The Last Wild Men of Borneo
Page 29
The majority had become semi-settled: Ibid.
He’d grown up working class: Author’s interview with Monika Niederberger, Aesch, Switzerland, August 5, 2015.
His father, though, had a hard edge: Author’s interview with Roger Graf, Zurich, Switzerland, September 17, 2016.
He touched everything: Author’s interview with Monika Niederberger.
Under his leadership: Ruedi Suter, Rainforest Hero: The Life and Death of Bruno Manser (Basel: Bergli Books, 2016), 32.
One day when Monika went to take a bath: Author’s interview with Monika Niederberger.
He often escaped out to the little balcony: Suter, Rainforest Hero, 33.
He created a nest: Ibid.
He disemboweled an old sleeping bag: Ibid., 30.
He started carving: Ibid.
“My profession”: Ibid., 33.
In the seventh grade his class went to the Alps: Ibid., 34–35.
The boom of 1945 to 1973: Nicholas Crafts and Gianni Toniolo, “‘Les Trente Glorieuses’: From the Marshall Plan to the Oil Crisis,” Oxford Hand-books Online, http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199560981.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199560981-e-18, accessed April 17, 2017.
“It was a wild time”: Author’s interview with Erich and Aga Manser, Masein, Switzerland, August 5–7, 2015. I spent three days with Erich and Aga, staying at their home, hiking with them to the hut where Bruno lived in the Alps, and visiting the village of Nufenen, where Bruno lived off and on for several winters. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes and information attributed to them came from our daily discussions during this time.
As Bruno neared graduation: Suter, Rainforest Hero, 40.
“Each of us wants to be ourself”: Ibid., 35.
“It is the task of every individual”: Ibid.
“He could be so funny and childlike”: Author’s interview with Edmund Grundner. I spent parts of two days with Grundner at his house in Halien, Austria, August 8–9, 2015, and we met three more times in Bali in February 2016.
Judge Lieutenant Riklin watched: Suter, Rainforest Hero, 46.
“At the moment he has not succeeded”: Ibid.
“the energy I have to expend is very high”: Manser, Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald, 73. Unless otherwise noted, all the descriptions and quotes related to Bruno’s search for the Penan in this chapter are from chapter 3 of his journals.
Two
It was a half mile wide, chocolate brown: I have filled in some details of Palmieri’s descriptions of the Mahakam River between Samarinda and Melak from my own experiences on that same stretch of river in a similar vessel in 1987.
Gardner McKay, the show’s hero: Episodes of Adventures in Paradise are widely available on YouTube.
Those last summers in California: My understanding of the cultural and political backdrop of what Michael Palmieri and Bruno Manser were going through as teenagers was deepened by Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope and Rage (New York: Bantam, 1987).
Three
Bruno woke, heard those quiet voices: Bruno Manser, Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald 1984–1990 (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2004), 73. Unless otherwise noted, all the descriptions and quotes related to Bruno’s search for the Penan in this chapter are from chapter 3 of his journals.
When Bruno emerged from jail: Ruedi Suter, Rainforest Hero: The Life and Death of Bruno Manser (Basel: Bergli Books, 2016), 49.
“The hippies all had this idea”: Author’s interview with Erich and Aga Manser, Masein, Switzerland, August 5–7, 2015. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes and information attributed to them in this chapter came from our daily discussions during this time.
“We sat and talked and talked”: Author’s interview with Georges Rüegg, Gunzwil, Switzerland, September 12, 2016. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes and information attributed to Rüegg came from this interview.
Bruno learned to read the weather: Ibid.
He carved a face: Author’s first-person observation in the Alps with Erich and Aga Manser, August 6, 2015.
His mother and sister visited: Author’s interview with Monika Niederberger, Aesch, Switzerland, August 5, 2015.
“Lately I’ve realized how far removed”: Suter, Rainforest Hero, 57.
In late 1983: Wade Davis, “The Apostle of Borneo,” Outside, January 1991.
The Mulu caves had first been discovered: “The Mulu Caves Project,” http://www.mulucaves.org/wordpress/history-of-exploration, accessed April 14, 2017.
In 1978 Britain’s most famous speleologist: Author’s telephone interview with Andy Eavis, September 16, 2015. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes about Bruno’s sojourn with the expedition and Eavis came from this interview.
Four
It was late June 1967: Many of the descriptions in this chapter are validated and heightened by Palmieri’s photographs.
The Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan: “Afghanistan Profile—Timeline,” BBC News, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12024253, accessed April 14, 2017.
It was Charles Sobhraj: The story of Sobhraj has been widely told in articles, a film, and a book, including Andrew Anthony, “On the Trail of the Serpent . . . The Fatal Charm of Charles Sobhraj,” GQ, April 11, 2014, http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/charles-sobhraj-serial-killer-interview, accessed April 14, 2017.
