Tracking shots, men in boat,

Motorboat

01.00.00.00

Joseph speaking

in boat

Joseph:  All this land will be flooded and will be submerged under the water if the dam is going to be built.  The land here belongs to the Kenyah native.  They are the people who live within this land and in these surroundings.  The land is theirs.

We try our best to defend what we have according to the law that exists now which safeguards our rights on our land and on everything we have.

Boat in rapids,

people in boat

Davis:  This is the very heartland of Borneo's native culture and it's about to be totally destroyed. 

Super: 

Mark Davis

Some 9,000 people are going to be removed from these rainforests next year and force onto plantations to work as labourers.

The Kenyah, the Kayan, the Penan are going to be obliterated and yet no one is allowed in here to hear their stories - not even their lawyers who they've commissioned to help save their land.

The Bakun Dam is not just one of the biggest hydro schemes ever devised, it's also become Malaysia's biggest secret.

Tracking shot from boat, Joseph and driver in boat, eating, people travelling in long boat, family in boat

For many upriver people these men are the only contact with the outside world.  When the dam was announced they left their city careers, joined Malaysia's main environmental group, SAM, and returned to their tribal homes on the river. 

01.22

It's taken three days hidden in the backs of cars and the bottoms of boats for me to get safely into their land.

For the past twelve months no outsiders have made it past the intensive road blocks and river patrols which have sealed off this region and the risk for them, in assisting me, is substantial.

Music

Village, people working, kids

The village of Long Geng is a world away from the dealmakers and security forces downstream.  It's far upriver but not far enough to be spared from the waters of the Bakun which will spread one hundred and sixty kilometres inland.

02.31

Anyone who supports the dam is given full voice in Malaysia, especially politicians who stand to make personal fortunes from Bakun. 

Hut, interview with young man,

But these people are never heard.

family group

in circle talking, smoking

Young Man:  A citizen from Malaysia or Kuala Lumpar, anyone from peninsular Malaysia could come and help us but the government of Sarawak won't let them come.

03.00

We have no one who can tell our story.  Who can we speak to?  Who can help us?

Davis:  Like dozens of other upriver tribes these people from Long Geng will lose all of their native lands to the Bakun project.  170,000 acres will be consumed and in return each large family expects to receive seven acres, far from their ancestral homes, alongside a company plantation.

03.29

Interviews with family members

Older Man:  There'd be just enough room for one of our big houses! 

03.51

Woman:  Look at our house here.  How many times have we had to add on rooms?

03.57

Man:  We have to think of land for our children and our grand children.

Young Man:  They say that we just waste the land up here, that we just sit on it and don't progress.  What do they mean by progress.  For us life means living with our community.  What they call progress is really murder - killing of the community.

04.09

Man singing, speaking to others

Older Man (sings):  At great depth, great depth, there is water flowing through a channel.  The water is deep and comes up high.  The river spreads wide like the sea.  And all our wealth will be carried away down the channel.  Tell that to him.

04.29

Forest, house, people carrying engine, in boat

Davis:  Over the past two or three decades change has come to the Kenyah - but their self sustaining lifestyle has remained virtually unaltered.

05.16

Each day at Long Geng begins as it has for centuries.  Whole families pile into boats and head off to work - fishing, gathering wild fruits and vegetables or working small farms in forest clearings.

05.27

People working in fields

Tapa Ajau:  Since the beginning of our lives at Long Geng we have made our farms.  We take months to clear the ground, cut the trees, trim the small branches.

05.53

Interview with Tapa Ajau, people working in fields

Then we burn it, then plant it.  After two or three months we start weeding.  After that the rice comes into ear.  Then we eat the fruit of our hard work.

06.07

The rice that we plant that's our life.  If you compare rice with dollars there's no comparison.  However, many tens of thousands of dollars you have it can disappear.  But rice can be kept in our stores forever.  We can ration it out carefully.

06.21

If we've got plenty of rice and we need to go down to the coast to get medicine we can do that if we have plenty of rice.

Bulan Ungau:  Even though it's difficult to live here at times at least we can go and search for vegetables. 

06.58

Interview with Bulan Ungau, people working in field

We can get wild sago.  We have land here.  That's how we can get by - but anywhere else no way.

This is how we earn our living - only through the land.  This is our cash.  The land is our wealth. 

We don't know how to live in a brick house.  We won't be able to eat any of our food there.  No matter how nice the brick house is we won't be able to get our food.  We don't want it, we don't.

If the government want to move us away it would be better to kill us here - all in one go.  finish it.  Then the government would have no more problem.

Kids playing with

Music

ball, family in

house, men in boats, tracking shot along river, man's face close up, boat moving along river

Davis:  It's not just tradition that keep people on the river.  For many of the Kenyah's young people, like Marcos Ding, the poverty of the urban labouring class holds little allure.  His land may provide both a good live and a good living - but according to the government it's not his land at all.

