a final chapter it provides the reader with a sense of chronology to my last weeks in the field and a narrative conclusion to the book. The tragic events I witnessed and took part in during these final weeks of fieldwork would greatly shape my understanding of Orang Rimba notions of society, death, and separation. To witness death firsthand and the ensuing emotional response also gave me a more direct and visceral understanding of the Orang Rimba’s emotional life, and I attempt in this chapter to organize and make sense of my observations amid the challenging circumstances under which these observations took place. Throughout the previous chapters (particularly in chapter 4) I noted how both the Orang Rimba’s fear of sickness and confrontation with outsiders are central features of their emotional life. These fears provide a window into a deeper, more pervasive, fear of death (death being the most extreme outcome of sickness and confrontation with Malays). It is not surprising, then, that the most poignant displays of emotion occur during death, in particular during the melangun mourning ritual, where participants wail and weep dramatically in a group context. In this chapter I examine the Orang Rimba mourning practice of melangun and the broader social implications surrounding death in Orang Rimba society. I juxtapose specific ritual expressions of grief with genuine displays of emotion, a methodological tension that formed the basis for early anthropological theory through the works of Durkheim and, later, Radcliffe-Brown. But rather than conflate observed ritual behavior with genuine grieving, I emphasize the more spontaneous and improvisational aspects of mourning that often occur within a more structured ritual



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framework. I show how during the course of the melangun ritual mourners often find themselves consumed in the unpredictable ebb and flow of activity and, in so doing, open themselves up to the real possibility of experiencing the grief and sorrow of those genuinely afflicted persons. Here I elaborate on the arguments put forward in chapters 2 and 3 by showing how emotional experience is shared, often pre-personally, through direct experience with others, in both quotidian and ritual contexts. Later in the chapter I briefly examine how the Orang Rimba cope with death through the systematic suppression of memories. This is achieved both through a taboo on uttering the names of the deceased and the careful avoidance of places in the forest where death has occurred. These taboos and proscriptions serve to assuage potentially unwanted memories of the deceased and, through their strict adherence, reinforce the Orang Rimba’s strong psychic orientation to the present. In the following section I look at some of the sociopolitical consequences surrounding death by noting some important social realignments that occurred among the Orang Rimba with whom I resided. I conclude with a brief section, where I close with some reflections and afterthoughts from outside the field.

Returning to the Bukit Tigapuluh Area During the last month of my fieldwork I would need to leave Sumatra for two weeks to seek treatment in the capital city of Jakarta for recurring bouts of malaria. By now it was late 1998 and the Indonesian economy was in its final throes, with large scale student demonstrations taking over the streets on a daily basis. I was strongly encouraged by the U.S. Embassy to leave the country as, by now, many of these demonstrations had escalated into full-scale riots and thus posed a potential safety threat to foreigners. During these early weeks of public unrest, however, the island of Sumatra had yet to be directly affected by the political instability in Jakarta, particularly in the rural areas of Jambi Province where I was conducting my research. I had been surveying several field sites in South Sumatra Province prior to my trip to Jakarta and had not been to the Bukit Tigapuluh area for nearly two months. So feeling the need to pay one final visit to those Orang Rimba with whom I had originally begun my fieldwork and with whom I had developed the closest ties, I decided to undertake one last stint of fieldwork in the Bukit Tigapuluh area. My first visit was to the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang, where I found most of Ajang’s group present. After spending just one night there I hitched a ride on a logging truck the following morning to find Tampong’s group, accompanied by Dedi and Talaman, both of whom were familiar

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with the area and could thus help me locate Tampong’s encampment. We were dropped off at the P.T. IFA sawmill twelve miles upstream, not far from the southern border of Riau Province, where we would undertake the remainder of the journey on foot. Several hours later when we arrived at the camp I immediately noticed a new residential arrangement. Buyong was now cohabiting with two wives, their shelters erected side by side. In my absence he had married the teenage daughter of his second uncle, Meradi, who was among the newcomers who arrived at Sungai Gelumpang during the early months of my fieldwork. Meradi and his family joined Tampong’s group when Tampong returned to the forest after his precipitous departure from the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang and they continued to travel and cohabit together throughout the following months. But there were long-standing tensions between these two men. Nearly two decades earlier Tampong had run off with Meradi’s older sister while in the Serenten watershed area. She consequently bore two children— Nina and Manja—and soon after was stricken by an unknown illness. For years Meradi harbored ill feelings toward his elder cousin Tampong, and it now appeared that giving his daughter in marriage to Tampong’s obstinate son-in-law, Buyong, was a politically motivated decision aimed at undermining Tampong’s authority as a group leader. Meradi had no uxorilocal or matrimonial obligations to Tampong and thus his cohabitation with the latter was purely voluntary. Their co-equal status as family heads would enable Buyong to make a pact with Meradi to co-reside with his group instead of Tampong’s, thereby circumventing Tampong’s authority over him as a father-in-law. It was a carefully calculated scheme designed by the two men that would have wide reaching political ramifications. Buyong had already begun displaying his open rebellion by taking up residence in his new father-in-law’s camp half a mile or so upstream with his two wives, effectively separating Tampong and his wife from their daughter and infant granddaughter. Food was being shared across camps, but there was talk in the air about a permanent division between the groups. Ordinarily such a separation would be regarded as a breach of uxorilocal post-marital residence requirements, but in this instance Buyong and Meradi appeared to have found a loophole in Orang Rimba customary (adat) law. My loyalties necessarily lay with Tampong, for it was he that took me in during my early months of fieldwork and allowed me to accompany his group in their reversion to full-time forest dwelling. My initial acceptance by Tampong effectively set a precedent that other Orang Rimba would follow, affording me nearly unrestricted access to other groups in the Bukit Tigapuluh area. But rather than taking up residence with Tampong as I



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normally would, we were instructed to camp with Buyong’s group, as Tampong’s camp was being visited by the aforementioned shaman (dukon) who objected to my presence there. Later that evening Buyong openly voiced his displeasure in front of the camp over the fact that I had given him only one packet of cigarettes, compared to the several packets I had given Tampong. Clearly he understood my special allegiance to his fatherin-law and this seemed to add to his growing agitation. He was now openly seething as he shouted half-veiled threats across the camp. By now I had grown used to Buyong’s provocative manner; I had become accustomed to his public scorn for his father-in-law, Tampong, and to his frequent death threats against his father, Ajang, for taking his adopted daughter (Buyong’s half sister) as a fifth wife. His verbal tirade thus gave me little cause for concern. On the contrary, I felt myself in a strangely privileged position, for he would never speak out so openly against a Malay in their presence. While it was awkward to be on the receiving end of his verbal attacks I saw them as an indication of having achieved a kind of rite of passage, such that I was by now regarded as an integral member of the camp, albeit one who had fallen into disfavor. Several days passed and Buyong’s mood seemed to have subsided, tempered perhaps by my continual sharing of cookies and coffee. By now I had been paying daily visits to Tampong’s encampment and it had become evident by the sullen mood there that something was not right. Tampong’s sister, Malim, had given birth to her third child two weeks prior to my arrival. Her placenta remained intact for one week post-partum before it was finally purged, but she remained immobilized in her shelter, her condition worsening by the day. The aforementioned shaman had come from Riau Province to midwife the birth and remained to tend to Malim’s ailing condition. Throughout the day and night this elderly woman communicated with the deities of the forest (bedeki) and requested their supplications in the hope of receiving some kind of remedy. The shaman washed Malim’s infant in a nearby stream immediately after birth and buried the umbilical chord (pusot) in the forest, as is the custom (alternatively it may be buried under a fruit tree). At this time the infant’s aku-on birth deity appeared before the shaman to offer its protection to the child. The shaman returned to this site several times over the course of the next few days in the hopes of establishing contact with this aku-on deity, but her efforts were met with only marginal success, as indicated by Malim’s progressively deteriorating condition. Some days later we moved our shelter to the fringes of Tampong’s camp across a small stream some distance away. The elderly shaman had by now grown accustomed to my presence, in part because she had already become acquainted with me during a previous visit among Tampong’s

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group some months earlier. Moreover, I had by now taken an active role in trying to improve Malim’s condition by administering broad-spectrum antibiotics and paying her several visits throughout the day to check on her progress. By now it had become evident that her condition was steadily worsening as she continued to expel blood during urination and had become increasingly weak with little appetite for food. I tried to convince Malim’s husband, Perusik, to allow me to make arrangements to travel with her to the Javanese transmigration village to seek medical treatment. Perhaps feeling her death a certainty, my pleas were met by vehement objections from both he and Tampong. The thought of dying outside the forest in the Malay world was a horrific one, as their strong protestations revealed.1 So I paid the village a visit myself to try to convince the nurse there to travel to our camp. This was the same nurse that had refused to travel a much shorter distance to the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang to treat an infant’s eye infection during the early weeks of my fieldwork (recall that the infant eventually died). I was therefore not surprised when she cited a broad range of reasons, both personal and professional, for her inability to take leave from her post to tend to Malim’s health. She offered me a handful of syringes filled with penicillin to take back with me to our camp, to administer myself. On the same day that I traveled to the Javanese transmigration village, Perusik and Silingkup traveled to the Sumai watershed, where they had been camped previously, to tear down a balai (temporary shelter used for shamanic rituals) that they thought may have attracted malevolent forces from the surrounding forest area. Aside from needing to seek refuge from the rain for one night inside an unattended bulldozer, they returned the following afternoon with reports of a successful mission. But all our efforts were in vain, as Malim’s health continued to deteriorate. Her internal hemorrhaging now manifested in intermittent discharges of clotting blood. Having reached her pain threshold many times over, she had become increasingly incoherent, intermittently slipping in and out of consciousness. By now the mood in Tampong’s camp had become increasingly languid as everyone began to anticipate and prepare for the inevitability of her death. The scene that unfolded in the moments and hours following her death is recounted in the following journey entry. Written under somewhat extreme conditions these notes have been edited extensively for the sake of cogency: Fieldnotes, Sungai Alim, September 1998: After eight long days here it had become evident that Malim’s condition was terminal. Her skin and the whites of her eyes were now jaundiced and she had become wholly unresponsive to the sounds of our voices. Her adolescent daughters remained by her side, one holding her head and the other massaging her abdomen as she

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winced in pain. Despite all our efforts to improve her condition, her internal hemorrhaging could not be effectively treated; and after two long weeks of agonizing pain, her body could take no more.  Households were now beginning to rummage through their shelters and collect their belongings in preparation for our departure to an unknown location. Malim’s immediate family, along with her elder brother Tampong and I remained in her shelter, trying to revive her—hoping for a miraculous turn-around in her condition. But by now she was only vaguely coherent as she drifted in and out of consciousness, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings. Moments later she began to recede, her breathing no longer sporadic and her eyes gradually glazing over as she drifted out of consciousness for the last time.  The moment she slipped away her husband Perusik and his two daughters began to sob uncontrollably. Their quiet desperation immediately transformed into insuppressible wailing, and soon after developed into fits of hysteria. Glued to their mother’s side, her daughters shouted, “induk, induk!” (mother, mother!), “ako baywo!” (I will carry you), “induk hopi ado nyawoh!” (mother has no life/breath).2 Their natural compulsion to remain by her side was so strong that they had to be forcibly pried from her body. Perusik now rolled off the shelter platform and onto the ground below, where he lay despondent, sobbing uncontrollably in a fetal position. After a minute or so he rose to his feet and began to roam the camp aimlessly as he continued to wail aloud. Moments later he returned to the shelter and reached for his paghong (machete), at which time he was restrained by Tampong and Buyong. His intent to physically harm himself was clear and both men would continue to keep a close watch on him throughout the following hours and days.  In the few minutes following Malim’s death the mood of the camp had quickly transformed from one of somber unity to collective disarray. Children and once unaffected youths were now drawn into the growing tide of hysteria. Adolescent males who were aloofly carrying on with their business only minutes earlier, while making preparations for our departure, were now desperately roaming the camp in search of some semblance of order. Although I felt a sense of sorrow and loss over Malim’s death, I was more immediately concerned with trying to find my bearings amid the chaotic wave of hysteria all around me. Like the rest of the camp, I too could not help but be drawn into the growing vortex of emotion; into the violent wave of delirium that had now overtaken the camp. The tortured despair in their cries and the tenor of raw, unrestrained vocal chords created a haunting polyphony of sound that was inescapable. I found myself struggling to suppress my own panic response; to contain the acute sense of shock and fear I was experiencing in the face of this extreme emotional outpouring.  The entire camp had fallen into chaos. Households had now splintered into smaller groups and individuals, scattered in every direction. Many fled into the nearby forest while others, including Tampong, remained in the area in the hope of organizing the group’s collective departure to a new location. Tampong was among the only stable adult males in the group and he would make his best effort to corral and guide the group away from the death site. Throughout this process Malim’s daughters would, on more than one occasion, need to be dragged away from their mother’s side, but amid the melee

Melangun



of activity they managed to make their way back to the camp again. They would be forcibly carried away down the logging road where, soon after, they disappeared once again. Less than a mile up the logging road a truck driver spotted both girls, where we would later find them collapsed in the sun, lying in a bed of grass on the side of the road, convulsing and wailing uncontrollably. Reportedly they had lunged in front of the truck, causing the driver to halt his journey and turn back to notify of us.  Tampong had decided that we should head north to the Sungai Alim area. Our journey started along the main logging road with nearly half the group intact, mostly women and children. As we made our way in a discontinuous human chain, we came across more camp members, some wandering aimlessly along the logging road and others in the bush nearby, attracted by the weeping and wailing sounds of our entourage. Many others, however, remained scattered in the vicinity, their whereabouts still unknown.  Several hours later we reached the Sungai Alim area, but during the course of our haphazard journey one of Tampong’s wives and her newborn infant had become separated from the group. Tampong asked me to turn back and retrieve them while he remained with the others to set up camp. After locating her alongside the main timber road where she had stopped to take a rest we returned to the new camp. By now dusk had fallen upon us and many were still unaware of our new location. I would be asked to journey again up the logging road and try to retrieve as many stray individuals as possible before the rains arrived.  A mile or so up the logging road I came across young Manja, sitting on the ground on the fringes of the forest, crying out for his father Tampong. In all the commotion he had been separated from his surrogate mother and older brother Nina. After retrieving him we set off in the hopes of reaching the new camp by nightfall. But now the rains started pouring down, forcing us to take intermittent breaks in the surrounding forest, where we sought shelter under the cover of large palm trees. After some minutes we decided to continue onward down the now slick and muddy logging road, each holding palm leaves over our heads to deflect the rain. Off in the distance I noticed a faint light emanating from the forest. As we approached, I could make out three silhouettes sitting around a lantern. They were Malays from a distant village who had set up camp here some days ago to search for forest products. They had witnessed Orang Rimba coming and going for the past several hours and were well aware that a tragic event had taken place. We were each given a plate of rice sprinkled with dry fish and offered a small space to sleep in their lean-to shelter. Manja curled up in a ball next to me and soon after was fast asleep.  The following morning we made our way to the new camp, which by now had grown to five households and a men’s shelter. This was not a typical Orang Rimba encampment but, rather, a temporary site in which to recuperate and make plans for a more permanent move. A large and open communal shelter (balai) had been constructed in the center of the camp, where both sexes would congregate over the course of the following days to mourn and weep intermittently as a group (bubughatongpon). At all hours of the day the cries of weeping and wailing could be heard emanating from this communal shelter, creating a surreal human landscape of sorrow and sound that carried across this open savannah-like clearing.

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Over the course of the following days the group continued to mourn collectively in the communal shelter, the tide of emotion swelling and subsiding, taking on an ebb and flow that was unpredictable and, at times, violent. Here I would gain rare insights into the Orang Rimba’s individual and collective responses to death and separation by witnessing first-hand the mourning practice of melangun.

Mortuary and Afterlife Immediately following Malim’s death her body was taken by two male family members to a location deeper in the forest. There a special post-mortem shelter was built upon a platform (rumah pasarhon), raised several feet higher than a typical family shelter (susudongan). This practice of erecting a raised shelter, I was told, serves primarily to keep the corpse from being eaten by animals (compare Woodburn 1982b: 189). Such shelters may be larger with slightly higher roofing than a typical family shelter. They are generally not marked or erected in a fixed location but in some areas, such as in the Bukit Duabelas area, they may be concentrated in a specified area in the forest along a riverbank (sympan meranti). In instances when an infant dies, the body is not placed in a platform shelter but, instead, is wrapped in a sarong cloth and hung high in a tree (also to keep the corpse safe from animals). Tree burial, whereby the corpse is bound and placed in a hollowed trunk, has been reported in archival literature in South Sumatra Province (Verkerk 1874: 157), but its continued practice has not been confirmed by recent accounts. These days the Islamic custom of wrapping the corpse in white cloth and interring the body in a marked grave is practiced by some of these southern groups. While all Orang Rimba traditionally flee the site where a death has occurred, no incidence of corpse abandonment has been reported, as is the case among the Penan and several other hunting and gathering groups found in other parts of the world (see Woodburn 1982b: 192). Once erected, the body is placed in the shelter in a horizontal position on top of a sleeping mat (tiko). Personal belongings are also placed in the shelter (compare Turnbull 1965a: 143) and, in some instances, food supplies are left near the body for consumption on the journey to the afterworld. Once the body is laid in place with a few personal belongings, the site of the shelter and the camp in which the death occurred are abandoned and not revisited for an unspecified period. The Orang Rimba I questioned in the Bukit Tigapuluh area informed me that they generally avoid a death site for as long as that person’s death triggers sad memories.