Five
The day after Bruno made contact: Bruno Manser, Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald 1984–1990 (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2004). Unless otherwise noted, all the descriptions and quotes related to Bruno’s search for the Penan in this chapter are from chapter 3 of his journals.
Two hard swings of the machete: Author’s observation during his eighteen-day walk through the forest with Peng Megut, December 2015.
“In my search to understand the deep essence”: Wade Davis, “The Apostle of Borneo,” Outside, January 1991.
“The most outlying lands”: “Arimaspoi,” Theoi Greek Mythology, http://www.theoi.com/Phylos/Arimaspoi.html, accessed April 17, 2017.
“Man is born free”: Rousseau, quoted in Jamie James, The Glamour of Strangeness: Artists and the Last Age of the Exotic (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016), 26.
“I want to go to Tahiti”: Paul Gauguin, quoted in ibid.
“I believe that the art”: Ibid.
“For my temperaments”: James Brooke, quoted in Nigel Barley, White Rajah: A Biography of Sir James Brooke (London: Abacus, 2003), 31.
Even better if you could go so deep: Victor Segalen, Essay on Exoticism, trans. Yael Rachel Schlick (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 34.
The British government: Barley, White Rajah, 105.
It was one thing, after all, to take home natives: Kenn Harper, Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of Minik the New York Eskimo (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2000), 21.
The Native Americans Christopher Columbus: Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 100.
“the Brazilian cannibals”: James, The Glamour of Strangeness, 36.
“all the pictures”: Michel de Montaigne, quoted in ibid.
“the very words that signify lying”: Ibid.
“Shakespeare lifted passages”: James, The Glamour of Strangeness, 36.
“It is noteworthy”: Barley, White Rajah, 45.
Either one was myth, oversimplification: Andrea Lee, “Notes on the Exotic,” New Yorker, November 3, 2014.
In the early days of her research in Borneo: Biruté M. F. Galdikas, Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), 252.
Yet he also said that in being among the Penan: Manser, Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald, 226.
Six
“their craters studded with serene lakes”: Miguel Covarrubias, Island of Bali (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1937), 4.
The American writer Hickman Powell: Powell, quoted in Adrian Vickers, Bali: A Paradise Created (Berkeley, CA: Periplus
Editions, 1989), 2.
The island “dripped and shone”: Colin McPhee, quoted in ibid., 1.
“No other race gives the impression”: Covarrubias, Island of Bali, 11.
“The slender Balinese bodies are”: Ibid.
“For the Balinese, everything that is high”: Ibid., 10.
Two Australians had just opened: Author’s interview with Michael Palmieri. For more information and a good history of the surfing scene and development of Kuta, Legian, and the beaches of southern Bali, including the Blue Ocean, see Phil Jarratt, Bali: Heaven and Hell (Melbourne: Hardie Grant Books, 2014).
Right there in the palms: Norman Lewis, An Empire of the East (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 92.
the highest concentration of killings: Howard Palfrey Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 386.
The Dong Son of Vietnam: Reimar Schefold and Steven G. Alpert, eds., Eyes of the Ancestors: The Arts of Island Southeast Asia at the Dallas Museum of Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 20–21.
The Portuguese, the first westerners: Barley, White Rajah: A Biography of Sir James Brooke (London: Abacus, 2003), 34.
In 1841 the rich British adventurer: Ibid., 57.
In Dayak consciousness: There are many good sources on Dayak religion and culture. Unless otherwise noted, the sections in this chapter come from: Sian Jay, Art of the Ancestors: Nias, Batak, Dayak: From the Private Collections of Mark A. Gordon and Pierre Mondolini (London: Alliance Française de Singapour, 2007); Christina F. Kreps, Liberating Culture: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation (London: Routledge, 2003), 32–42; Jean Paul Barbier and Douglas Newton, eds., Islands and Ancestors: Indigenous Styles of Southeast Asia (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988); Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid, eds., The Potent Dead: Ancestors, Saints and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia (Honolulu: Allen and Unwin and University of Hawaii Press, 2002); and Schefold and Alpert, Eyes of the Ancestors.
Integral to this idea was: Biruté M. F. Galdikas, Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), 231.
“as antimatter is to physicists”: Ibid.
Especially valued were brass gongs: Kreps, Liberating Culture, 36.
Carl Bock, whose 1882 account: Carl Bock, The Head-Hunters of Borneo: A Narrative of Travel Up the Mahakkam and Down the Barito (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1995 [1881]), 198.
Others said that the jars themselves were fruits: Kreps, Liberating Culture, 36.
By the time of Michael’s forays: Richard Lloyd Parry, In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos (New York: Grove Press, 2005), 17–84.