08.21

Marcos:  As much as we are able to, our struggle is to keep our land but others say that it is theirs.  That is our trouble.  Where is our land?  It belongs to the government?  So where is ours?  How have we lived on the earth without any land?

Man throwing fish net from boat

Davis:  If the upriver people are mentioned at all in the local media's rapturous coverage of the dam it is as grateful recipients of government generosity.  They will apparently be better off as wage earners, close to all the facilities that progress and the Malaysian government can provide. 

09.10

Up here it is an old line which has worn thin.

Interview with Marcos

Marcos:  We have seen people that live like that.  Their wage is very small and not nearly enough to support all the people in their house.  We live on the land here and we are free to seek what we want when we want.

We upriver people cannot follow the ways of the foreigners down river.  This Malaysian government just want to kill us off.  Maybe they'll get some profit out of it but we the common people just get suffering.  They say it's progress but we say it's just trouble.

The government says this is their land, we say it is ours.  We planted the fruit trees on the land and we have cared for them.  They're not government fruit trees on government land - they're our fruit trees on our land.

House, boat, man

10.16

people walking through forest, picking fruit

Women speaking to camera

Woman one:  We are making the river muddy.

11.05

Woman two:  We like to eat fish and this way the fish don't see us.

Woman one:  We call the fish up.  They don't see us, so we scoop them.

Woman two:  Naughty, aren't we?

Woman one:  We will drive the fish upriver crazy.

Child fishing with net, woman speaking to camera

We are sick in the heart that they want to block up the Bakun.  The government lies over and over to us.  They come again and again and deceive us each time.

11.33

We don't want to let this valley go.  It's our fish, our pond from which we eat.  We don't want them to block our river.  When the river is flooded our houses will be submerged and we don't want it.

11.49

Woman in pink blouse speaking

Younger woman:  We want to stay where our ancestors from the beginning lived, because it is very good here.  If we go to this other place there won't even be a chip of wood or even a curly fern leaf for our vegetable.

12.11

Why would we want to go there?  We would not be able to work as coolies.  'You are too old anyway' they'd say. 

Fish in net,

Woman:  This one's got eggs.

yabbies in net,

women, man playing

Woman:  'Yatib'

instrument, house,

woman working,

Davis:  Yabbie, yabbie.

12.45

baby bouncing

kid with guitar

Woman:  Yabbie, yabbie.

Music

Davis:  Some of the people here are talking of moving inland as the waters rise to hidden valleys where the government won't find them. 

13.07

But the dam will bring a ring of roads and roads bring soldiers and officials and court orders and gaols - there will no longer be any forests or distant rivers to run to - the impenetrable heartland of Bakun will be gone.

Old man walking with stick, blind man talks, Ugang Alung sings with him, interview with Ugang Alung

As the roads and earthworks start downstream the old men, mostly in secret, have begun singing to their ancestors, seeking their forgiveness for abandoning them.

13.36

Blind man:  However long we live we will probably not meet again.  So he asks us to sing the song so we sing it for him and we'll miss him after he goes.

13.47

Ugang Alung:  We are heartbroken when we think of these things.  Who will care for our ancestors graves if they are flooded.

14.30

We'll leave our fruit trees, the earth of our farms, our house.  Even though our houses are poor it breaks our hearts to leave them because we are used to them.

Davis with Ugang Alung on bridge, boat, interview with Ugang Alung

Davis:  If they take his land Ugang Alung wants to stay on the shores of the new dam but the government has rejected that plan outright.  If he and his family haven't left by next July he knows that the army and police will come to drag them away.

15.10

Ugang Alung:  We would like to stay on the edge of the new lake.  Where the waters come up, that is where we want to stay.

Even though they will send the soldiers, we won't go.  If they want to shoot us then let them shoot us and then we will be at peace.

Kids running,

Music

playing, woman

hanging out wash, kid with grass, people in boats, kids watching, family in boat

Davis:  It's easy to forget the world of Malaysian politics up here but it's never really far away.  After just a few days in Long Geng I was spotted by a helicopter and knew that a security force would be dispatched immediately.

16.14

Marcos:  Hope to see you again.

Davis:  Thanks very much Marcos, thanks very ....

Davis:  To protect the tapes, that may be the last testimony of the Kenyah at Long Geng.  I left the river under the cover of night.  But it seems that there'll be no escape for the Kenyah - in a few months Long Geng will be gone.

The Malaysian government seems to believe that if no on can see the devastation that this dam will create then no one will care.  And, as the contracts are sealed and the work begins, it seems that they're right.

ENDS

17.13