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Someone who has lost a spouse, parent, or child, for example, may avoid the area in which their death occurred for the remainder of their lives (compare Woodburn 1982b: 195, 202–3).3 The abandonment of death sites is a centuries-old practice that has been well-documented in early archival sources (see, for example, Van Waterschoot 1915: 223) and I examine this practice in relation to memory in more depth later in this chapter. As noted in chapter 8, the Orang Rimba I questioned in the Bukit Tigapuluh area professed their uncertainty as to what happens after death. Many believed that the haluy badan (traveling soul/body soul), travels into the afterlife. Recall, this is the refined or halus entity sharing the same morphology and general characteristics as the corporeal body that travels outside the shaman’s body during a trance. While responses varied as to precisely how this occurs and the location to which the body flies, the “disappearance” of the corporeal body (i.e., decomposition), indicated only by the remains of bones and clothing, may be cited as evidence that the body, guided by the haluy badan, has traveled to the afterworld. In the Bukit Duabelas area to the south somewhat more elaborate beliefs in the afterlife have been reported. Here it is believed that when a person dies the haluy badan embarks on  a long and winding journey into various heavenly realms, where it can be met by their aku-on birth deity on the death platform, who thereafter accompanies the soul to ensure its safety on the journey to the halom dewo (deity world). For those who have led virtuous lives, the first stage of the journey involves a long walk along a winding path through tall, wild grass (lalang) located above the sky in a region outside the halom dewo. Eventually they come upon a large felled white tree, laid out perpendicular to and obstructing the main path. After climbing over the tree and continuing onward, a fork in the trail is reached where Mohammad’s assistant (wakil Mohamaad) awaits with a book of one’s good deeds and sins (dosa) and a scale to weigh them (Sager, personal communication 2007). Here we find many structural parallels between Orang Rimba afterlife beliefs and those practiced by their Islamic Malay neighbors, with whom they have been intricately linked through political and trade networks for centuries. As a consequence of their continued social and geopolitical encapsulation these groups, over the course of generations, have adopted various aspects of Islamic cosmology into their traditional belief system. For instance, when a man dies the body is washed and dressed in a sarong (typically wrapped around the waist and draped over the shoulder), and a knitted turban (topi) is worn on the head. This is the same attire worn by Malay nobility and, as noted in chapter 8, this clothing style is emulated by Orang Rimba shamans in this area, who regard such clothing as the attire of the gods. In the Bukit Tigapuluh area, by contrast, a corpse is not



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given this special treatment and a deceased person is placed in the death shelter clothed in their everyday attire, a cloth around the loins for men (cawat) and a wrap-around cloth skirt for women (sarong). As a further example, the purest of Orang Rimba, such as powerful shamans (dukon godong), are believed to travel in the afterlife to certain designated “god villages” in the halom dewo, where they take up residence in a multilevel palace filled with young maidens—similar to the Islamic description of a celestial heaven with seventy-two awaiting virgins. Most Orang Rimba, including those in the Bukit Tigapuluh area, apply a moral dimension to their beliefs in the afterlife. As mentioned in the previous chapter, persons who had led virtuous lives can become benevolent deities in the afterlife, while those who had led immoral lives are commonly relegated to far less desirable positions. For example, a person who had committed serious sins of adultery could be transformed into a stone or head lice. Such persons can also be reincarnated as a pig (bebi) and may thereafter be hunted and killed by humans. Dead persons can also be reincarnated as other animal forms, their haluy badan inhabiting the bodies of tigers, snakes, and a wide variety of other creatures. As is a common theme in Southeast Asian eschatology, the recently deceased may remain on the fringes of human society in a degraded putrescent condition, during which time the body-soul may inflict sickness and harm on the living (Bloch and Parry 1982: 4). Among the Orang Rimba, those who led sinful lives may remain in the quotidian world (halom nio) in the form of a melaikat ghost, often near the vicinity of their death, where they can wreak havoc on others for several weeks. They may then progress to a purgatory realm called hentew,4 where humans spend varying degrees of time depending on their sins, before finally progressing to the halom dewo or deity world. In extreme cases, after several weeks in the world as a melaikat they can be banished to the nerako api, or “fires of hell,” a bright, infernal place believed to be located above the sun. The above description is intended to provide a general illustration of the elaborate passage that the body may undertake from the halom nio to the halom dewo upon death. While such accounts vary considerably across field sites, transition and salvation are common themes and even those who had led impure lives may eventually progress to the halom dewo once they have spent sufficient time in purgatory realms, where they can be cleansed of their sins. As jural minors, women and children are often not held culpable for their sins or judged by the same moral standards as men and, consequently, they generally do not journey along this path in the afterlife, nor are they required to spend time in purgatory realms after death.

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Death, Transition, and Ritualized Sentiment In his Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage (1984), Renato Rosaldo provides an eloquent account of the highly personal means through which mutual empathy and profound understandings can become possible between an ethnographer and his informants during the universal experience of death and bereavement. Rosaldo struggled in his earlier attempts to understand how a people could resort to extremes of violence in the face of tragedy. But when faced with the untimely death of his wife some years later, he was finally able to grasp what his Ilongot informants had repeatedly told him about grief, rage, and their reasons for headhunting (1984: 193). Through his own grief and personal anguish he could begin to understand the anger and rage that the Ilongot expressed through taking human heads. “I tried to cry,” he writes, “… but rage blocked my tears” (Ibid.: 183). When pain and sorrow reach such heightened degrees of intensity, a veritable panic of helplessness ensues; one that can develop into exasperation, anger, and as I illustrated above, mass hysteria. In chapter 2 I noted how individual idiosyncrasies in behavior are widely accepted among Orang Rimba and personality traits are often given their full expression within the open context of camp life. As a consequence, in the face of extreme tragedies such as death, Orang Rimba may be ill-equipped to temper their behavioral responses, often resulting in extreme and uncontrollable outbursts of emotion. Turnbull describes a similar phenomenon among the Mbuti, “In the same way that the Mbuti are given to excessive bursts of laughter, often developing into near hysteria, so when they weep they do so with what amounts almost to violence” (1965a: 142–43). Turnbull’s descriptions of Mbuti bereavement bear many similarities to what I observed among the Orang Rimba, in particular the kind of unrestrained emotion that can develop into self-inflicting violence. “Sometimes the relative may seek to express grief by wounding himself or herself though other people would intervene if there were any danger of serious injury” (Ibid.). Near the turn of the twentieth century Durkheim described a similar pattern of self-inflicted mutilation among Australian Aborigines, of men and women “seized by a veritable frenzy … rushing about cutting themselves with knives and sharp-pointed sticks”; and of the bereaved “digging the sharp ends of yam-sticks into the crown of their heads, from which the blood streamed down over their faces, while [keeping] up a loud, continuous wail” (1965: 435–36). But Durkheim, and later RadcliffeBrown, showed that even amid the apparent chaos and self-mutilation pre-existing social arrangements govern these extreme expressions of

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mourning (Metcalf and Huntington 1991: 3); that these outward behaviors are often highly codified displays of emotion, or what Robert Hertz called “institutionally governed” responses (Block and Parry 1982: 3). In fact, Radcliffe-Brown based his entire theory of society on the ritual expression of sentiments and gives special attention to Andamenese ritual weeping. Weeping, he shows, is not a spontaneous expression of feeling but is, rather, a mandatory act during which time persons often exercise a high degree of self-control. He illustrates this point by noting how his Andamanese subjects were able to weep genuine tears on command (in Metcalf and Huntington 1991: 44). He argued that while participants may not feel those outwardly displayed sentiments of grief and sorrow, their mandatory participation will often strengthen their feelings toward one another and, in so doing, renew social bonds between participants (Ibid: 45–46).5 I do not wish to espouse a crude determinism or echo, as RadcliffeBrown had, Durkheim’s once widely held idea that all ritual acts serve as a means of preserving in its participants the collective ideals of society.6 Arguing against the Durkheimian notion that society and its “collective representations” govern personal responses to death, Metcalf and Huntington rightly point out that individual processes of grieving often only partially intersect with those outward behaviors observed during death rituals (1991: 5). For instance, in the melangun ritual that I witnessed, the barren woman who had adopted the surviving infant consistently displayed the strongest emotions of grief. She had benefited greatly from Malim’s untimely death and, consequently, she wept and wailed more demonstrably than all other participants, always evoking the proper sentiment at the right time. Conversely it is equally important, as Rosaldo argued, not to conflate the ritual process with those genuine emotions experienced during mourning: “Just as the intense emotions of bereavement do not explain obligatory ritual acts, so obligatory ritual acts do not explain the intense emotions of bereavement” (1984: 187). For anyone that has experienced the loss of a loved one, the paralyzing effects of death cannot be overstated. The body’s regenerative functions may come to a standstill, often induced by a lack of appetite and sleep, coupled with acute depression. To experience the loss of life, then, is often to feel the body’s vital restorative energies siphoned away, to feel life-energy itself purged from the body. What remains for some time is a looming void that is often likened by the bereaved to the loss of a limb. When strong emotional bonds are severed in the face of irrevocable loss, persons are often left both physically and emotionally crippled. Rosaldo’s description upon discovering the dead body of his wife aptly illustrates the pain of the bereaved: “I felt in my chest the deep cutting pain of sorrow almost beyond endurance, the ca-

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daverous cold of realizing the finality of death, the trembling beginning in my abdomen and spreading throughout my body as a form of wailing, the mournful keening that started without my willing, and frequent, tearful sobbing” (1984: 184). To conflate the ritual process with the process of genuine grieving also obscures the real possibilities for improvisation and the expression of spontaneous sentiments that are commonly evoked during such rituals. While certain prescribed and codified aspects of ritualized mourning may provide a general structure and social context for the bereaved, genuine emotions of grief and sorrow, mixed with feelings of exasperation and confusion, are often experienced by those persons most closely affected by the loss of life. In a ritual context, particularly in the kinds of intimate and informal settings that I have described above, such intense displays of emotion often ripple outward to engulf other participants; and at some time or another during the melangun ritual everyone in contact with the bereaved may find themselves open to the possibility of becoming drawn into the tide of emotion. Through their close proximity with the bereaved, participants in the melangun ritual open themselves up to the sorrow of others; and even those least affected by the death, such as distant kin visiting from other areas, may find themselves overcome by genuine grief. While I had very little contact with the deceased, I too found myself affected by the strong emotional outpouring, which seemed to overtake the group in waves, following its own unpredictable ebb and flow. Through my immersion in this highly emotional and occasionally volatile social setting, and by seeing and hearing the anguished pain in their wails, I found myself flooded and, at times, overwhelmed by the sensory output around me. Much like those non-verbal and tactile modalities of interpersonal experience I examined in chapters 2 and 3, emotional experience also has an innate, pre-personal dimension. In the face of extreme social circumstances such as I have described above, a kind of pre-personal transference of emotion occurs between individuals and what is experienced is, first and foremost, an immediate bodily response; one that is often direct, unreflective, and unconscious or “pre-conscious” (Lazarus 1991: 128). In this sense, many forms of emotional experience can be said to be “pre-cultural” (Milton 2005: 35). The body receives “visceral” understandings from the sensory ambiance of the social environment before this information is filtered through a cultural lens. Those feelings we outwardly exhibit are often secondary to the original bodily responses we experience. So rather than describing emotional states through their outward behavioral manifestations, we should recognize their innate, pre-cultural antecedents (see Nussbaum 2001). In such a view the inner bodily response causes the out-

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ward reaction and the order of operations is reversed: we feel sad because we cry and we feel embarrassed because we blush and not vice versa (Laird and Apostoleris 1996). The bodily response precedes the outward interpretation of the emotional state that occurs through self-reflexivity. It is on this pre-personal level that emotions are often transmitted interpersonally and only at the secondary, self-reflexive stage of interpretation can more codified displays of emotion occur. We feel that which another feels by being with others on a common plane of awareness within a common social and environmental setting. This kind of shared emotion or “co-feeling” arises out of a distinctive ordo amoris (order of the heart), with its own intrinsic ability to share emotional states with, and discern feelings in, others (Scheler 1954). This is precisely why an outsider such as myself is able to empathize with and experience the grief and sorrow of others, however disparate our cultural backgrounds and personal histories (compare Gieser 2008: 309–10). In a ritual context it is these more innately-driven and spontaneous emotional elements that are often more true to the experience of ritual than those prescribed or codified behaviors that may be more amenable to observation (compare Tambiah 1970). Moreover, it is often through these less structured modes of social interaction that mourning rituals find their true power and efficacy for participants. With this in mind, the practice of melangun can be seen in a therapeutic light, as a kind of societal coping mechanism by which participants ameliorate and reorient themselves to new social circumstances in the face of irrevocable loss. Van Gennep’s (1960), and later Turner’s (1969), approach to mourning ritual as “rite of passage” is useful here. Van Gennep’s early surveys of death rituals throughout the world emphasized the theme of transition. He noted how the living pass through a “liminal phase” during which time persons are re-integrated into the fabric of society without the deceased (Metcalf and Huntington 1991: 84; see also Goody 1962). The practice of melangun serves to harness this liminal phase in the days and weeks following death, so as to circumscribe individual and collective responses to death within a socially sanctioned arena comprised primarily of close kin. Group weeping (bubughatongpon), particularly in the prescribed social manner in which it is carried out, serves as a collective “purging” whereby persons are drawn together in mourning around the loss of a group member. Weeping is voluntary and can vary in duration from several days to several weeks depending on the degree of experienced loss and its impact on the group. In instances when an infant or child dies, weeping may last for only a day or so and may be limited to immediate family members. Such persons are less integrated into the social fabric and thus the continuity of the group is not called into question (compare Hertz 1960: 76).

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When someone of high social status in the community dies, particularly shamans and older family heads, the melangun ritual is extended with no prescribed duration, the mourning lasting until the camp has sufficiently grieved and collectively come to terms with the loss of life. Those most closely related to the deceased, however, may continue to mourn individually for weeks or months. Thus the melangun ritual is oriented primarily toward social continuity and the sentiments displayed are not only of sorrow and loss, but also reflect an overarching need to consolidate these sentiments within a collective context (compare Metcalf and Huntington 1991: 46–47). The fact that even individuals with no familial ties to the dead may inflict harm upon themselves and align their emotions and behavior, however extreme, with those directly afflicted persons is testament to the socially bonding effects of the melangun ritual on its participants. While such outward displays of emotion are encouraged and even codified as an outlet for collective trauma in the days and weeks following a death, once this liminal stage has been crossed, the Orang Rimba apply a drastically different, more introverted, code of conduct in coping with the dead, to which I now turn.

The Practice of Forgetting During the early weeks of mourning immediately following a death people openly express their grief and attempt to collectively come to terms with the loss of life. But once the melangun ritual is completed—indicated by the gradual resumption of everyday life—people adhere to strict behavioral constraints aimed at minimizing those memories related to death in order to suppress any unwanted feelings that may arise. This is facilitated both through a prohibition on uttering the names of the deceased and through a strong aversion to visiting places in the forest where a death has occurred. The avoidance of uttering the names of the dead is a common practice among hunting and gathering societies, albeit with some cultural variations. For instance, among the !Kung the prohibition serves not to suppress painful memories but, instead, is followed to show respect for the dead and to avoid possible sickness sent by the spirits of the deceased should they overhear (Woodburn 1982b: 202). Among the Mbuti, however, there is explicit pressure to forget the dead and any mention of the deceased by name is strongly discouraged (Turnbull 1965: 184). While this behavior is not strictly rule-governed in the form of a taboo or prohibition, it illustrates a strong tendency toward the suppression of painful memories associated with death.

