Penan People - Lifestyle

Lifestyle

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

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

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