1995 was a banner year for the Berkeley-Borneo. A delegation from Berkeley traveled to Uma Bawang to celebrate our union as sister communities and to show indigenous leaders how to use modern technology to map their lands. In this newsletter is a reprint of the article in Earth Island detailing that trip.

Since the publication of that article, two remarkable events have occurred which could be of great importance to the indigenous rights movement. The first is that people trained at the mapping workshop have traveled to the upper Baram to teach the Penan mapping skills.

Two members of the Project saw first hand the potential importance of such a workshop when we traveled in August to the upper Baram and spent a week with the Saban and Penan peoples. Malaysian Airlines had recently begun regular air service to this very remote region. The flight alone was worth the trip.  From the windows of the little prop plane the startlingly complex canopy of the primary forest reminded me of a coral reef. With rain clouds cascading down the sides of the mountains, you could almost feel the forest breathing.

The flight also offered a sobering view of the logging.  Huge tracts of the forest have been cut. Every few minutes I saw red gashes in the green where entire hillsides have eroded and slid. Every mountain top seems to be cut by badly eroding logging roads.

We flew into the longhouse settlement of Long Banga. The logging roads are just now reaching this area and the people of the upper Baram are very concerned. The Penan are well aware of what logging has done to the lives of their relatives in the area near Gulung Mulu. They are showing tremendous ingenuity in resisting the logging. A Penan famous for his hunting skills showed me signs he'd posted in the virgin forest claiming it as ancestral land and warning loggers to leave it alone. He also showed me tracks where the village has planted an understory of medicinal plants beneath a stand of towering ironwood trees to demonstrate that the forest can be left almost wild and still produce economically important goods.

The situation in the Upper Baram is tense. Logging companies are bulldozing their way into an area where, for many generations, community values have been more important that personal profit. Among the Penan, rape, murder, and theft are unknown; selfishness is considered a bad offense. We found these peoples to be deeply troubled by the approaching logging. They expressed great interest in the work of Uma Bawang and in the mapping workshop. It's with great pride that we can report that mappers trained in Uma Bawang have recently been to Long Banga and are holding workshops is the upper Baram. Teaching the Penan mapping skills could be a significant aid in their struggle to protect their land.

The other event was so unexpected that at first I couldn't believe it. On December 20th, 1995 a Malaysian judge ruled that the people from Uma Bawang who were arrested in 1987 for blockading a logging road which had been illegally constructed on their land  were wrongfully arrested.   There are over 50 cases pending in the Malaysian Courts brought against the authorities on the behalf of the indigenous peoples. This is the first case in which the judiciary has ruled in favor of the indigenous peoples. The vast majority of the cases are kept in a Kafka like limbo and are never brought to judgment; meanwhile the trees keep coming down.  It's hard to say if this victory means the door is opening to time when indigenous peoples have equal rights. It is, at least, a moral victory and a well- deserved affirmation of the courage and tenacity of the people of Uma Bawang. It will likely be an inspiration to other longhouses. Perhaps it will be a turning point.