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The Orang Rimba also avoid any mention of the dead by name, but in typical Orang Rimba fashion they have codified the practice so as to make any utterance of the dead taboo. Recall from chapter 1 my painstaking attempts at drawing up a genealogy of Orang Rimba kinship and descent in the Bukit Tigapuluh area. When asked the name of any deceased relative or ancestor I was often met with the stock response “akay telupo” (I forgot). Only after several failed attempts and some explanation could I begin to understand this taboo and the reasons for its strict adherence. Orang Rimba do not speak of the dead, I was told, so as not to give rise to feelings of longing (rindu) that can lead to “sickness of the heart” (menyakit hati). What is being enacted through this prohibition, then, is a conscious and calculated practice of “forgetting” so as to intentionally suppress or obfuscate the conditions that could lead to regression. And due to the strict and widespread adherence to this rule, the names of ancestral figures that are not in the living memory of people are often genuinely forgotten after two generations, making any attempts at reconstructing the past with regard to kinship and descent almost impossible. Avoidance of death sites serves the same function of suppressing potentially unwanted memories. In chapter 7 I examined the enduring mnemonic force that familiar places hold and the universality with which memory and cognition are inextricably bound up in and continually enacted through the perception of the environment. In all societies personal memories are tied to places (for reviews see Casey 1993; J. Fox 1997), but in a hunting and gathering society the exigencies of movement require specific strategies for avoiding death sites, often involving the creation of and movement along different paths. In Woodburn’s analysis of death in four hunting and gathering societies, he attributes the reasons for movement following a death to purely pragmatic concerns. The practice of abandoning death sites, he writes, “does not make demands on people which go much beyond the practicalities of the situation” (1982b: 202). He recognizes the movement of camps immediately following death as a “rule” but overlooks the more emotional and visceral aspects of this practice that lie in the intentional and (in the Orang Rimba case) socially sanctioned desire to suppress grief and the onset of painful memories that can lead to psychological trauma. He notes how for the Hadza death sites become “hot” and thus need to be avoided, but his overall analysis does not draw out the salient relationships between place, memory, cognition, and peoples’ perception of the environment. Studies in anthropology and cognitive psychology have shown that life events are particularly memorable if they are encountered during heightened emotional states (see for example Whitehouse 1992). When the continuity of life is suddenly disrupted those places in the forest where persons

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lived and died take on new significance and hold particularly strong mnemonic force. These kinds of visceral responses are rooted in the body’s pre-personal groundedness in the world and its innate emotional identification with particular places from the past. These emotional significances, as I showed in chapter 7, are embedded in the features of the landscape much as they are within the lived body that encounters them, and they are continually being renewed and reformulated through the body’s ongoing interactions in the world. These meanings, as Merleau-Ponty pointed out, are forever circulating through spaces in the world much in the way that blood is circulated through the body (Mazis 1993: 74). Merleau-Ponty’s often cited passage (1962: 243), “our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism …” underscores both the inextricability of people and places and the “pulse” of human life as it is carried out through the existential movement of bodily being, continually enfolding and becoming through its engagement in lived space. Those places in the forest where persons have died can best be seen as “pain infested spaces”: locales that form a part of an emotional continuum between body and world, as the body undergoes physiological and psychosomatic changes whenever it encounters these sites in the forest. The avoidance of such death sites serves the vital function of suppressing unwanted recollections of the dead, and it is because of this implicit understanding that painful memories can be evoked by revisiting certain places in the forest where death has occurred As noted above, the practice of avoiding death sites is not unique among hunting and gathering societies. To provide an additional example, the Batek will avoid returning to those places in the forest where a death has occurred until remembrance has faded away (Lye 1997: 149). Unlike the Batek and other hunter-gatherer groups, however, the Orang Rimba have codified the practice into a strict rule that is followed without exception, much like the taboo on uttering the names of the deceased. People are well aware of the mnemonic power that places in the forest hold (recall from chapter 7 Tampong’s pleasure in showing me those places in forest where his children were born), and for this reason all Orang Rimba will go to great lengths to avoid those sites where a death has occurred. While walking in the forest people may happen upon death sites but, as a rule, these sites will be avoided. As a consequence, the extra effort made to avoid death sites often requires people to follow alternative routes in the forest, which may increase the time of a journey. In cases when a shaman or other high status group member dies, and particularly when the death occurs along or near a commonly traveled path, a new trail in the forest may be opened up, thereby establishing new paths of movement. So death also has the consequence of altering the forest’s

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network of trails and even its topography through the subsequent movements and activities of people. To summarize, the melangun ritual provides a socially sanctioned outlet for grief and mourning, thereby enabling persons to begin the process of detachment from the dead. But rather than coming to terms with the death of a group member through the construction and visitation of tombs or other memorials, the Orang Rimba dispose of the dead with little ceremony and, once an unspecified period of mourning is completed during the melangun ritual, systematically suppress and, whenever necessary, subvert the conditions that could trigger painful memories. More concerned with the “here and now,” the Orang Rimba make concerted efforts, both visceral and codified, to ensure that there is no place for the dead in the lives of the living.

The New Social Order In the days following Malim’s death our camp received continual visits from other Orang Rimba in the Bukit Tigapuluh area who had journeyed here to participate in the melangun ritual. Ajang and most of his wives from the settlement at Sungai Gelumpang were among the earliest arrivals, while other groups traveling from as far as Riau Province to the north made their way to the camp in the following days. Single-family shelters were erected as adjuncts to the existing camp, while a men’s hut housed many of the visiting and adolescent males, along with the widowed Perusik. Group weeping (bubughatongpon) remained sporadic throughout most of the day in the communal shelter, the women typically leading in much of the wailing and lamenting (compare Turnbull 1965: 146; Woodburn 1982b: 189). By now word had spread among the local timber company workers in the area from reports by workers who had witnessed the spectacle along the main logging road on the day of Malim’s death. In the days that followed our congregation also attracted the attention of local villagers who would be lured from afar by the loud sounds of weeping and wailing. Unlike most Orang Rimba encampments, where shelters are typically constructed in the forest, often a stone’s throw from the nearest logging tracks, this temporary encampment had been built alongside a major logging road, in an open meadow along a major waterway. In plain sight of the main north-south logging road, many passersby would stop for a moment on the outskirts of the camp. Some appeared mortified to see such outward expressions of grief, which stand in stark contrast to the more reserved and subdued mannerisms that Muslim Malays typically

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exhibit in instances of tragedy. The Orang Rimba remained uncharacteristically indifferent to the presence of these outsiders. Unlike the typically self-conscious responses I was accustomed to observing whenever villagers intruded on their encampments, the group remained unaffected by the comings and goings of these onlookers, weeping and wailing aloud, seemingly oblivious to their presence. These villagers also behaved atypically, displaying a genuine empathy for the Orang Rimba that I had not seen during their interactions in more quotidian contexts. Perusik remained emotionally unstable throughout the following days. Each night he awakened shouting his wife’s name and wailing aloud while professing his desire to end his life. He made several more suicide attempts with his machete, but these were half-hearted efforts and he was easily subdued by other adult males in the vicinity. On several occasions, he pleaded with me to take him back to my home village of “Merika” (America), stating that he no longer wished to live among his fellow Orang Rimba. At first it seemed odd that he could abandon his two adolescent daughters, but I soon realized that this relationship was now in jeopardy and, consequently, was the cause of much of his distress. As a maternal uncle Tampong held certain privileged rights to Perusik’s children; and now with the passing of his wife (Tampong’s sister), Perusik would be relegated to an even lower status vis-à-vis his brother-inlaw, Tampong. In order to maintain custody of his two daughters Perusik would need to co-reside in Tampong’s camp and assume the role of a lower-status male. Tampong not only felt himself entitled to Perusik’s daughters by way of customary (adat) law, but he also saw his sister’s passing as an opportunity to consolidate power in his group, particularly in the wake of his son-in-law Buyong’s most recent appropriation of a second wife, which enabled the latter to take up residence in his new father-inlaw’s camp. In fact, it was Perusik who was employed by Buyong to arbitrate the proceedings that ensued over this union when Tampong raised his objections. As a high-ranking temmengung (headman) Perusik used his authority to decide in Buyong’s favor, leaving Tampong vulnerable to the real possibility that Buyong would defect to his new father in-law’s group by claiming his need to fulfill new uxorilocal residence and bride-service obligations. So now it seemed clear that Perusik’s aversion to remaining with Tampong’s group was due to his justified fear that the latter would retaliate by exercising his full authority over his daughters and, in so doing, relegating Perusik to a secondary role in the raising and guardianship of his own children. Other political alignments were also taking shape. Throughout the course of the melangun ritual Tampong’s son-in-law Buyong remained camped separately in a small clearing a mile or so up the logging road

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with his second wife and his new in-laws. He paid regular visits to our encampment, but rumor around the camp indicated that he would most certainly continue to follow his new father-in-law’s group and no longer co-reside with Tampong. Their relations had been strained from the start when Buyong married Tampong’s eldest daughter two years ago by way of clandestine elopement in the forest (kawin lari); a tryst that most likely resulted in the conception of their first child. Tampong’s son Silingkup remained steadfast in his support for his father and, more importantly, for his sister Bebunyung, who was often forced to endure Buyong’s erratic mood swings and became the recipient of his verbal abuses. Their troubled relationship would cause Silingkup to actively seek out ways to dissolve their marriage, but he acted in most instances as a surrogate for his disgruntled father Tampong, who would need to maintain a diplomatic front in order not to upset the delicate balance between himself and his new in-laws, namely Buyong’s father Ajang. But now much to everyone’s surprise, Silingkup remained camped with his brother-in-law Buyong and professed his unwillingness to join our encampment, headed by his father Tampong. When asked for his reasons, he informed me that his father had only given him a handful of uncooked rice (berai) moments after Malim’s death and was thereafter expected to fend for himself. While this seemed like a fairly innocuous, or even thoughtful, gesture considering the dire circumstances, Silingkup saw the matter very differently. He would need to spend that rainy night in the forest alone and hungry and, for this, he held Tampong culpable. But his reasons for casting the blame solely on his father were complex. Prior to the arrival of these newcomers Silingkup enjoyed following in the footsteps of his father, but with the arrival of Tampong’s long-lost nephews, Silingkup suddenly felt himself increasingly marginalized. Nephews are particularly cherished in Orang Rimba society, particularly when descended from different sex siblings.7 Uncles commonly adopt a nurturing role as special guardians toward nephews and, according to Orang Rimba customary adat law, often have greater custodial rights over nephews and nieces than those of a natural father (as Tampong’s newly acquired rights over Perusik’s daughters illustrate). Over the course of the following months Silingkup would grow increasingly resentful at having to divide his time with Tampong with these more novel newcomers; and this last incident in the wake of Malim’s death appeared to be the final straw in what he perceived to be a steady pattern of neglect by his once attentive father. Days later Buyong and his new in-laws departed north to the forests of Riau Province and Silingkup would join them. This, however, did not seem to bother Tampong, who assured me that one day his wayward son

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would return. Moreover, he felt Silingkup’s presence in Buyong’s camp would better ensure the wellbeing of his daughter Bebunyung, particularly during this uncertain period where she would be residing with a second wife and, most probably, be receiving less food and attention. So by joining Buyong’s camp it would appear that Silingkup was both expressing his growing discontent toward his father while, at the same time, keeping a watchful eye on his sister Bebunyung. After the first week most of the visiting Orang Rimba, including Ajang’s group, left our encampment and Tampong was now making plans to return to the forest. My fieldwork was nearing its end and as they had planned to be in the forest for an unspecified period (during which time I would have no way of leaving), this seemed the most opportune moment for me to leave the field. The camp appeared preoccupied while I was collecting my belongings in preparation for my departure. Mourning continued in sporadic outbreaks and I had become so inured to the intermittent sounds of weeping and wailing over the course of the past days that I failed, at first, to recognize that my departure had, on this occasion, become the reason for their lamentation. As I began making my way out of the camp, most of those present approached and formed a semi-circle around me, the women bending down to sniff my hand and the men embracing me one by one, all the while maintaining a steady wail (Tampong and his sons being among the most vocal). While much of the wailing around me may have been ritual in nature, I nonetheless could feel the emotional weight of the moment. I would respond to the gravity of the situation in typical Orang Rimba fashion, by picking up my belongings and walking away. Accompanied by Dedi and Talaman I would make my way to the sawmill a few miles up the main logging road where I would hitch a ride on an outbound truck heading downstream to the base camp at Pasir Mayang. Across the river at the village of Duson Tuo I would pay Yayo a final visit to check on his progress and bid him farewell. Dusk had fallen when I arrived at the village, and I found Yayo sitting on the same bench outside his Malay toke’s residence where I had found him nine months earlier. Appearing tired and overworked, he slowly warmed to my unexpected presence. He complained of his long hours and his toke’s empty promises of finding him a village wife. He had come to the stark realization that these were, in fact, empty promises, most probably intended to lure him here, where he could be kept as a paid laborer. Over the course of the past year the price of rice and other necessities had more than quadrupled, making life particularly hard for the rural populations in the area. His labor power and the forest products he collected were thus of particular import during these hard times. But for Yayo there would be no respite. He worked long hours and reaped few long-term rewards from the fruits of his labor.

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Much of his money would be spent on Malay prostitutes at the nearby town of Rimbo Bujang, a habit his Malay toke introduced him to some months earlier and one from which the latter presumably received some form of remittance (as is typical in Sumatra when business introductions are made). With no internal options for marriage among Orang Rimba and no opportunities to find a willing Malay bride, he would remain at the village of Duson Tuo as a day laborer and an outcast in both societies.

Indonesia in Flames Back in Jakarta I was surprised to learn that both endemic strains of malaria, plasmodium Vivax and Falcifirum, remained alive in my bloodstream. The former appeared to be a new infection contracted during my final weeks in the field; while the latter, a potentially deadly strain, had not been adequately treated during my previous visit to Jakarta, where concentrated doses of chloroquine were prescribed. This had managed to eradicate the more benign infection, but only inhibited the progression of the more malignant strain, leaving the most virulent plasmodium alive to reproduce in my system. As I have alluded in previous chapters, the island of Sumatra and much of the outer lying archipelago had, over the course of the past year, been undergoing an extreme dry spell, onset by the El Nino global weather phenomenon. The latter months of my fieldwork would see an escalation of forest fires which would, in some areas, reach catastrophic proportions. Set by local timber and plantation companies that use fire as the least labor intensive means to clear land, these forest fires were now burning out of control throughout much of the Sumatran and Bornean interiors, blanketing large areas of the Indonesian archipelago and Malay Peninsula in a thick, noxious haze. Where I resided in the forest, on occasion only miles from several of these wildfires, the thick forest canopy served as an impenetrable filter that dispersed much of the smoke into the open spaces. The extent of the damage had only become apparent to me from outside the forest in the final weeks of fieldwork, when I had access to television and newspaper reports of human casualties, particularly on the nearby island of Singapore, where the entire population had adopted the use of face masks to prevent any further fatalities caused by respiratory illness. The city of Jakarta was also in flames. Ongoing social inequities, caused in large part by decades of corruption and civil inequalities under the Suharto regime, finally led to the collapse of the Indonesian economy.

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The once peaceful daily student protests had now escalated into full scale rioting in the streets and I could not avoid the stark realization that the burning buildings outside my window set by looting protesters and the smoke from the forest fires that now blanketed much of Southeast Asia were somehow fatally linked. The former arose out of years of corruption and cronyism that placed the interests of the ruling elite before and above the common people—who were now up in arms rioting in the streets and burning cars, buildings, shops, and government offices; while the latter was a byproduct of the same corruption and cronyism that allotted prized logging concessions to Suharto’s relatives and friends, resulting in the plundering of the nation’s natural resources and a ravenous profit-at-anycost mindset that was blind to the catastrophic consequences of their logging and land clearing practices. I confined myself to a hotel room during my last days in Indonesia writing up a final progress report for the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). My meals were prepared in-house and my personal safety was looked after by the hotel staff. Out of my window I could see rows of military police in the streets and tanks parked on street corners, as thick dark smoke billowed steadily out of burned-out buildings, creating a prescient aura of chaos and anarchy. Once bustling thoroughfares had been all but deserted, save for the presence of armored tanks lined up at strategic intersections. But these checkpoints could do little to stop the rioting masses and, in many instances, were abandoned amid the widespread violence that had now overtaken the city. Physically and emotionally drained from the past weeks in the field and emaciated from several months of battling with malaria, I lay in bed on high doses of quinine, pondering the past twenty months in the field and the uncertain future I would face back in the U.K. As I looked around at all my possessions laid out across the room—laptop, audio CDs, clothing, sunglasses, toiletries—I felt overcome by a sudden emptiness. I somehow felt estranged from these belongings, objects that were once a part of my everyday life, but that were now inexplicably shrouded in a dreamlike ambiguity. They were cultural artifacts of a world from which I had grown increasingly distant over the course of the past two years and stark reminders of the re-assimilation process I would soon undergo in a new social environment. As is so often the case, culture shock commonly occurs upon arriving home after a long stay in a foreign place. Jackson aptly captures this sense of estrangement that can occur upon returning to one’s homeland from the field: “I watched people walking up and down the street, going about their business, and was puzzled by the sense of purpose they evidently possessed” (1998: 117).



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As I contemplated the uncertainties of trying to find my feet once again in a new social environment I felt overcome by a sudden longing to be back in the forest. When I arrived in Sumatra nearly two years earlier I opened myself up to discovery and, in so doing, I opened myself to the forest and its human inhabitants. Consequently I had, over time and without conscious effort, appropriated those impressions from the forest to such an extent that they were now part of my own physical and psychic constitution. The musculature in my upper and lower legs had developed in response to continual walking through the forest’s hilly terrain; my once tender feet were now thickly callused and noticeably wider from months of barefoot walking over the rugged, uneven forest floor. My vision had become attuned to the intricate nuances of the forest landscape. I could identify animal tracks and all those once-hidden signs in the forest that reveal its resources and potential hazards. My dilated pupils, unaccustomed to continual sun exposure, now emitted an unselfconscious gaze, reflecting the more public and extroverted mode of life I had been living for the greater part of twenty months. My teeth also bore the marks of forest dwelling. Yellow and covered in plaque from a diet of forest game and inadequate hygienic care, they both astounded and horrified my dentist back home, requiring two visits to his office to fully clean.8 I had also grown accustomed to living in an open and transparent social setting. The personal privacy that I once cherished and actively sought now made me slightly uneasy. I longed for the constant human contact that I once eschewed and that was cause for the greatest anxiety during the early months of fieldwork. I longed to be in the company of familiar people within the intimate confines of the Orang Rimba’s forest camps. I longed to be immersed in the sounds of the forest and its allencompassing aural ambiance. Those syncopated soundscapes of unseen life that I once found daunting I now associated with warmth and sanctuary. They were animate expressions of an ever-present life-force, inextricably linked to the lives and activities of its human inhabitants. I recalled with nostalgia sleeping to these sounds and waking in the morning to an exuberant camp, collectively oriented toward a common purpose for the day. As I lay in bed in my hotel room watching the news coverage of the nationwide protests on CNN, while intermittently peering out my window at the city of Jakarta in flames, I felt a strong yearning to be back in Sumatra; to be beneath the shade of the forest canopy in a social and physical environment that I had grown so accustomed to over the course of the past twenty months and without which I now felt slightly vacant. I was not a forest person in the true sense, but I was certainly no longer a “clear person.”

