Challenges and Limitations

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley – Robert Burns

4.4.1 Seasonalities

Seasonality became a problem with ecological fieldwork, as the sheer volume loss at the reservoir in the dry season is magnified greatly, the drop in water level from the maximum reaching as much as 20m. This unanticipated fluctuation had great

78 consequences. At low water levels, the naturally steep banks become very high, and streams with small rapids become large waterfalls. This posed a serious safety risk as, in order to access the survey sites, we had to grab hold of dried out, exposed tree roots. Exiting survey sites was as hard due to the unstable slopes. In some areas, where the field site was accessed by streams, the boats had to stop at the base of the waterfall and we would have to rock-climb up the banks. Another problem posed by the dry season was that driftwood would tend to collect and block access up some tributaries. Many surveys had to be cancelled when the interlocked pieces of timber became immovable.

On the other hand, the nearly daily occurrences of rain the wet seasons tended to bring heavy, lashing storms, where visibility reduced to less than 5m. Accidents have been known to occur when fishermen tried to race home in the rain with their catch and collided with tree stumps, rocks, or other boats. My host also, just before I arrived, got lost on the way back from the lake himself in the rain. Once the rain subsided, he realised that he had been repeatedly circling one of the small islands.

Besides safety issues, the extreme seasonality brings about operational issues, such as identifying islands to place traps, and needing to know that these islands are permanent, and not submerged during the wet season. For this, we needed to consult the other men and hunters for their own knowledge as these areas are in the land owned customarily by other longhouses.

4.4.2 Access

Besides seasonality, access to survey sites is also challenging due to the shape of the lake. The area of the lake surface is generally accepted to be 700km2_{, and often quoted} to be ‘the size of Singapore’, but, as noted earlier, the shape of the lake is very different to the diamond-shaped island republic. Due to the inundation area being within mountain ranges, Bakun lake has turned out to be an extremely long, dendritic lake. This means that to access survey sites, or visit people who decided to live on the lake, can take a long time and get extremely expensive. For example, to reach Uma Kulit, a Kenyah longhouse which has significant numbers of people living in floating houses on the lake, takes about sixteen hours to and from the jetty and two barrels, or 416 litres, of petrol.

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4.4.3 Positionality

On arrival at the fieldsite and in the process of acquainting myself to the place and people, I was aware and constantly reminded by the locals, of my own collection of identity markers that made me out to be “different”, and a “privileged outsider”. I am a male foreign national, from a rich home country (Singapore), and am a tertiary candidate at the highest level (PhD) from an institution in a country that is somewhat associated with power. A surprising number of people knew that the president of Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) was also an anthropology graduate of the Australian National University (ANU), that many other political leaders were trained in Australia, and that Australian corporate entities had a big role to play in the Bakun Dam; and many were also aware of the Australian missionaries who set up the BEM and brought young Orang Ulu children to Australia to be educated. A few mentioned an Australian anthropologist (who is actually my advisor) who works at Uma Lahanan. They considered her to be more “insider” than I was, as I was new, had no familial relations in the area, and could not speak or understand Kayan, Kenyah or any of the Orang Ulu languages.

I had to keep all the identity markers in mind as I talked to people. I had to remember also that the information that was told to me by the people was a combination of their perception of my identity markers (which then affected their understanding of my conversational intentions), social norms, their own intentions and expectations, and perceived power relations (Briggs, 1986). As they talked to me and assessed my identity, their own experiences and values would prioritise some markers over others, and they would assign a position within the BRS to me (John, 1990). These would place constraints on who I could talk to and what about, or expectations of what I could do for the community. For example, my association with the PRS president made some wary to talk to me about political issues, while others expected various problems to reach the highest levels of government through me. Nevertheless, as argued by Takacs (2003) and Robson and Willis (1994), positionalities can often be turned into advantages. Demands for issues to be brought to political leaders give me direct access to the problems of resettlement, and my foreign nationality as a Singaporean, a country that was formed by separation from the Malaysian Federation which Sarawak is still a part of, enabled discussions at various scales.

80 I would also be associated with my host family, which would later adopt me. This potentially would affect my position within the community, and who I could talk to. The elderly patriarch of the family is one of the last dayongs, while his daughter, whom I lived with is a senior education officer and is called cikgu (or teacher) even when she is referred to in absence, reflecting the relatively high levels of respect accorded to them. Her husband is also popular among the communities in general. The combination of these factors meant that I was afforded very good access to data, from men, women and the elderly to culture to education.

4.4.4 Ethics

4.4.4.1 Animal Ethics

Although the ecological research had been approved by the Animal Ethics panel at the ANU, I realised that there was one aspect that was not covered. My research included the use of camera traps. After the traps were collected, the field assistants were often very excited to see what was captured and I would show them the captured images on my laptop. Soon after, hunters began asking where I placed my traps and what I saw, and I realised that they were hoping to gather data to boost their chances of successful hunts. After this, I made sure that the locations of the cameras were unknown as far as possible (except for location), and that hunters did not get access to the list of species that were sited at particular locations. Some other hunters became interested in my work and when asked about the presence of certain species, said that they were happy to shoot the animal in question to show me. I politely declined these offers and explained that if the animal was shot it would not count as it was dead and no longer present.

4.4.4.2 Human Ethics

Researchers have been accused of exploiting the communities they studied (Smith, 2006). Indeed, one of the things said when I first arrived was that I would just be here to get my data and leave. Clearly, the community has been very heavily studied and had entrusted the researchers to have been able to help improve their lot with the information provided to them. Thus, I tried whenever I could to reciprocate. In addition to paying rent to my host family, I taught them some skills, such as basic book-keeping, as they were trying to keep their small businesses in good shape to attract federal grants. As the project progressed and the results of the political ecology approach became

81 clearer, I started to help resolve livelihood issues on a larger scale (further elaboration in Chapter 8). I helped look into the water and electricity issues in the village and helped expedite the sending of messages to higher authorities. I paid my field assistants fair wages for ecological work, and always paid for the coffee or tea whenever discussions were held in coffee shops, and my informants took the time to travel to the town centre.

Finally, in this thesis, I have tried to maintain anonymity except where the informants are happy to have their names used. In some cases, informants insist that their names are used. I have applied some discretion to these cases, as discussions sometimes covered politically sensitive topics. For example, if someone in leadership has expressed certain views that are already in the public domain then they may not be anonymous here.

4.4.5 Administrative Restrictions and Timelines

Two full years’ fieldwork was planned for in 2012, and ethics approval arrived from the university in March 2013. The fieldwork proposal and approvals were submitted as supporting documents to the Economic Planning Unit of Malaysia and the State Planning Unit of Sarawak for permission to begin field work. Three to six months was advised as processing time, and it was anticipated that fieldwork could start just after the middle of the year. However, the approval for fieldwork only arrived in December 2013, before Christmas, with the research permission to expire by 30 Nov 2015. While two years were actually granted it was impossible to stay in the field for two full years as my candidature was to end in early March 2016, and much time would need to be spent on writing the dissertation.

Research time became further compressed and fragmented when the administrators of the scholarship changed the rules of the award, such that a significant amount of time still needed to be spent within Australia or I would lose my stipend. As such, I had to constantly fly in and out of Sarawak over the field work period. On average, after three months of fieldwork, I returned to Australia for over a month. Thus, all in all, the amount of time spent physically in the field was just over a year.

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