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Notes  1. Woodburn notes a similar preference among the Baka, where the dead are interred in the forest even in instances where a death has occurred in the village (1982b: 195). When birthing children the Orang Rimba exhibit a similar preference for being in the forest. The two births I witnessed at the timber company settlement at Sungai Gelumpang were both carried out in the forest inside a forest shelter. Constructed for the sole purpose of birthing, both women remained in their shelters for several days before returning to the settlement to take up residence in their huts.  2. Recall from Chapter 8, nyawoh is conceived as the breath within all living things that is generated and sustained through respiration.  3. An exception to this rule can be found in the Bukit Duabelas area, where death sites may be visited on a yearly basis by those persons who originally laid the body to rest. Offerings to the dead may also be made during such visits (Sager, personal communication 2007).  4. Hentew is said to be the heaven of dogs (surgo anjin), who live in human huts and eat human foods. Those who are sent for a time to hentew must live among dogs in a kind of role reversal, sleeping on the ground and begging for scraps from their dog masters. They may also be abused by these dogs, particularly if they had been known to abuse dogs or commit serious sins during their lifetime (Sager, personal communication 2007).  5. It should be noted that both Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown had very little first-hand observation to use in their analysis. Durkheim’s reporting on Australian Aboriginal ritual was derived entirely second-hand, primarily through the written works of Spencer and Gillen. Radcliffe-Brown, on the other hand, did spend time in the Andaman Islands, but remained somewhat detached from his subjects, collecting his data through local translators. It is thus no surprise that their writings reflect little grasp of local realities on the ground and tend to overlook the genuine feelings and spontaneous expressions of grief associated with mourning rituals and death more generally.  6. Most of Durkheim’s core ideas focused on the integration of individuals into society and much of his ethnographic analysis highlights the pervasive tension between the autonomous individual and his identification with the wider society (Metcalf and Huntington 1991: 28–29).  7. While cross-cousin marriage is the preferred arrangement, marriage between cousins descending from same sex siblings is also common, provided that the groom pays a fine (dendo) to the family of the bride.  8. The fear that foaming toothpaste invoked in Orang Rimba children often imposed restrictions on when I could brush my teeth while in their forest camps.

Epilogue

 Alfred Whitehead (1938: 217) famously wrote “from the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.” We are continually tapping into processes already in motion and those symbolic worlds of meaning we inhabit are perpetually coming into being through our ongoing action and perception in the world. In the preceding chapters I have attempted to integrate the immediacy of bodily and sensory experience with the various forms of practice and cultural meaning that arise through the Orang Rimba’s practical engagement in the world. With this I aimed to put forth a more relational ontology; one that can adequately capture the multifaceted character of human life and shed light on the co-constituting and mutually engendering qualities of body and world. Rather than encapsulating human experience in deterministic models or programmatic thinking, I have taken a phenomenological approach to better elucidate the underlying processes of action and perception that serve as the basis for the creation of social experience. Values, ideas, volitions, perceptions, the creation of cultural meaning, and culture itself are best treated as processes, undergoing continual generation within a broader nexus of interconnected processes that, in their totality, mirror the process of life itself. Studies that attempt to depict the culture or customs of a people only provide a limited snapshot from a particular vantage point, from a particular time and place: once the monograph has been published, the people (and ethnographer) have already moved on. In today’s increasingly globalized world the rate of social change has become particularly accelerated by continual innovations in communication and information sharing, through which the ongoing evolution of new global media continue to broaden the dynamics and possibilities for social interaction and change.

Epilogue

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Several years ago I happened upon an Orang Rimba video on YouTube. A French nonprofit organization had posted a short documentary shot in the Bukit Tigapuluh area sometime in 2007. The footage showed a group of several families—an offshoot of one of the main groups I had worked with—living in the forest, hunting and collecting forest products just as they had nearly a decade earlier when I lived among them. I could see several familiar faces, children that had grown, young adolescent girls that had married and had their own children and, in the closing scenes, a closeup of Nina, who had become a young man, perhaps married I imagined. I viewed the video intently on my computer screen with surprised delight and nostalgia. Looking out the window of my Manhattan apartment onto a city that epitomizes modernity and change, I felt a sense of hope and relieved satisfaction that this small kin-related community could continue to make their living in the forest and maintain their cultural autonomy in the face of increasingly insurmountable odds. So far removed from each other’s lives, I could only reflect on our shared journey and our now seemingly divergent paths: we had both moved on. Like the Orang Rimba, so too the forest is ever evolving. During my first trip to Sumatra before commencing my graduate studies at the University of Manchester I visited an Orang Rimba enclave in the Bukit Duabelas area. There I stayed in a small white hut with a group of social workers stationed there under the auspices of the Indonesian Department of Social Affairs (Depsos) as part of a broader national assimilation project (PKMT) for the nation’s so called “isolated peoples” (masyarakat terasing). The hut was located in an island of barren earth, cleared for the purpose of agriculture, while the surrounding forest landscape had been fragmented by a network of logging roads originating at a base camp located just a few miles from the hut. During the course of my ten-day visit, I regularly observed Orang Rimba men paying daily visits to the hut, during which time the social workers would entice them with cigarettes, rice, and cookies in the hope of habituating them to village ways and developing a rapport with which to implement their broader objective of assimilating them into the Indonesian mainstream. The project failed after only two years. The Orang Rimba had not abandoned their forest-based way of life in favor of a sedentary lifestyle centered on dry rice cultivation, nor had they converted to Islam. They had not taken up the domestication of animals or made any significant changes in their traditional commensal practices. Some months later the timber company would also leave the area. Having extracted the largest and most prized tree species from the surrounding forests they moved on to another logging concession, leaving this forest area in isolation once again.

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I had an opportunity to revisit this site three years later during the course of my fieldwork while surveying other Orang Rimba field sites. No longer accessible by road, the once well-worn logging tracks had all but grown over; their past existence evidenced only by faint paths in the landscape, covered by secondary growth. The main road into the area remained in use through steady foot traffic, but this too had been reduced to a narrow footpath, the forest overgrown on both sides. The large clearing surrounding the hut where I stayed had also been recaptured by the forest, while the area where the hut itself once stood was recognizable only by its decayed wooden foundation protruding up beneath the surrounding underbrush. When I left Sumatra I felt certain that this forest area would be gone in a matter of time, and with it, the Orang Rimba’s way of life. As I learned on my subsequent trip to the area, this was not at all the case. With the forest regenerated and the timber company and social workers gone, this Orang Rimba enclave was once again isolated from the Indonesian mainstream and the encroaching forces of development. They continued to collect forest products and trade under a quasi-feudalistic system with a trusted Malay intermediary, much as they had for centuries. They had replaced their Malay jenang with a new Malay intermediary and occasionally cooperated with other select traders, thereby diversifying their external trade contacts. But while they were now enjoying a greater degree of participation in the outer market economy, structurally their relationship with the outside world endured through the continuance of their partnerships with these few trusted intermediaries. Since my first visit, this hilly interfluvial region had officially gained national park status, thereby enabling the Orang Rimba in the area to carry on with their lives in and around the park and exercise a modicum of control over their traditional forests. Despite their ability to maintain their livelihood in the forest the case of Bukit Duabelas is the exception and not the rule. Even there illegal logging continues largely unabated within the boundaries of the park and has led to intermittent clashes between the Orang Rimba and local villagers over access to the forest’s resources (recall the homicide reported in chapter 4). Similarly, the buffer zone of the Bukit Tigapuluh National Park, where many groups continue to reside (including those among whom I worked), has seen a spike in logging activities in recent years. In fact, only a week after happening upon the aforementioned video I received an email from a friend with an Associated Press article attached. The story reported on a newly acquired license granted to the Singapore-based conglomerate Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) to clear an expansive area of forestland lying contiguous to the Bukit Tigapuluh National Park for the establishment of a large palm oil plantation. The vast scope of this project would threaten

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a nearby forest area that has in recent years been used as a release point for rehabilitated orangutans, while at the same time creating new inroads around the park’s boundaries. As the world’s leading palm oil producer, Indonesia continues to clear its remaining forests to meet the soaring demand for palm oil products. In recent years the national government has implemented subsidies to increase the use of biofuels. This is expected to further fuel the demand for palm oil and result in more deforestation. In other areas such as in South Sumatra Province, forests have been progressively decimated through major infrastructural developments and a continual influx of transmigrants. Here Orang Rimba groups (or “Orang Hutan” as they call themselves) have become more assimilated into the wider Sumatran mainstream than their Jambi counterparts. Many practice an indifferent form of agriculture in settled villages and have become economically integrated into the neighboring village populations with whom they most frequently interact. But despite living under these new conditions, often as marginal members of these rural communities, their incorporation into their socioeconomic networks has not undermined their ability to maintain their distinct cultural autonomy as a people (Persoon 1989). While they have been able to hold onto important aspects of their identity and culture, these groups, for the most part, no longer use the forest for productive purposes, aside from the seasonal collection of forest products. They have, as a consequence, lost much of their practical and symbolic association with the forest, which for centuries has served as a wellspring for ideology and source of collective wellbeing. As I have endeavored to show throughout this book, Orang Rimba culture is as much a byproduct of intersubjective relations between people as it is a natural outgrowth of those salient interactions that occur between people and the forest. Thus the kind of cultural autonomy that is preserved among sedentary groups that no longer hunt and gather and those unique characteristics of hunter-gatherer sociality that are born out of relations with the non-human environment are not one and the same. For the Orang Rimba, and tropical foragers generally, the forest engenders a kind of connectedness, and with this comes a sense of ontological security; one that is contingent not only on harmonious relations between people, but also between people and the non-human environment, including those supernatural agencies of the forest that people depend on for their spiritual and emotional wellbeing. In fact, the central themes I have examined throughout the book—sociality, cultural identity, the significance of movement, the development of bodily skills, personal and collective memory, and even death and bereavement—were most clearly revealed to me within the relational framework of the forest. Even those early intersubjective interactions I observed within the domestic camp

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would take on greater significance when placed within the context of the forest. With its unique sensory output, the forest would often manifest an animate “womb-like” ambiance around us and lead to a high degree of sensory continuity, where our perceptions would come to be constituted in a shared way. Thus for the Orang Rimba, insofar as social continuity and collective wellbeing are achieved within the context of the forest, the loss of the forest signifies the loss of ontological security. The global impetus toward industrialization and urbanization has left most of the world’s remaining hunting and gathering societies under threat from encroachment in some form or another. This is particularly so in the tropics where timber is a most prized commodity, unremittingly extracted to satisfy the world’s insatiable need for raw and processed hardwood. The current trend toward the decrease in petroleum and gas exports, operating under the banner of “sustainable development,” has replaced one form of environmental destruction (CO2 emissions) with another, as the shift to biofuels will inevitably accelerate the rate of deforestation by clear-cutting forestland for the establishment of palm oil plantations. As has been the case in Indonesia and elsewhere in the world, traditional rights to land and resources are often relinquished to, or superseded by, the nation states within which these groups find themselves geopolitically encompassed. For those remaining societies that depend on the nonhuman environment for their economic survival and social wellbeing the question of self-determination is critical, for it is the conditions that a people are faced with that will determine the trajectory they will follow. As Sartre noted (1982: 97–98) people make changes based on prior conditions, and so those foraging societies that have been able to draw from their own cultural and political resources, effectively “reaching into their roots,” have been the most successful in their struggle toward self-determination (Lee 1988: 183). When traditional environments are no longer viable and unable to sustain their native populations, those vital linkages between the past and present will be severed and the continuity of life halted, forcing people to make changes based on new, often unforeseen, conditions. A pervasive anxiety and lack of purpose are commonly observed characteristics among individuals and groups living under such unchosen conditions. The timber company-sponsored settlement at Sungai Gelumpang bears many semblances to a refugee camp, in that the continuity of life has been arrested and the people are left with a sense of futility and despair as they progressively move away from a familiar past toward an uncertain future. The intimate relations Ajang’s group once enjoyed with the forest and the deities residing therein have progressively diminished, while their social links within the wider village world remain uncertain and tenuous at best.

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Those Orang Rimba groups in both Jambi and South Sumatra Provinces who have settled permanently have found themselves suspended in an ideological chasm, somewhere between the past (forest) and the present (village). For anthropology the loss of societies that hunt and gather and draw upon the non-human environment to meet their economic, ideological and spiritual needs signifies a new chapter in the evolution of the discipline. Since A. R. Radcliffe-Brown’s early accounts of the Andaman Islanders near the turn of the twentieth century, hunters and gatherers have remained at the forefront of the anthropological imagination and have held a central place in the development of anthropological theory. Through the foregoing exploration into Orang Rimba ethnography I hoped to reaffirm that knowledge gained from contemporary foraging societies can still yield general insights into human development and behavior. With fewer research opportunities available this is of particular importance as proper field studies may no longer be feasible for future generations of anthropologists. As foraging populations continue to undergo rapid assimilation into those societies and nation-states that their territories fall under, vital connections with the nonhuman environment are progressively diminishing, and with them those unique forms of sociality and modalities of being-in-the-world that hunting and gathering engenders.

Orthography and Glossary

 The Orang Rimba language shares the same Austronesian etymology as classic Malay. While there are many lexical similarities to the Malay dialect spoken throughout much of south-central Sumatra, it is unique sounding in that it is spoken in a glottal manner with variations in inflection and tonal modulation. As such, Orang Rimba language constitutes a dialect of its own and is unintelligible to Sumatran villagers. Between Orang Rimba populations there are also minor variations in lexicon and modulation. These variations correspond roughly to those groups residing in Jambi Province (and parts of southeastern West Sumatra Province) and those residing in South Sumatra Province (and parts of southernmost Jambi Province). The greatest variation is found among the southernmost group, comprised of a small remnant population residing in South Sumatra Province. The orthographic guidelines below most closely correspond to the accent and lexicon of Jambi Province, where this fieldwork was conducted. For the sake of simplicity I have avoided the use of phonetic symbols when denoting Orang Rimba terms by maintaining an Indonesian orthographic and spelling system. The pronunciation key below is intended to give the reader a general guideline for pronunciation. I employ a simplified version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as is most commonly used in modern Indonesian orthography and phonology. Vowels: a = pronounced as ä in father. e = pronounced as ə at the end of sofa. i = pronounced as ë in see. o = pronounced as ō in coat. u = pronounced as ō in food.

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Diphthongs: ai = pronounced as ī in cry. au = pronounced as ou in now. oi = pronounced as oi in boy. Consonants and Consonant Sequences: c = pronounced as ch is church. ny = similar to ny in canyon; nasal continuant produced with the lower velum. ng = pronounced roughly as ng in singer; nasal continuant produced with the lower velum. kh = no English equivalent; voiceless velar spirant pronounced with emphasis on k and spoken with the lower velum. gh = no English or Indonesian equivalent; nasal continuant with emphasis on g, produced with the lower velum. Glossary of common Orang Rimba terms and concepts used throughout the book, followed by a list of kinship terms. Orang Rimba word/English Glossary adat custom/law a-ee water akau/akay me/myself/mine aku-on birth deity alami natural/nature anak child/children anak sungai stream/rivulet asu/anging dog auw yes awoh I (before verb) balai shelter for shamanic rituals bapak semang Malay patron/trader bayjalon to walk/to move bebi wild pig bedeki shamanic trance behayo danger behelo omnipotent forest god/deity behuma to swidden/swiddening phase bengun blood money beno wild yam berai uncooked rice berburu hunting/to hunt

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betina girl bidan midwife bua fruit (generic) bubughatongpon group weeping bukit hill cawot loincloth datuk grandfather/respectful term to address tiger dejempi remedy for sickness/blowing on affected area dendo fine/penalty desa village dewo forest deity dosa sin dukon shaman dukon godong experienced shaman duri durian gadis unwed girl gayjo elephant ghouton rattan gwua friend halom dewo deity world halom nio quotidian world haluy/halus refined quality/invisible haluy badan astral body hantu monster harimau tiger hopi no hopi ado none/do not have hopi bungaghon impure/adulterated (forest) hubi yam hubi kayu manioc hujan rain hutan forest ilir downstream ilmu magic/knowledge ilmuu becintaan love magic ilmu jahot black magic ilmu penyakit healing knowledge/magic spells inuman class of deity residing in swamps jahot evil jaylon forest trail/logging road jenang Malay patron/guardian/intermediary jerenang dragon’s blood (dye stuff )

Orthography and Glossary

jinak tame kain cloth kalapohon hungry kampong village kasar coarse or unrefined quality katoq frog kawin married/to marry kawin lari elope/to elope kelompok group kito we kohway you kota city/big town kuya ghana/pungo monitor lizard landak porcupine lelabi turtle liar wild louq wild game/meat mati death/to die macang manis first cousin marriage magho let’s go makon food/to eat melaikat ghost melangun mourning ritual/to flee site of death menyakit sickness/to be ill menyakit hati heartbroken merantau migrate/to migrate mergho tiger mahalo follow/to follow mika-ay you mika he/she munsa tapir nangoy bearded pig napoh mouse-deer nene moyang ancestors nyawoh inner breath/life-sustaining breath orang bayghu newcomer/villager orang kampong villager orang melayu Malay villager orang depenyakit malevolent downstream deity orang kapir/skapir malevolent being living beneath ground paghong machete penghulu headman

 231

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Orthography and Glossary

penginang shaman’s helper/assistant penyakit/sakit sickness pohon tree (generic term) berayau foraging phase/maintaining residential mobility rimbo forest rimbo bungaghon virgin forest/primary forest rindu longing/to long for rombongan group (normally consisting of several families) rumah pasarhorn post-mortem shelter rusah deer sakoh stream/rivulet setan tanah malevolent deity living in soil sifat characteristics of sumbang incest sungai river susudongan forest shelter tampuy globular fruit tanah earth/ground tanah celako cursed/polluted soil temenggong highest ranking headman tiko sleeping mat toke Malay trader/merchant tombak spear tuhan god ubi tuber/wild yam ubi kayu cassava ubi kentang wild potato ujan rain ulo snake ulo sao reticulated python ulu upstream wakil deputy

Kinship Terms adik younger sibling anak child anak tighi step child bepak father bepak mertuo father-in-law bini wife bisan betina male in-law

Orthography and Glossary

bisan jenton female in-law datuk grandfather ibung aunt ifar/ipar brother, sister, or cousin-in-law induk mother induk belum childless wife induk mertuo mother-in-law kakok older sibling menkanak child-in-law/adopted child mentuho parent-in-law momoh/paman uncle nene grandmother nene moyang ancestors saudera betina sister saudera jenton brother saudera sepupu cousin suami husband

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Index

 A acoustic environment, 57–58, 158 adat (custom/law), 22, 24, 35, 54, 172, 182, 199, 215–16, 229 adik (younger sibling), 34, 45n3, 85n2, 165n2, 232 adolescent males. See also bachelor males fieldworker, arrival of, 27 fieldworker, nighttime discussions with, 184 fieldworker, reacquainting with, 77 group weeping and communal shelter, 214 Malim’s death, 202–3 microcosmic society of, 37–39 “public property,” 82 sexual curiosity, 61 sleeping in groups, 14, 26–27, 36–37, 80–82 social activity and bodily contact, 70 social inclusion, 54 sons of Ajang and Tampong, 26– 27, 36–37, 39, 42 taboos on sleeping with their mothers, 45n3, 85n2 undisciplined, 39 village boys, chased by, 41 Yayo, 117

adoption of children, 46n4 adoption of village habits, 98 adultery, 174, 206 a-ee (water), 22, 27, 53, 56, 58, 88, 118, 124, 127, 137, 154, 195n1, 229 affectation, gestural and facial, 48 afterlife, 96, 172–74, 204–6 afterworld, 205 agoraphobia, culturally-induced, 41 Air Hitam watershed, 54 Ajang (head of settlement) (penghulu). See also Orang Rimba adolescent males, did little to discipline, 39 adolescent sons, 26–27, 36–37, 39, 42 Ajang, third wife Timpo, and children prepare for sleep, 67f2.3 Ajang standing with three of his five wives and children, 44f1.1 Ajang with prospective son-inlaw Yayo, and Talaman and older half-brother Dedi, 45f1.3 Ajang’s group settled in Malaystyle huts and focused on collection of forest products, 120 Ajang’s predicament, 32–33 Buyong’s death threats against Ajang, 200, 216

 248

family unit, 30–32 fieldworker to avoid bathing in river with women present, 24 fieldworker’s lived with Ajang and members of settlement, 23–24 fieldworker’s offer to take Timpo with her child to the nurse in transmigration village, 89 forest and forest deities connection progressively diminished, 226–27 grooming and delousing, 75–76 group leader (kepalo rombongan) after death of the father-in-law, 32 local maps and wayfinding, 152– 53 Malay traders visit to Sungai Gelumpang with Tampong, Manja, Kirai, Nina, Dedi, Silingkup, Talaman, Ajang, Malay traders, 108f4.1 Malay-style dwellings, move to, 105–6 “seeing” abilities, 183 sons, Talaman and Dedi, stayed in settlement, 42–43 Sungai Gelumpang, huts and family units in, 25f1.1, 214, 226 Sungai Kemumu, consanguinal ties with siblings in, 120 Talaman resented his stepfather Ajang, 38 Tampong and Ajang share a common great-grandfather, 33 Tampong’s extended family members and Ajang’s agitation, 89–91 Tampong’s wives had close personal bonds with Ajang’s junior co-wives, 76 Timpo (third wife) and Tampong with family, 67f2.2 village of three families with forty-four persons, 27, 28f1.2

Index

wives allowed to smoke tobacco, 34 wives (5) and 19 children, 24 Yayo’s failed attempt at “stealing” Ajang’s eldest daughter Kymah, 36–37, 115–16 Yayo’s relatives cohabitated with Ajang’s group at Sungai Gelumpang, 119 akau/akay (me/myself/mine), 229 ako baywo (I will carry you), 202 aku-on (birth deity), 200, 205, 229 alami (natural/nature), 169, 229 Allah and Behelo, 170–72 alterity, 64 anak (child/children), 229, 232 anak bini (child-wife), 24 anak sungai /sakoh (rivulets), 56 anak tighi (step child), 232 ancestors (nene moyang), 40–41, 94, 96, 103, 105, 146, 165, 231, 233. See also dead person; genealogy animals, domesticated, 40 Argonauts in the Western Pacific, 60 Arjuna (Yayo’s sister; Ajang’s mother), 25f1.1, 36, 38–39, 119, 132 astral body (haluy badan), 173–74, 184–87, 205–6, 230 astreams (nak sungai), 154 asu/anging (dog), 26, 94, 118, 124, 131–32, 134, 137–40, 153, 229 Atkinson, J.M., 182–83, 191 audition, 69, 71, 143, 158 aunt (ibung), 233 autoerotic behaviors, 61 auw (yes), 170, 229 awoh (I before verb), 229 B Bachelard, Gaston, 12, 145 bachelor males. See also adolescent males; fieldworker; male(s) behavior, group-centered modes of, 52 central characters in fieldworker’s experience, 39

Index

fear of social exclusion, 52 hunted birds and small rodents, 39, 52, 156 hunted turtles and lizards, 52, 88, 117, 122, 132, 136 unwed girl taboos, 119 unwed girls and undue intimacy, to avoid, 56 balai (shelter for shamanic rituals), 184–85, 201, 203, 229 Bangko (town), 20 banishment from residential camp, 54 bapak semang (Malay patron/trader), 116, 229 Barito Pacific Timber Group, 20 Batang Hari River, xii, 19–21, 118 Batek “shadow soul,” 174 bathing, 24, 27, 169, 195n1 bayjalon (to walk/to move), 79, 229 bearded pig (nangoy), 231 beatings, mock, 53 bebi (wild pig), 42–43, 95, 122–23, 132– 37, 139, 162, 169, 174, 179, 206, 229 Bebunyung (Tampong’s eldest daughter), 25f1.1, 34, 76, 116, 216–17 bedeki (shamanic trance), 168, 174, 177, 181, 184–87, 200, 229 behayo (danger), 95–96, 99, 102, 104, 106, 109n2, 229 behelo (forest god/deity, omnipotent), 90, 105–6, 169–72, 229 behuma (swidden/swiddening phase), 45n3, 103–4, 128, 177, 229 being-for-oneself, 63, 65, 84 being-for-others, 63, 65, 84 being-in-the-world body and senses, culturally patterned uses of, 4 body is primary vehicle and locus of, 10 environment in biographical terms, 153 foraging populations, 227 forest mobility and village sedentism, 105 lived experience, 83

 249

people composed of forest, 164 perception and pre-personal awareness, 11 shamanic imagination, 190–91 touching and being touched, 83 being-with-others, 7, 48, 66, 85, 114, 210 bengun (blood money), 45n3, 229 beno (wild yam/tuber), 27, 123, 229 bepak (father), 32, 35–36, 38–39, 41, 53, 56, 76, 97, 232 bepak mertuo (father-in-law), 31–32, 116, 199–200, 216, 232 berai (uncooked rice), 216, 229 berayau (foraging phase/maintaining residential mobility), 15, 104–5, 142, 232 berburu (hunt/hunting), 142, 183, 193, 195n5, 204, 211–13, 223, 226–27, 229 Berkeley, George, 71 Besuni, 47 betina (girl), 35–36, 52–53, 56, 74–76, 96, 116, 119, 165n2, 203, 223, 230 bidan (midwife), 46n4, 76, 230 bini (wife), 24, 25f1.1, 27, 30, 33–38, 55, 67f2.2–2.3, 76, 78, 89, 95, 103, 116, 123, 132, 179, 195n5, 199–200, 207–8, 215–17, 232 birth deity (aku-on), 200, 205, 229 bisan betina (male in-law), 232 bisan jenton (female in-law), 233 black magic (ilmu jahot), 183, 230. See also shamanism blood money (bengun), 45n3, 229 bodily awareness, pre-personal, 82 comportment and mannerisms, 66 comportment and positioning, 24, 48, 51, 62 conditioning and acquired sensibilities, 136–38 contact and awareness, prepersonal forms of, 70 control and physical aptitude, 143 engagement with others, nonverbal, 84 gestures, 50

 250

interaction and perception, 7, 12 kinetic conditioning, 8 perception, non-cognitive, 82 proximity, being-with-others and close, 7, 114 sensory conditioned perception, 114 and sensory engagement, 48–49, 64, 163–64 and sensory experience and interactions, 7–8 breastfeeding, 73–75 breathing soul (nyawoh), 173, 175, 195n2, 202, 221n2. See also shamanism; Western bride price, 36 bride service, 25, 34, 36, 115–16, 215 brother (saudera jenton), 29, 32, 36–38, 53, 233 brother, sister, or cousin-in-law (ifar/ ipar), 233 bua (fruit (generic)), 100–102, 123, 129–30, 133, 135, 200, 217, 230 bubughatongpon (group weeping), 78, 118, 203, 210, 214, 230 bukit (hill), 21–22, 25f1.1, 114, 120, 123–24, 126, 128–29, 134, 137, 151, 153, 160, 220, 224, 230 Bukit Duabelas National Park, xii, 97 bukit gayjo bebaylik (hills that turn elephants back), 124 Bukit Tigapuluh area, 29, 31, 33, 91, 103, 120, 124, 128, 168 Bukit Tigapuluh National Park (TNBT), 22, 29, 31, 33, 91, 103, 120, 124, 128, 168 Buyong (Ajang’s eldest son), 27, 34–35, 76, 116, 199–202, 215–17 C Caplan, Mariana, 69, 72–73, 83 cartography local maps and wayfinding, 151– 53 map of Orang Rimba distribution in Sumatra, 30f1.3

Index

western, 152–53 cassava (ubi kayu), 230, 232 cawot (loincloth), 230 central nervous system, 71 Cephu (Mbuti hunter), 54 characteristics of (sifat), 172, 180, 186, 232 chiasmic intertwining, 65, 84 chief/headman (penghulu), 38, 188, 231 child abduction, 96–97 child rearing practices, 73 child/children (anak), 229, 232 child-in-law/adopted child (menkanak), 233 childless wife (induk belum), 233 child-wife (anak bini), 24 city/big town (kota), 231 clan-like groupings, 29 Classen, Constance, 69–71 cloth (kain), 20, 24, 31, 34, 231 cloth currency for fines, 45n2, 182 clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), 22 cognitive development, 72, 155 cohabitation of fieldworker, 51, 119 of Meradi, 199 public declaration of, 35 collective alienation, 41 autonomy, 87, 105 behavior, 85 camp life, 50, 54, 63 catharsis as shamanism, 180–91 catharsis for releasing fears and anxieties, 168 despair, feeling of, 89 emotional outpouring, 78 experience of bodily engagement with others, 84–85 experience of sleeping in groups, 81–82 experiences of the environment, 163 identities, 151 immersion in a shared social context, 66

Index

immersion in common social setting, 64 means of suppressing painful memories of the deceased, 165n3 memory of lived experience of people, 162 perception and private selves, 60–63 poisoning and catching fish, 109n4 resentment towards Malay society, 98 values of forest dwelling, 14 wellbeing, 105 conditioning, bodily-kinetic, 8 conscious states of others, 49 continuity cultural, 14 of forest, movement, ethnic identity, cultural continuity, 14 of the group, 210 of life and a sense of futility and despair, 226 of life and forest places disrupted by death, 212–13 of life and traditional environment changes, 226 conversational signals, 48 coregulation, 49 co-residential arrangements, 25, 29 corporeal boundaries, 63–64, 72, 80–84 corporeal dialectic of the senses, 48, 81, 84 corpse abandonment, 204 cosmology Islamic, 177, 205 Orang Rimba, 87, 94, 166, 192–93 cousin (saudera sepupu), 29, 33, 36, 116, 118–21, 233 co-wife (wives), 27, 76, 132. See also polygamy cultural boundaries, 57, 192 cultural meaning, xiii, 3–4, 9, 13, 222 cursed soil (tanah celako), 102, 162, 177, 187, 232. See also shaman (dukon)

 251

custom/law (adat), 22, 24, 35, 54, 172, 182, 199, 215–16, 229 D danger (behayo), 95–96, 99, 102, 104, 106, 109n2, 229 datuk (grandfather), 29, 33, 195n4, 230, 233 datuk (tiger, respectful term to address), 180, 230 dead person(s) . See also ancestors “akay telupo” (I forgot), 29, 212 ancestors (ne ne moyang), 40–41, 146, 165, 231 genealogy of Orang Rimba kinship, 212 (See also ancestors) Malim’s death, 202–3 newborn infant death, 87–90 recollective experiences of environment and personal biographies, 15 reincarnated into animal forms, 174, 206 death-site(s). See also mourning ritual abandonment, 89, 202–3, 205, 212 annual visit to, 221n3 avoidance, 204–5, 212–13 Hadza, 212 death/to die (mati), 16, 32, 35, 54, 87, 89, 91, 95, 102, 104, 134, 137, 139–41, 173, 176, 178–79, 184, 195n2, 197–98, 200–202, 204–14, 216, 221n1, 221n3, 221n5, 225, 231 Dedi (Ajang’s son) adolescent, semi-orphaned, 38 adolescent males, microcosmic society of, 37–38 forest camp and the fieldworker, 55–60 group sleeping with fieldworker, Yayo, Talaman and Silingkup and Nina, 26, 36–37, 80–82, 117 personality, 38 photographs, 25f1.1, 45f1.3, 108f4.1 semi-orphaned adolescent, 38

 252

sexual curiosity, 61 soap and bathing, 169–70 Tampong and his sons, 78–82 Tampong’s encampment, search for, 199 turtle searching, 52 village boys chased him, 41 Yayo, visiting, 217–18 deer (rusah), 133, 136, 232 deity (deities). See also forest deity; shaman benevolent, 174, 176, 178–80, 183, 187, 206 class residing in swamps (inuman), 179, 230 downstream deities, pilgrimages to, 177 of the forest, 87, 95, 99–100, 123, 142–43, 183 harmful, 176–77, 183 malevolent, 178–80, 186–89, 191, 201 malevolent downstream (orang depenyakit), 231 malevolent downstream (silumon), 176 manifestations, resident, 8 of rice (orang de padi), 178–79 of sickness (orang menyakit), 178 of sickness, downstream (orang de penyakit), 176–78 tiger, 174 deity world (halom dewo), 172–75, 177–79, 181, 184–91, 205–6, 230. See also quotidian world (halom nio) dejempi (remedy for sickness/blowing on affected area), 175, 186, 230 delousing, 75–76, 79. See also grooming demand sharing, 68n5 dendo (fine/penalty), 24, 221n7, 230 Department of Health (Dinas Kesehatan), 22, 43, 46n5, 89, 91–92 Department of Social Affairs (Depsos), xiv, 23, 223 deputy (wakil), 232

Index

desa (village), 20–21, 27, 31, 33, 39–43, 51, 53, 55, 230 devil of the soil (setan tanah), 178–79 dewo (forest deity), 230 dipterocarp tree, 132, 134, 171 diseases, waterborne, 124 dog (asu/anging), 26, 94, 118, 124, 131–32, 134, 137–40, 153, 229 dog heaven (surgo anjin), 221n4 domestic spaces, private, 59 dosa (sin), 123, 205, 230 downstream (ilir), 154, 175, 230 downstream deities, malevolent (silum-on), 176 downstream deity, malevolent (orang depenyakit), 231 downstream deity of sickness (orang de penyakit), 176–78 dragon’s blood (jerenang), 27, 230 Drobnick, J, 69 dukon (shaman), 102, 142, 181–91, 194f8.1, 200, 230 dukon godong (experienced shaman), 181, 183–84, 206, 230 duri (durian trees), 100–101, 109n5, 153, 230 durian trees (duri), 100–101, 109n5, 153, 230 Duson Tuo village, 31, 217–18 E earth/ground (tanah), 26, 125, 223, 232 ecologies of mind, 15 ecology, sentient, 167 Ekman, Paul, 48, 68n1, 68n4 elephant (gayjo), 124, 162, 187, 230 elope/to elope (kawin lari), 33–34, 116, 216, 231 emotional dependencies, 75, 81 Endicott, Kirk, 74, 174, 178, 186, 192 environment, tropical, 57, 64, 100, 114, 120, 146, 150 epilogue, 222–27 ethnic group Malays, 6 Orang Rimba, xii, xiii

Index

ethnic identity, 14, 22, 40, 164 ethnic preservation, 107 ethnographic description and analysis, xiii, xiv, 1 ethnographic present, 2 evil (jahot), 230 existential being, 84 conditions, 10, 99 continuum, 164 domains, 99, 173 movement of bodily being, 213 polarities, 63 reality, social, 191 terms, life in, 104 experienced shaman (dukon godong), 181, 183–84, 206, 230 experiential boundaries, 63 external nervous system, 71 extrasensory perception, 62 F facial expressions, 48, 50–51, 65, 68n1, 68n4 family shelters (susudongan), 55–56, 204, 232 family unit(s) Ajang, 30–32 Ajang’s younger brothers, headed by, 116 huts and, 25 f1.1 Orang Rimba, 29 Orang Rimba woman, 96 Tampong’s, 33–34 Yayo’s cousin Gumbaye, headed by, 116 father (bepak), 32, 35–36, 38–39, 41, 53, 56, 76, 97, 232 father-in-law (bepak mertuo), 31–32, 116, 199–200, 216, 232 female(s). See also unwed girl; women adolescent, 56 body, 75 deity (subon), 179 unwed girl (gadis), 56, 76, 119, 230 female in-law (bisan jenton), 233

 253

“feudalistic” relationships, xi Field, Tiffany, 69, 71–72, 74, 76, 84, 85n2 field notes August 15, 1998, 170–71 fear of social exclusion, 52 hegemony of tactile interactions, 76–77 Ma Tuo and the tiger (datuk), 180 March 12, 1998, 47 Sungai Alim (September 1998), 201–3 Sungai Kemumu (15 December 1998), 131 field of perception, 49, 62 fieldworker. See also adolescent males; bachelor males; subjectivity acceptance by Orang Rimba, xiii, 1, 6, 20, 39, 42–43, 50, 60, 78–79, 94, 100, 133, 199 acceptance by Sungai Gelumpang, 33, 39, 42, 80 adolescent males, nighttime discussions with, 59, 184 agoraphobia, 60 Ajang’s group at Sungai Gelumpang settlement, 198 Allah and Behelo, conceptual formulations of, 170–71 bachelor males taught him language and shared camp gossip, 39 bathing avoided in river where women were present, 24 cookies and coffee, 37, 43, 52–53, 92, 200, 223 corporeal boundaries, 63 Dedi and Talaman’s interest in him, 26 delousing by Perentik, 79 domestic camp setting, 59–60 females, Orang Rimba, 77–78 forest area, three-week excursion to, 54–55 forest camp, 55–63 forest products, collecting, 58–60

 254

forest shelters, slept with adolescent males in, 80 group sleeping with Yayo, Talaman and Dedi, Silingkup and Nina, 26–27, 36–37, 80–82, 117 hairy forearms, 79 hunting with older men, 94 huts and family units at Sungai Gelumpang, 25f1.1 Indonesia winter, 6 Indonesian forest fires, 218–20 intention to live with Ajang (penghulu) and members of settlement, 23–24 learning language (“belayjo bahaso”), 50 local maps and wayfinding, 151– 53 malaria, 198, 218–19 Malay dialect, archaic, 6 mute, 50–52 negotiations with local timber company, 87 negotiations with local traders, 43 offered to take Timpo and child to village nurse, 89 ontological security, 63 outsider status, 42 personal boundaries, 60 personal privacy, 59–60 “person-centered” approach, xiii phenomenology of place, 160–61 private selves and collective perception, 60–63 rapport building efforts, 42 “sensory-based” methodology, xiv sexual curiosity of adolescent males, 61 sociality and social life, 7 Sungai Gelumpang, 23–27, 42–43 Tampong and his sons, 78–82 Tampong’s group, visit to, 198– 204 tooth brushing, 220, 221n8

Index

turtle searching, 52, 122, 132–33, 170 walking in forests, 163, 220 welcoming by Nina and Silingkup, 79 wellbeing concerns, 77 Yayo and Sungai Kemumu, 117– 19, 217–18 Yayo in Sumai watershed, 115–17 Yayo’s hut, fieldworker resided in, 24, 27, 37 Yayo’s relatives, acceptance by, 119 fine/penalty (dendo), 24, 221n7, 230 first cousin marriage (macang manis), 120, 121f5.1, 221n7, 231 fish, poisoning and catching of, 100, 109n4, 123 Fogel, Alan, 48–49 follow/to follow (mahalo), 24, 231 food/to eat (makon), 35, 39–40, 42–43, 231 foragers, tropical, 56, 107, 225 foraging. See also forest product(s) cycles, 104 groups, 103 lifestyle, 9 mobile foraging (remayow), 87, 103–6, 120, 128, 142 nomadic, 15, 46n3 patterns of wild pigs (babi), 133 phase/maintaining residential mobility (berayau), 15, 104–5, 142, 232 swiddening and, 103 forest (forest’s) (hutan) (rimbo), 230, 232. See also forest deity angels (malaikats), 173 Besunyi examines fresh kill under supervision of his elder brothers Nina, Silingkup, and Manja, 157f7.1 camps, 57–63, 82, 97, 100, 154, 220 child’s appropriation of the forest, 155–60 cultural boundaries between forest and village domains, 57

Index

dwelling, 14–15, 20, 87, 93, 105–7 dwelling Ongee of Little Andaman, 152 ecological and ideological rubicon, 106–7 forest and village: existential and conceptual polarities, 98–100 forest and village in historical perspective, 93–98 forest camp, children playing in, 158f7.2 forest camp, women and children in, 159f7.3 forest camp and the fieldworker, 55–60 forest conditions the body and senses, 113–15, 150, 163–64 forest dwelling vs. village ways, 87 forest mobility and village sedentism, 105 forest world, sacred, 106, 171 game, 26, 95, 102, 122–23, 131, 136–37, 142, 180 god/deity, omnipotent (behelo), 90, 105–6, 169–72, 229 impure/adulterated (hopi bungaghon), 171, 230 Indonesian forest fires, 218–20 Kemumu, forests of, 122–24 life continuity and forest places disrupted by death, 212–13 local maps and wayfinding, 151– 53 meanings, 8 mobile foraging (remayow), 87, 103–6, 120, 128, 142 movement and wellbeing, 100–103 nighttime in, 56–58 nurturing ground for thought, 9 Orang Rimba, appropriation of forest by, 150–51 people, x–xi, 120, 164, 213 people composed of forest, 164 perceiving order in the forest, 153–55

 255

phenomenology of place, 160–61 place, memory, and temporality of landscape, 161–65 primary forest (rimbo bungaghon), 31 reciprocal interplay with, 8 “reference system,” fundamental, 15 sacred connection to the forest, 40, 59, 94 seeing and hearing in forest, 133–36 senses and attunement to everchanging characteristics of the, 15 shamanic communication with forest, 188 shelter (susudongan), 55, 80, 89, 119, 180, 185, 204, 221n1, 232 textures of the forest: halom nio and halom dewo, 172–75 trail/logging road (jaylon), 127, 129, 158, 163, 230 village and forest domains, blurring of, 187–89 vital life forces, 171 walking in, 125–28, 134, 153–55, 164, 174 (See also walking) forest deity (deities) (dewo), 230. See also deity (deities) cycle of life, ideological and biological, 143 deity connection progressively diminished, 226–27 dialectical balance between humans and, 87 dialogue with, esoteric modes of, 168 dukon and, 187 halom dewo, 184 (See also deity world) harmonious relations with, 167 hierarchically ordered, 176 human conduct in the forest and, 95 human morphology, 180

 256

humans, common sociality with, 173 humans and, sacred connection of, 142–43 knowledge, vital esoteric, 167 magical spells, 175 Malay dukon, 184 Orang Rimba, 177, 192 possessed by, 186 remedies bestowed directly to dukon, 186 shaman, powerful (dukon godong), 181, 183–84, 206 share common sociality with humans, 173 supernatural agents and deities, 175–81 trusted, 102 “village money” and, 142 wellbeing, personal and group, 143 forest product(s). See also foraging about, 26, 34, 39–41, 53, 56, 58, 74 collecting, xii, 8, 22, 32, 38, 100, 102, 167 selling, 39, 130n2 forest-based way of life, 41, 87, 99, 105–7, 113, 223 forest-dwelling groups, xiv n2, 24, 195n1 forest-village dichotomy, 40 formal hearing (pekagho), 24 freshwater turtles (lelabi), 132–33, 156, 170 friend (gwua), 52–53, 169, 219, 230 frog (katoq), 58, 135, 231 fruit (generic) (bua), 100–102, 123, 129–30, 133, 135, 200, 217, 230 fruit trees, 100–101, 200 G gadis (unwed girl), 56, 76, 119, 230 gadung (wild yam/tuber), 27, 123, 229 gayjo (elephant), 124, 162, 187, 230 Geertz, Clifford, 1–2

Index

genealogy of Orang Rimba kinship, 212. See also ancestors gestural communication, 48 Geurts, K., 69 ghost (melaikat), 173, 206, 231 ghouton (rattan), 101, 230 Gibson, James, 71–72, 129, 144, 155 girl (betina), 35–36, 52–53, 56, 74–76, 96, 116, 119, 165n2, 203, 223, 230. See also women globular fruit (tampuy), 101, 232 goblins (hantu kayu), 162, 180 god (tuhan), 169, 171, 232 god villages in deity world, 206. See also deity world grandfather (datuk), 29, 33, 195n4, 230, 233 grandmother (nene), 195n4, 233 great ape communication, 48, 68n2 grooming, 14, 70, 75–77. See also delousing group (kelompok), 231 group (normally consisting of several families) (rombongan), 29, 232 group leader (kepalo rombongan), 32, 199 group leadership, 182 group weeping (bubughatongpon), 78, 118, 203, 210, 214, 230 group-centered modes of behavior, 52 groupings, large (rombongan), 29, 232 Gumbaye (Yayo’s first cousin), 36, 116, 118–19, 122, 132 gwua (friend), 52–53, 169, 219, 230 H Hall, Edward, 61–62 halom dewo (deity world), 230 halom nio (quotidian world), 167, 172– 75, 181–85, 187, 190, 206, 230 haluy badan (astral body), 173–74, 184– 87, 205–6, 230 haluy/halus (refined quality/invisible), 172, 174, 180, 183, 190, 205, 230 Hanks, William, 5, 48 hantu (monster), 180–81, 187, 230

 257

Index

hantu gunnung (monster of the mountains), 180–81 hantu tinggi (tall monster), 181 harimau (tiger), 22, 124, 133, 174, 180, 186–87, 195n4, 230 Harvey, G., 69–70 Hassan (Ajang’s brother), 118–19, 149f6.4 head lice, 79 headhunting, 207 headman, highest ranking (temenggong), 29, 232 headman/chief (penghulu), 23, 38, 176, 188, 231 healing knowledge/magic spells (ilmu penyakit), 175, 230 healing the sick (ilmu penyakit), 174–75 heartbroken (menyakit hati), 52, 212, 231 Heller, S., 69, 71 he/she (mika), 231 hill (bukit), 21–22, 25f1.1, 114, 120, 123–24, 126, 128–29, 134, 137, 151, 153, 160, 220, 224, 230 hills that turn elephants back (bukit gayjo bebaylik), 124 honey trees, 101 hopi bungaghon (forest, impure/ adulterated), 171, 230 hopi bungaghon (impure), 171 household shelters (susudongan), 55–56, 204, 232 hubi (yam), 207, 230 hubi kayu (manioc), 230 hujan (rain), 53, 118, 129, 136, 169–70, 182–83, 201, 203, 230 human intersubjectivity, 47, 65 sociality, 49–50, 66, 82–85 tactility, 11, 69–70, 73–75, 84, 125 traits, 66 waste disposal, 26 hungry (kalapohon), 141, 216, 231 hunter-gardener populations of Borneo and Amazonia, xii hunter-gatherers, tropical, xiv n2, 86, 94, 154

hunter-gatherer-turned-sedentary settlement, 26 hunters, 15, 54, 114, 124, 131, 133–44, 140f6.4 hunters and gatherers, xiii, 51, 68n5 hunters/men, older, 135–37, 141, 144, 168n2 hunting about, 131–33 bodily conditioning and acquired sensibilities, 136–38 body and world, integrating, 143–46 camp members inspect a hunter’s kill, and children touch and examine the carcass, 147f6.1 field notes: Sungai Kemumu (15 December 1998), 131 forest game, 26, 95, 102, 122–23, 131, 136–37, 142, 180 the hunt, 138–40 to hunt/hunting (berburu), 142, 183, 193, 195n5, 204, 211–13, 223, 226–27, 229 hunting, ideological significance of, 140–43 mouse-deer, preparing a meal of, 148f6.3 Orang Rimba hunters: Hassan, Sijuk and Hussin. Talaman’s younger brother adopted by Ajang’s brother Hassan, 149f6.4 seeing and hearing in the forest, 133–36 subsistence, 26 women digging for edible tubers at Sungai Kemumu, 147f6.2 husband (suami), 95, 97, 123, 201–2, 233 hutan (forest), 230 I I (before verb) (awoh), 229 I forgot (akay telupo), 29, 212 I will carry you (ako baywo), 202 ibung (aunt), 233

 258

ifar/ipar (brother, sister, or cousin-inlaw), 233 ilir (downstream), 154, 175, 230 illegal loggers, 97 illegal logging, xii, 22, 41, 224 illegal timber, 40 ilmu (magic/knowledge), 103, 175, 230 ilmu jahot (black magic), 183, 230 ilmu penyakit (healing knowledge/ magic spells), 175, 230 ilmu penyakit (healing the sick), 174–75 ilmuu becintaan (love magic), 230 impure (hopi bungaghon), 171 incest (sumbang), 35, 45n3, 85n2, 174, 232 incontinent sociality, 62 Indonesian forest fires, 218–20 Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), 19, 63, 219 induk (mother), 202, 233 induk belum (childless wife), 233 induk hopi ado nyawoh (mother has no life/breath), 200, 202 induk mertuo (mother-in-law), 233 Ingold, Tim, 6–7, 12–13, 51, 57, 69, 85, 126, 144–45, 152 in-laws, 35–36, 76, 115, 216 inner breath/life-sustaining breath (nyawoh), 173, 175, 195n2, 202, 221n2, 231 inner “traveling body” (haluy badan), 173–74, 184–87, 205–6. See also shaman (dukon) interchangeability of standpoints, 65 intersubjectivity, 3, 14, 47–48, 62, 64–65, 85, 190 inuman (deity residing in swamps), 179, 230 Islamic cosmology, 177, 205 law, 22 slaughtering techniques, 40, 43, 95 J jahot (evil), 230 Jambi (Jambi Province capital), 19, 95–96

Index

Jambi, rural, 13, 50, 95, 106 Jambi Province, x, xii, 34, 114, 151, 198, 227–28 Jambi rural dialect, 50 Jambi-Muaro Bungo road, 88 Jambinese Malays, 96 Jambinese society, 96 Jambi-Riau border, 124 Javanese transmigrants, xii transmigration project, 22, 30–31, 188 transmigration village, 39, 89, 201 jaylon (forest trail/logging road), 127, 129, 158, 163, 230 jenang (Malay patron/guardian/ intermediary), x, 107, 188, 224, 230, xivn1 jerenang (dragon’s blood (dye stuff )), 27, 230 jerenang (tree resin), 100 jinak (tame), 130n1, 231 K kain (cloth), 20, 24, 31, 34, 231 kakok (older sibling), 74, 126, 233 Kalahari Bushmen, 75 kalapohon (hungry), 141, 216, 231 kampong (village), 231 kasar (quality, coarse/unrefined), 172, 180, 190, 195n4, 231 katoq (frog), 58, 135, 231 kawin (married/to marry), 29, 33, 36, 38, 119, 199, 216, 223, 231 kawin lari (elope/to elope; runaway marriage), 33–34, 116, 216, 231 kelompok (group), xii, xiii, 14, 16, 20, 24–25, 27, 29, 231, xivn1–2 Kemumu watershed area, 113–15 cross-cousin marriages between Sungai Kemumu and Sungai Gelumpang, 121f5.1 forests, walking in the, 125–28 forests of Kemumu, 122–24 Orang Rimba at Sungai Kemumu, 117–20

Index

walking, vision, and cognition, 128–29 Yayo reunites with his relatives, 122f5.1 Yayo’s blues, 115–17 kepalo rombongan (group leader status), 32 kinship affiliation, 75, 78 diagram of Sungai Gelumpang settlement, 27, 28f1.2 networks, 120 terms, 232–33 kito (we), 231 kohway (you), 79, 231 kota (city/big town), 231 Kubu (pejorative term), x, 20, 23, 33, 40, 96, 177 kuya ghana/pungo (monitor lizard), 88, 123, 132–33, 136, 231 Kymah (Ajang’s eldest daughter), 115–16 L lalang (wild grass), 205 landak (porcupine), 123, 133, 136–37, 180, 231 larger groupings (rombongan), 29, 102 learning language (belayjo bahaso), 51 Leder, Drew being-with-another, 83 “decorporealized” character of existence, 8 environment merges with and transforms temporal being, 164 habitual patterns of action, 144 habitual uses of the body, 114 incorporation, 145 intersubjective experience, 83 linkages between body and environment, 11–12 self-understanding from what others see, 64 sleep and the body’s withdrawal from conscious experience, 81 taken-for-granted body, 144

 259

lelabi (turtle), 40, 52, 66f2.1, 88, 95, 117, 122, 130n3, 132–33, 136–37, 156, 170, 231 “Les Techniques du corps” (Techniques of the body) (Mauss), 10, 241 let’s go (magho), 231 liar (wild), 19, 79, 86, 120, 174, 231 life-force/essence (sifat), 172, 180, 186–87 lifestyle, semi-sedentary, 40 LIPI. See Indonesian Institute of Sciences lived experience, decontextualized, 51 local maps and wayfinding, 151–53. See also cartography local village goods, 32, 39, 58 local villagers (orang terang) cigarettes as gesture of good will, 23 economic networks of, 39 forest products, exchange of, xi Malay dialect, 26 motorized trail bike, 21 status as Kubu, 33, 40 Sungai Gelumpang vs., 42 logging networks, illegal, xii, 22, 41, 224 loincloths (cawot), 230 bark-skin, 31 sarong, 20, 72, 80, 109n3, 117, 155, 188, 204–6 longing/to long for (rindu), 212, 232 “looking-glass self” (orang kapir/ skapir), 177 louq (wild game/meat), 86, 120, 124, 130n1, 151, 154, 231 “love magic” (ilmu becintaan), 95, 175, 230 lower-status male, 215 lower-status persons, 76 M Ma Tuo (Tampong’s eldest wife), 34, 38, 55, 76, 116, 132, 180 macang manis (first cousin marriage), 120, 121f5.1, 221n7, 231

 260

machete (paghong), x, 109n1, 109n5, 129, 138, 202, 215, 231 magho (let’s go), 231 magic/knowledge (ilmu), 103, 175, 230 mahalo (follow/to follow), 24, 231 makon (food/to eat), 35, 39–40, 42–43, 231 Malay bride, 218 intermediaries (jenang), xi patron/guardian/intermediary (jenang), x, 107, 188, 224, 230, xivn1 patron/trader (bapak semang), 116, 229 shaman (dukon), 184 trader/merchant (toke), 39–40, 63, 79, 116–17, 122, 217–18, 232 villager (orang melayu), 27, 29, 40, 78, 97, 119, 126–28, 175, 177, 179, 193, 231 Malay dialect about, 6, 20, 26, 50, 228 consonants and consonant sequences, 229 diphthongs, 229 kinship terms, 232–33 Orang Rimba word/English glossary, 229–32 vowels, 228 Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus) (munsah), 22, 132–33, 136, 179, 231 male(s). See also bachelor males adult, 77–78, 88, 93, 100, 126, 154–55, 181 family heads, 29 in-law (bisan betina), 232 malevolent being living beneath ground (orang kapir/skapir), 177, 231 deity (orang skapir), 98, 102, 176, 186 deity living in soil (setan tanah), 178–79, 232 downstream deities (silum-on), 176

Index

downstream deity (orang depenyakit), 231 malevolent spirits, 171 Malinowski’s diary, 5–6 manioc (hubi kayu), 230 Manja (Tampong’s son) adolescent males, microcosmic society of, 37 fear of social exclusion, 52–53 lost on fringes of forest, 203 mother, loss of his, 37 picture, 108f4.1, 157f7.1 Tampong and Meradi’s older sister, 199 maps. See cartography marriage, cross-cousin, 120, 121f5.1, 221n7 married/to marry (kawin), 29, 33, 36, 38, 119, 199, 216, 223, 231 masih liar (still wild), 116 mati (death/to die), 16, 32, 35, 54, 87, 89, 91, 95, 102, 104, 134, 137, 139–41, 173, 176, 178–79, 184, 195n2, 197–98, 200–202, 204–14, 216, 221n1, 221n3, 221n5, 225, 231 Maura Bungo (town), 20 Mauss, Marcel, 10, 241 mediation, language-based modes of, 65 meeting of the minds, 48 melaikat (ghost), 173, 206, 231 melangun (mourning ritual/to flee site of death), 16, 197–98, 204, 208–11, 214–15, 231 me/myself/mine (akau/akay), 229 menarche (first menstrual period), 56, 77, 195n5 menkanak (child-in-law/adopted child), 233 mentuho (parent-in-law), 233 menyakit (sickness/to be ill), 231 menyakit hati (heartbroken), 52, 212, 231 Meradi (Buyong’s second uncle), 199 merantau (migrate/to migrate), 29, 33, 231

Index

mergho (tiger), 22, 124, 133, 174, 180, 186–87, 195n4, 231 Merleau-Ponty, M. alterity embodied within our subjectivity, 64–65 “being-for-oneself” vs. “beingfor-others,” 65 blind man’s cane, 145 body as the means of belonging to the world, 70 body in the world as the heart in the organism, 113, 213 chiasmic intertwining, 65, 84 corporeal dialectic of the senses, 48 incontinent sociality, 62 meanings circulate like blood in the body, 213 mutual “transference” of intentionality, 62 phenomenology, 10–11, 16n2 phenomenon of touching, 83 “re-opening” the past in the present, 164 social exists obscurely and as a summons, 65 two bodies in an intimate context, 81 midwife (bidan), 46n4, 76, 230 migrants, Orang Rimba, 29 migrate/to migrate (merantau), 29, 33, 231 mika (he/she), 231 mika-ay (you), 231 mobile foraging (remayow), 87, 103–6, 120, 128, 142. See also foraging Mohammad’s assistant (wakil Mohamaad), 205 momoh/paman (uncle), 38, 199, 215–16, 233 monitor lizard (kuya ghana/pungo), 88, 123, 132–33, 136, 231 monster (hantu), 180–81, 187, 230 monster, tall (hantu tinggi), 181 monster of the mountains (hantu gunnung), 180–81

 261

Montagu, Ashley, 69–71, 73, 75, 80 mother (induk), 202, 233 mother has no life/breath (induk hopi ado nyawoh), 200, 202 mother-infant bonding, 14 mother-in-law (induk mertuo), 233 mourning ritual/to flee site of death (melangun). See also death-site(s) about, 16, 197–98, 204, 208–11, 214–15, 231 Bukit Tigapuluh area, returning to, 198–201, 204 codified displays of emotion, 16 death, transition, and ritualized sentiment, 207–11 deceased placed in death shelter in their everyday attire, 206 field notes, Sungai Alim (September 1998), 201–3 forgetting, practice of, 211–14 grief, genuine displays of, 16 mortuary and afterlife, 204–6 new social order, 214–18 site of the deceased is abandoned, 91, 163, 198 mouse-deer (napoh), 88, 123, 132, 135, 148f6.3, 158, 231 Muara Bungo (town), 60, 63, 91–92, 116 munsah (tapir), 22, 132–33, 136, 179, 231 muscular consciousness, 12, 145 Muslim villagers, 40, 177 N Nadep (Tampongs’ son), 78–79, 88, 90 nak sungai (astreams), 154 nangoy (bearded pig), 231 napoh (mouse-deer), 88, 123, 132, 135, 148f6.3, 158, 231 natural/nature (alami), 169, 229 nene (grandmother), 195n4, 233 nene moyang (ancestors), 40–41, 94, 96, 103, 105, 146, 165, 231, 233 newcomer/villager (orang bayghu), 42, 78–79, 90–91, 199, 216, 231

 262

Nina (Tampong’s son) adolescent males, microcosmic society of, 37–38 Allah and Behelo, 170–71 fieldworker, welcoming gesture towards, 79 forest camp and the fieldworker, 55–60 mother, loss of his, 37 personality, 37–38 pictures, 25f1.1, 108f4.1, 157f7.1 slept in groups with fieldworker, Yayo, Talaman and Dedi, Silingkup and Nina, 27, 37, 80–82, 117 Tampong and Meradi’s older sister, 199 turtle searching, 52, 170 village boys, chased by, 40 Yayo in Sumai watershed, 115–17 no (hopi), 169–70, 230 nomadic foraging, 15, 46n3 none/do not have (hopi ado), 230 non-Islamic forest-dwelling populations (Kubu), xi non-swiddening. See also swidden/ swiddening groups, 128 phase, 105 nonverbal behaviors and visual cues, 65 bodily and sensory interaction, 7 bodily engagement with others, 84 communication, 49–50 modalities of social interaction, 52 modes of social interaction, 50 participant observation, 51 social interaction, 70 trajectory of action and perception, 52 non-vocal communication, 48, 68n2 nuclear families, 29, 116, 175 nuclear family dwellings, 103 nyawoh (inner breath/life-sustaining breath), 173, 175, 195n2, 202, 221n2, 231

Index

O older sibling (kakok), 74, 126, 233 olfaction, 11, 61, 69, 71, 73–74 Ongee of Little Andaman, forest dwelling, 152 ontological security “being-for-oneself” vs. “beingfor-others,” 65 fieldworker, 63 Orang Rimba, 14, 57, 102–3, 105, 159, 225–26 shaman (dukon), 191 Shamanistic practice, 168, 191 oral tactility, 74 orang bayghu (newcomer/villager), 42, 78–79, 90–91, 199, 216, 231 orang de penyakit (deity of sickness, downstream), 176, 178, 231 Orang Hutan, xii, 164, 225 orang kampong (villager), 20–23, 26–27, 29, 31, 33, 39–43, 51, 55–56, 63, 76, 78, 85, 175–79, 183–84, 193, 214–15, 224, 231 orang kapir/skapir (malevolent being living beneath ground), 98, 102, 176–77, 186, 231 orang melayu (Malay villager), 27, 29, 40, 78, 97, 119, 126–28, 175, 177, 179, 193, 231 Orang Rimba. See also Ajang (head of settlement) adolescent males, microcosmic society of, 37–39 child abduction by Malays, 96–97 codified practice of avoidance of local villagers due to fears of persecution, 86–87 collective alienation of, 41 cosmology, 87, 94, 166, 192–93 cross-cousin marriages between Sungai Kemumu and Sungai Gelumpang, 121f5.1 death of a newborn infant, 87–90 direct sensory interaction with, 6 distrustful of all outsiders, 42 empty promises, 90–93

Index

ethnic categories, reconfiguring, 42–43 fear of sickness, 197 fieldworker, acceptance of, xiii, 1, 6, 20, 39, 42–43, 50, 60, 78–79, 94, 100, 133, 199 forest dwelling, values associated with, 87 groups, limited contact with, xi hunters at Sungai Kemumu: Hassan, Sijuk and Hussin, 149f6.4 kinship, genealogy of, 212 long-lasting bonds from touch, close bodily proximity, and grooming, 70 Malay villager, contact with, 97 map of Orang Rimba in Sumatra, 30f1.3 migrants, 29 non-swiddening/mobile foraging, 105 northern migrations, 29–30 ontological security, 14, 57, 102–3, 105, 159, 225–26 population: 3,800– 3,900 individuals, xii recollective experiences of environment and personal biographies, 15 residential groups, 29 rural society, struggle for acceptance by, 93 shaman (dukon), elderly, 194f8.1 social inclusion and acceptance of individual peculiarities, 54, 207 at Sungai Gelumpang: impossible task of assimilation, 39–42 at Sungai Kemumu, 117–20 Talaman sitting on floor with sisters and infant while women cook on lower level, 44f1.12 Tampong holding a captured turtle, 66f2.1

 263

Tampong moved his group into Sungai Gelumpang settlement, 33 Tampong with family and Ajang’s third wife Timpo, 67f2.2 Tampong’s family unit, 33–34 woman must denounce past life in the forest to be accepted in Malay community, 96 word/English glossary, 229–32 Yayo (lone bachelor), 35–37 Orang Rimba-Malay relations, 86–87 orang skapir (malevolent deity), 98, 102, 176–77, 186, 231 otherness, 62–64 P paghong (machete), x, 109n1, 109n5, 129, 138, 202, 215, 231 palm trees, 203 parent-in-law (mentuho), 233 Pasir Mayang (village in Bungo-Tebo Regency), 20, 31, 90, 116–17, 122, 217 “patron-client” relationship, symbiotic, 86 Pemayungan (Malay village), 118 Pendek (youngster), 37, 52 penghulu (headman, chief), 23, 38, 176, 188, 231 penginang (shaman’s helper/assistant), 185–87, 232 penyakit/sakit (sickness), 232 perception. See also subjectivity; touch acquisition of skills, 150 active organs of, 72 bodily interaction and, 7, 12 bodily-sensory conditioned, 114 body, begins in the, 11 child’s modalities of, 159 cogito ergo sum, 11 collective, 60–63 common, 5 common domain of, 65 cosmological, 189, 192–93 creation of cultural meaning, xiii, 2, 9

 264

creation of social experience, 222 depth, 159 “ecologies of mind,” 15 enhanced, 190 of the environment, 15, 166, 172, 193, 212 esoteric modalities of, 15 extrasensory, 62 of the forest, 8, 15, 192 of forest environment, 176, 181 habitual patterns of, 9, 164–65 innate processes of, 11 of the landscape, 170 language mediates, 48 memory and cognition, 151, 163 modality of forest, 167–68 non-cognitive bodily, 82 nonhuman environment, 151, 155 ordinary faculties of, 189 ordinary modes of, 190 perceptions of others, 65 phenomenological approach, 11 pre-personal modalities of, 113 prerequisite process, 11 “private” nature of, 62, 84 recollective experiences, 163 reified version of reality, 190 of rural society, 98 shamanic modality of, 166 shared, 48, 64–66 shared modalities of, 49 shared social setting, 64 spatiotemporal, 105 visual-spatial, 129 of the world, 65, 222 Perentik (Tampongs’ son), 78–79 pig (bebi), 42–43, 95, 122–23, 132–37, 139, 162, 169, 174, 179, 206 Pink, Sarah, 69 pohon (tree, generic), 56, 58, 64, 100, 129, 133–34, 139, 154, 161–62, 180– 81, 189, 204–5, 223, 232 polygamy, 27, 29, 32–34, 44f1.1, 175. See also co-wife porcupine (landak), 123, 133, 136–37, 180, 231

Index

possession trance, 190. See also shamanic; sickness post-mortem custom, 89 post-mortem shelter (rumah pasarhorn), 204, 232 powerful shaman (dukon godong), 181, 183–84, 206. See also shaman (dukon) pre-arrangements with local traders, 43 pre-cognitive experiences, 163 pre-conscious, 209 pre-cultural, 209 pre-cultural antecedents, 82, 209 pre-domesticated roots, 131 pre-existing categories of thought, 193 matrix of ideas, 192 social arrangements, 207–8 subject-object boundaries between body and external world, 71 pre-existing categories of thought, 193 pre-linguistic interactions, 159 pre-marital years, 56 pre-objective condition, 82 pre-objective foundations of interaction, 114 pre-personal awareness, 11 bodily awareness, 82 connection with the world, 11 connections between subjects, 81 dialogue between body and world, 113 dimension of emotional experience, 209 emotions transmitted interpersonally, 210 experience, 15 forms of bodily contact and awareness, 70 groundedness of the body in the world, 213 “intercorporeal” dialogue, 83 involvement, 82 modalities of action and perception, 113

Index

ontological foundations of all human experience, 10–11 and pre-linguistic interactions, 159 processes of appropriation, 15 shared emotional experience, 198 transference of emotion between individuals and what is experienced, 209 prepubescent daughters, 76 pre-verbal foundations of social interaction, 65, 70 identification with animate agencies, 159 infant, 73 transference, 81 primates, non-human, 70, 72, 85, 134–35 P.T. IFA concession (French logging company), 22–23, 25f1.1, 31–32, 88–90, 118, 189, 199 public spaces, 59 Q quality, coarse or unrefined (kasar), 172, 180, 190, 195n4, 231 quotidian world (halom nio), 167, 172–75, 181–85, 187, 190, 206, 230. See also deity world R rain (ujan) (hujan), 53, 118, 129, 136, 169–70, 182–83, 201, 203, 232 rainforest, 12, 124 rattan (ghouton), 101, 230 rattan (rhotan), 26 reciprocity of perspectives, 65 recollective experiences of the environment, 161 refined quality/invisible (haluy/halus), 172, 174, 180, 183, 190, 205, 230 reincarnation, 174, 206 remedy for sickness/blowing on affected area (dejempi), 175, 186, 230 residential groups, Orang Rimba, 29

 265

residential mobility in forests (rimbo bungaghon), xiv n2, 14, 31, 87, 102–4, 130n2 reticulated python (ulo sao), 179, 232 Riau Province, xii, 31, 33, 114, 124, 184, 199–200, 214 rice, store-bought, 26, 32 rice cultivation, 30, 89 rimbo (forest), 232 rimbo bungaghon (virgin forest/ primary forest), 21, 31, 33, 55, 91, 232 rindu (longing/to long for), 212, 232 risk of self/other conflation, 64–65 river (sungai), xii, 20–21, 23–25, 27, 31, 39, 47, 55–56, 79, 88, 100, 232 rivulets (anak sungai /sakoh), 56 rombongan (groupings, large), 29, 232 Roseman, Marina, 69, 179, 191 rubber tapping, 22 rubber tree cultivation, 30 rubber tree planting, 90 rumah pasarhorn (post-mortem shelter), 204, 232 runaway marriage (kawin lari), 34, 116, 216 rusah (deer), 133, 136, 232 S sacred connection to the forest, 40, 59, 94 forest world, 106, 171 humans and forest deities connection, 142–43 knowledge, 99 mode of life, 41, 96, 105 practice of movement in forest and living off the land, 105 “upstream,” vs. “downstream,” 40, 99 sakoh (stream/rivulet), 56, 154, 232 Sandbukt, Øyvind, xii, 103, 171, 173, 175–77, 243 Sarolangun-Bangko (administrative regency), 29, 97 sarong loincloths, 20, 72, 80, 109n3, 117, 155, 188, 204–6

 266

saudera betina (sister), 33, 35–36, 38, 44f1.2, 76, 118–19, 199–200, 215–17, 233 saudera jenton (brother), 29, 32, 36–38, 53, 233 saudera sepupu (cousin), 29, 33, 36, 116, 118–21, 233 sedentary living, 20, 26, 32–33 self-other awareness, 61–62 boundaries, 13, 50 dialectic, 65 Semambu (Malay village), 118 semi-sedentary living (Malay style), 40–41 senses, anthropology of the, 69 sensory and bodily engagement, 48–49, 64, 163–64 sensory universe, 50. See also perception Seranten watershed area, 29, 33 setan tanah (malevolent deity living in soil), 178–79, 232 sexual energies, 196. See also shamanic sexual intercourse, 34, 45n3 sexual “potential,” 61 shaman (dukon). See also black magic; cursed soil; deity; shaman’s helper; trance about, 102, 142, 181–91, 194f8.1, 200, 230 elderly Orang Rimba dukon, 194f8.1 forest deity, 187 great hunters, 142 halom nio and halom dewo, 172–75, 181–84 inner “traveling body” (haluy badan), 173–74, 184–87, 205–6 ontological security, 191 powerful shaman (dukon godong), 181, 183–84, 206 shamanic practitioner, 102 shaman’s helper (penginang), 185–87, 232

Index

shelter for shamanic rituals (balai), 184–85, 201, 203, 229 shamanic. See also shelter for shamanic rituals communication with forest, 188 experience, 191 imagination, 166, 168, 189–90, 193 knowledge, 160, 182–83 lifestyle, 182 practice, 15, 106, 166–67, 182–83, 196n6 practitioners, 102, 168 (See also shaman (dukon)) rituals, 15, 166–68, 183–85, 188, 196n6, 201 seeing ability, 173 trance (bedeki), 168, 174, 177, 181, 184–87, 200, 229 (See also deity world) trance imagery, 16, 168 visions, 15 shamanism. See also black magic; breathing soul about, 166–69 Allah and Behelo: divinities in the landscape, 169–72 deities and supernatural agents of the forest, 175–81 dukon and the trance (bedeki), 184–87 elderly Orang Rimba dukon, 194f8.1 field notes: August 15, 1998, 170–71 field notes: Ma Tuo and tiger (datuk), 180 foraging for ideas in an everencroaching modern world, 192–94 forest and village domains, blurring of, 187–89 halom nio and halom dewo, shaman conduits between, 181–84 halom nio and halom dewo: textures of the forest, 172–75

Index

shamanism as collective catharsis, 189–91 of Wana of Sulawesi, 182 shaman’s helper (penginang), 185–87. See also shaman (dukon) shelter for shamanic rituals (balai), 184–85, 201, 203, 229. See also shamanic sickness (penyakit/sakit), 232 and/or death, 178 body-soul, inflicted by the, 206 danger and, 102 of the heart (menyakit hati), 52, 212 Orang Rimba’s fear of, 197 sent by the spirits of the deceased, 211 sin and, 177 sickness/to be ill (menyakit), 231 sifat (characteristics of), 172, 180, 186, 232 Sijuk (Yayo’s younger brother), 118, 122, 130n2, 132, 137–38, 149f6.4 Silberbauer, 62 Silingkup (Tampong’s son) adolescent males, microcosmic society of, 37–38 Allah and Behelo, 169–71 fear of social exclusion, 52–53 fieldworker, welcoming gesture towards, 79 forest camp and the fieldworker, 55–60 group sleeping with fieldworker, Yayo, Talaman Dedi, and Nina, 27, 36–37, 80–82, 117 personality, 38 picture, 25f1.1, 108f4.1, 157f7.1 turtle searching, 52, 88, 170 village boys, chased by, 40 Yayo in Sumai watershed, 115–17 silum-on (malevolent downstream deities), 176 sin (dosa), 123, 205, 230 sister (saudera betina), 33, 35–36, 38, 44f1.2, 76, 118–19, 199–200, 215–17, 233

 267

skin, cultural notions of, 69–70 skin ailments, water-born, 120 skin-to-skin contact, 69, 73–75, 77 sleep (sleeping) adolescent males sleeping with their mothers, taboo about, 45n3, 85n2 bodily contact during, 70 dissolution of corporeal boundaries, 80–82 in groups (social sleeping), 14, 26–27, 36–37, 80–82 mat (tiko), 204, 232 snake (ulo), 40, 95, 129, 134, 136, 160, 174, 179, 206, 232 soap and bathing, 169–70 social bonds, 7, 59, 70, 75, 82, 84, 208 distance, 75 exclusion, 52–53 inclusion, 52–55 interactions, 13, 16n1, 39, 49, 51, 77 primates, 85 relations, 14, 16, 39, 76–77, 167 sleeping, 14, 27, 36–37, 80–82 sociality camp, setting up, 55–56 field notes: 12 March 1998, 47 field notes: fear of social exclusion, 52 fieldworker, mute, 50–52 forest products collecting, 58–59 negotiation of self and other, 47–50 nighttime in the forest, 56–58 orang terang (living in brightness), 63–64 personal privacy, 59–60 private selves and collective perception, 60–63 self and other, balancing the dialectic of, 64–66 social inclusion, need for, 52–55 socio-economic networks of Malay society, 120

 268

soul/body soul traveling (haluy badan), 173–74, 184–86, 205–6, 230. See also shaman (dukon) South Sumatra Province, xii, 164, 181, 185, 198, 225, 227–28 spear (tombak), 109n5, 117, 131–33, 136–39, 145, 232 step child (anak tighi), 232 still wild (masih liar), 116 Stoller, Paul, 2, 5, 69 stream/rivulet (sakoh), 56, 154, 232 streams/rivulets, small (anak sungai / sakoh), 56, 154, 229 suami (husband), 95, 97, 123, 201–2, 233 subjectivity. See also being-in-theworld; perception; pre-personal; touch being-with-others and close bodily proximity, 7, 114 bodily and sensory experience and interactions, 7–8 body and environment become co-constituted by people’s habitual patterns of action and perception, 9 body as an open repository for embodied knowledge and skills, 13 body transforms itself in relation to the non-human environment, 15 body-centered methodology, 9–10 body’s innate receptivity to animate and inanimate agencies in the environment, 14 body’s kinesthesia and sensorymotor repertoire, 9 body’s own kinetic patterns and responses, 12 bounded individual vs. individual experience, 4 contemporary sociocultural anthropology, 3–4 culturally patterned uses of the body and senses, 4

Index

descriptive ethnography, phenomenological approaches, 3 direct experience and selfknowledge, 1–2 direct sensory interaction with the Orang Rimba, 6 ecological context of the body and senses, 9 embodied skills and habitual patterns of behavior, 7 “inter-experience” and cultural meaning, 9 intersubjectivity, experiential basis of, 3 intuitive, sensory-based modes of inquiry, 3 non-verbal modes of bodily and social interaction, 6–7, 13 observation of behaviors, speech patterns, body language, and other non-verbal cues, 6 perceiving body, 10–13 positivist knowledge vs. “empathic understanding,” 5 postmodern discourses, 1 sensory-centered and bodycentered knowledge, 5 subjective awareness, 5, 64 visceral experience, 11 Western epistemic rationality, 3 Western society, “disembodied” style of, 8 subsistence activities, daily, 98 activities of a young teen, 38 farming, 22 hunting and gathering, 26 related activities, 38, 58, 104, 162 somatic dependencies and, 32 suku anak (tribes of the interior), xivn2 Sumatran elephant (gayjo) (Elephas maximus sumatrensis), 21, 124, 133, 162, 187, 230 Sumatran forest-dwelling populations, xii

Index

Sumatran tiger (mergho) (Panthera tigris sumatrae), 22, 124, 133, 174, 180, 186–87, 195n4 sumbang (incest), 35, 45n3, 85n2, 174, 232 sungai (river), xii, 20–21, 23–25, 27, 31, 39, 47, 55–56, 79, 88, 100, 232 Sungai Gelumpang. See also Ajang (head of settlement) Ajang, third wife Timpo, and children prepare for sleep, 67f2.3 Ajang family unit, 30–32 Ajang with prospective son-inlaw Yayo, and Talaman and older half-brother Dedi, 45f1.3 Ajang with three of his five wives and children, 44f1.1 Ajang’s group at, 198–204 Ajang’s predicament, 32–33 body odor from habitual lack of bathing, 27 bureaucracies and beginnings, 19–23 Buyong and Bebunyung: volatile union, 34–35 cross-cousin marriages between Sungai Kemumu and Sungai Gelumpang, 121f5.1 fieldworker’s acceptance, 33, 39, 42, 80 fieldworker’s arrival at settlement, 23–27 fieldworker’s presence was tolerated, 42–43 huts and family units at, 25f1.1, 26, 214, 226 kinship diagram of settlement of three families with forty-four persons, 27, 28f1.2 local villagers vs., 42 Malay traders visit with Tampong, Manja, Kirai, Nina, Dedi, Silingkup, Talaman, Ajang, 108f4.1

 269

non-Islamic forest-dwelling population, x Orang Rimba at Sungai Gelumpang: impossible task of assimilation, 39–42 subsistence hunting and gathering, 26 Tampong became de facto leader to sixty-four people, 90 Tampong ‘s extended family arrived, 89–91 volatile union on arrival, 33–35 Yayo, bachelor adult male, 35–36 Yayo’s relatives cohabit with Ajang’s group, 119 surgo anjin (dog heaven), 221n4 susudongan (forest shelter), 55, 80, 89, 119, 180, 185, 204, 221n1, 232 swidden (swiddening) agriculture, xii, 142 cultivators, xii cycles, 104, 153 phase (behuma), 45n3, 103–4, 128, 177, 229 (See also nonswiddening) T taboos adolescent boys sleeping with their mothers, 45n3, 85n2 bachelor males and unwed girls, 119 codified in customary law (adat), 24, 94–95 contact with outsiders, 98 cultural boundaries between forest and village domains, 57 deceased person’s name, uttering, 29 foods eaten by Malays, 95 forest camps, restricting access to, 55 “going native,” 2 on male-female interaction, 24 names of the deceased, 29, 165n3, 198, 211–13

 270

quarantine, 175 sexual intercourse, post-partum, 45–46n3, 45n3 shamans and shamanic knowledge, 169 slaughtering techniques, 43 touch betwen males and females, 76–77 village world contact, 167, 170 tactile (tactility). See also touch behaviors, 69, 72–73, 75, 80 gesture, 77 human, 11, 69–70, 73–75, 84, 125 relations, 70, 73, 76–77 Talaman (Ajang’s son) adolescent males, microcosmic society of, 37–38 elder of two brothers, 38 forest camp and the fieldworker, 55–60 group sleeping with fieldworker, Yayo, Dedi, Silingkup and Nina, 27, 36–37, 80–82, 117 personality and resentments, 38–39 sexual curiosity, 61 soap and bathing, 169–70 Tampong and his sons, 78–82 Tampong’s encampment, search for, 199 turtle searching, 52 Yayo, visit to, 217–18 tame (jinak), 130n1, 231 Tampong (family head) adolescent males, did little to discipline, 39 adolescent sons, 27, 36–37, 39, 42 Buyong challenged Tampong’s authority, 199–200 common great-grandfather with Ajang, 33 family unit, 33–34 fieldworker’s visit to Tampong’s group, 198–204 forest, return to, 199, 217 grooming and delousing, 75–76

Index

hut shared with three wives and children, 27 local maps and wayfinding, 151– 53 Malay traders visit Sungai Gelumpang; Tampong, Manja, Kirai, Nina, Dedi, Silingkup, Talaman, Ajang, Malay traders, 108f4.1 Manja and trader, 53–54 meeting at timber manager’s office at P.T. IFA base camp, 90–93 Silingkup support, 216 sons travelled together, 42 Sungai Gelumpang, de facto leader of, 90 Sungai Gelumpang, huts and family units at, 25f1.1, 27 Sungai Gelumpang, volatile union on arrival, 33–35 Sungai Gelumpang and extended family, 89–91 Tampong holding a captured turtle, 66f2.1 Tampong in Sumai River, 108f4.2 Tampong with family and Ajang’s third wife Timpo, 67f2.2 third wife, deceased, 37 wives (5) and 19 children; 13 reside in Sungai Gelumpang settlement; 6 in Seranten watershed area, 33 wives forbidden from smoking tobacco, 34 wives had close personal bonds with Ajang’s junior co-wives, 76 tampuy (globular fruit), 101, 232 tanah (earth/ground), 26, 125, 223, 232 tanah celako (cursed/polluted soil), 162, 177, 187, 232 tanah kampong (village land), 170 tapir (munsah), 22, 132–33, 136, 179, 231 Tapirus indicus (Malayan tapir), 22 Telai watershed area, 29 temenggong (headman, highest ranking), 29, 232

Index

tiger (harimau), 230 tiger, respectful term to address (datuk), 180, 230 tiger, Sumatran (Panthera tigris sumatrae) (mergho), 22, 124, 133, 174, 180, 186–87, 195n4, 231 tiger deity, 174 tiko (sleeping mat), 204, 232 timber company workers, 23, 31, 40, 87, 97, 102, 123, 214 Timpo (Yayo’s sister; Ajang’s second wife), 36, 53, 67f2.2–2.3, 179 daughters, 53 infant child, death of, 87–89 TNBT. See Bukit Tigapuluh National Park tobacco, 31–34, 43, 58, 86, 97, 117–18 tobacco pouch, 79 toke (Malay trader/merchant), 39–40, 63, 79, 116–17, 122, 217–18, 232 tombak (spear), 109n5, 117, 131–33, 136–39, 145, 232 touch. See also perception; subjectivity; tactile about, 69–70 field notes: hegemony of tactile interactions, 76–77 human sociality and pre-cultural antecedents, 82–85 sleep and dissolution of corporeal boundaries, 80–82 tactile relations, assimilating into the web of, 77–80 tactility and the domestic camp, 75–77 touch, sociology of, 70–73 touch and early development, 73–75 trade relations, x, 39, 41, 188 traditional way of life, 87, 105 trance. See also shaman (dukon) imagery, 16, 168 induced visions, 15 possession, 190 shamanic (bedeki), 168, 174, 177, 181, 184–87, 200, 229

 271

traveling soul/body soul (haluy badan), 173–74, 184–86, 205–6, 230. See also shaman (dukon) tree, generic (pohon), 56, 58, 64, 100, 129, 133–34, 139, 154, 161–62, 180– 81, 189, 204–5, 223, 232 tree bark, 55 tree burial, 204 tree resin (jerenang), 100 tribes of the interior (suku anak), xivn2 tropical environment, 57, 64, 100, 114, 120, 146, 150 foragers, 56, 107, 225 hunter-gatherers, xiv n2, 86, 94, 154 tuber/wild yam (ubi), 27, 58, 74, 100, 104, 123, 128, 147f6.2, 156, 178, 232 tuhan (god), 169, 171, 232 Turnbull, Collin, 21, 86, 94, 101, 204, 207, 214 turtle (lelabi), 40, 52, 66f2.1, 88, 95, 117, 122, 130n3, 132–33, 136–37, 156, 170, 231 U ubi (wild yam/tuber), 27, 58, 74, 100, 104, 123, 128, 147f6.2, 156, 178, 232 ubi kayu (cassava), 230, 232 ubi kentang (wild potato), 232 ujan (rain), 53, 118, 129, 136, 169–70, 182–83, 201, 203, 232 ulo (snake), 40, 95, 129, 134, 136, 160, 174, 179, 206, 232 ulo sao (reticulated python), 179, 232 ulu (upstream), 175, 232 uncle (momoh/paman), 38, 199, 215–16, 233 uncooked rice (berai), 216, 229 unwed girl (gadis), 56, 76, 119, 230 upstream (ulu), 175, 232 V ventriloquism, 186 village (desa), 20–21, 27, 31, 33, 39–43, 51, 53, 55, 230

 272

village (kampong), 231 village chief (kepala desa), 97, 118 village land (tanah kampong), 170 village-dwellers (orang duson), 21–22 villager (orang kampong), 20–23, 26–27, 29, 31, 33, 39–43, 51, 55–56, 63, 76, 78, 85, 175–79, 183–84, 193, 214–15, 224, 231 villagers (orang terang), 63–64 Malay, 29, 78, 97, 127–28, 175, 177, 179, 193 Muslim, 40, 177 virgin forest/primary forest (rimbo bungaghon), 21, 31, 33, 55, 91, 232 virgins, 206 vision, 12, 14, 57, 71, 73–74 trance-induced, 15 vision-tactility-taste relationship, 74 W wakil (deputy), 232 walking, 120, 124–25 body’s kinesthesia and muscular development, 163 death sites in forest, 213 deities, malevolent, 178 forest trails, 163–64 in forests, 125–28, 134, 153–55, 164, 174 on hilly terrain, 137 hunting and gathering lifestyle, 145 physical aptitude and bodily control, 143 in single line formation, 138 vision, and cognition, 128–29 to walk/to move (bayjalon), 79, 229 water (a-ee), 22, 27, 53, 56, 58, 88, 118, 124, 127, 137, 154, 195n1, 229 water buffaloes, 22 waterborne diseases, 124 we (kito), 231 West Sumatra Province, xii western cast of mind, 4

Index

epistemic rationality, 3 notions of soul, 173 (See also breathing soul) science, 173 society, 8, 73 style clothing, xii, 31, 92, 109n3, 125, 142 wife (bini), 24, 25f1.1, 27, 30, 33–38, 55, 67f2.2–2.3, 76, 78, 89, 95, 103, 116, 123, 132, 179, 195n5, 199–200, 207–8, 215–17, 232 “wife stealing,” 29, 95, 115 wild (liar), 19, 79, 86, 120, 174, 231 wild animals, raising, 179 wild game/meat (louq), 86, 120, 124, 130n1, 151, 154, 231 wild grass (lalang), 205 wild pig (bebi), 42–43, 95, 122, 133–36, 169, 229 wild potato (ubi kentang), 232 wild tubers (beno, gadung), 27, 123, 128 wild turkey, 160 wild yam/tuber (ubi), 27, 58, 74, 100, 104, 123, 128, 147f6.2, 156, 178, 232 wildfires, 218 wildlife sanctuary, 194 witchcraft, 29, 187 women. See also female(s); girl (betina) animal spirits, ability to attract, 195n5 behavioral constraints placed on men, 24 breastfeeding, 73–75 bride price, 36 bride service, 25, 34, 36, 115–16, 215 child rearing practices, 73 child-wife (anak bini), 24 co-wife (wives), 27, 76, 132 (See also polygamy) edible tubers, digging for, 27, 58, 147f6.2 fieldworker avoided bathing in river where women were present, 24

Index

forest camp, women and children in, 159f7.3 grooming, 75 household shelters (susudongan), 55–56, 204 menarche (first menstrual period), 56, 77, 195n5 men’s claims over women, code regarding, 24 menstruation and ineffectiveness of hunter’s poisoned arrows, 195–96n5 subordinate and nurturing role, 75 Talaman sitting with sisters and infant while women cook, 44f1.12 “wife stealing,” 29, 95, 115 Y yam (hubi), 207, 230 Yayo (Timpo and Arjuna’s younger brother) adolescent males, microcosmic society of, 37–38 Ajang’s authority, attempt to circumvent, 116 Ajang’s daughter, his infractions and desire to marry, 36–37

 273

Ajang’s eldest daughter Kymah, failed attempt at “stealing,” 115–16 bachelor adult male in Sungai Gelumpang, 35–36 fieldworker, relatives accepted, 119 fieldworker stayed in his hut, 24, 27, 37 group sleeping with fieldworker, Talaman and Dedi, Silingkup and Nina, 27, 36–37, 80–82, 117 relatives, reunites with his, 122f5.1 relatives cohabit with Ajang’s group at Sungai Gelumpang, 119 residence in bachelor hut with adolescent sons of Ajang and Tampong, 36 spouse, frustrations in finding a, 116 Sungai Kemumu, 117–19, 217–18 turtle searching, 117, 122, 132 yes (auw), 170, 229 you (kohway), 79, 231 you (mika-ay), 231 younger sibling (adik), 34, 45n3, 85n2, 165n2, 232