Flying into Pangkalan Bun: As he traveled over the years, Michael Palmieri kept sporadic journals; in addition to the author’s interviews with him, much of the information in this chapter is based on those journals.
Seven
For centuries, what is now Peninsular Malaysia: Lukas Straumann, Money Logging: On the Trail of the Asian Timber Mafia (Basel: Bergli Books, 2014), 75–103.
The Brookes’ reign in Sarawak: Barley, White Rajah: A Biography of Sir James Brooke (London: Abacus, 2003), 46–94.
The Penan, who for generations: Peter G. Sercombe and Bernard Sellato, eds., Beyond the Green Myth: Hunter-Gatherers of Borneo in the Twenty-First Century (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2007), 303–11.
And as huge rubber plantations were created: Straumann, Money Logging, 69.
At the turn of the nineteenth century: Ibid.
James Brooke’s nephew turned Sarawak over: Ibid., 75.
And in 1963 Britain finally ceded: Ibid., 82–83.
Here Malaysian and Sarawak politics become complex: Ibid., 87–97.
In 1966 the Malaysian government: Ibid.
Logging in Sarawak exploded: Ibid., 109–11.
In his first six years in office: Ibid.
In 1987 the Wall Street Journal reported: James P. Sterba, “Malaysian Tribe Fights to Preserve Forests, Win Native Rights,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 1987.
Six tropical timber conglomerates: Straumann, Money Logging, 111.
In 1965 loggers cut down: Ibid., 110.
To keep it sustainable: Ibid.
But by 1981 the number had climbed: Ibid.
Annually, that is: Ibid.
Not long after Bruno’s arrival: Author’s interview with Mutang Urud, Montreal, Canada, September 28, 2017. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes and information attributed to Mutang came from this interview.
In a letter to his brother: Bruno Manser to Peter Manser, March 9, 1985. Unless otherwise noted, all letters between Bruno and others quoted here came from the archives of the Bruno Manser Fund, Basel, Switzerland, accessed September 3–5, 2015, and translated from German and Swiss German by Sophie Biglar and Nicole Ganzert.
“I had just completed my second-to-last year”: Harrison Ngau quoted in Straumann, Money Logging, 112.
“As the meeting was taking place”: Straumann, Money Logging, 112.
After “a friendly talk”: Sterba, “Malaysian Tribe Fights to Preserve Forests.”
In October 1984, a twenty-five-year-old: Author’s interview with Roger Graf, Zurich, Switzerland, September 17, 2016. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes and information attributed to Graf came from this interview.
“Now we’re walking”: Bruno Manser, Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald 1984–1990 (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2004), 149.
“Any appeals by the Penan”: Ibid., 166.
“Big Man, that’s how he greeted me”: Ibid., 306.
“A child wants to come into the world”: Ibid., 160.
“Huddled closely together”: Ibid, 275.
Eight
Kim Kardashian’s ninety-eight million: Kim Kardashian West’s Instagram account, accessed April 17, 2017.
Malaysia’s politically powerful and majority Muslims: Comments in newspapers and books by Malaysians are filled with condescending statements, no more so than in James Ritchie’s book Bruno Manser: The Inside Story (Singapore: Summer Times Publishing, 1994)—the Penan are “untidy and skimpily dressed” (109); “the deplorable conditions of this poverty stricken group” (30); “the hopeless, illiterate native children” (142)—and in Prime Minister Mahathir’s own statements: “the Penan live on maggots and monkeys in their miserable huts.” Mahathir Mohamed to Bruno Manser, March 3, 1992.
To Malaysians they were the lowest of the low: Mahathir Mohamed to Bruno Manser, March 3, 1992.
In early August 1985, James Ritchie: Ritchie, Bruno Manser, 1.
“WHAT. . . . You must be joking”: Ibid.
“He is stirring a hornets nest”: Ibid, 2.
Malaysian newspapers are government-controlled: Derek Jones, ed., Censorship: A World Encyclopedia (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2001), 1702.
A police inspector named Lores Matios: Bruno Manser, Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald 1984–1990 (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2004), 409–13. This story is related over those five pages. James Ritchie also provides a secondhand account of Bruno’s escape from Matios in Bruno Manser.
Rolf Bokemeier, the editor from GEO: “Ihr habt die Welt-laßt uns den Wald!,” GEO, October 1986.
Those images were powerful: Andrew Revkin, Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990).
He had, finally, gone to see James Wong: Ritchie, Bruno Manser, p. 2.
“‘If he is here, please tell me’”: Ibid., 25.
They still wouldn’t tell Ritchie: Ibid., 27.
As Ritchie left the camp: Ibid., 30–31.
On September 15, 1986: Ibid., 34.
The only reason to meet, he said: Ibid., 40.
Ritchie refused to go: Ibid., 41.
Two weeks later, however, Ritchie’s first story: Ibid., 50.
Word of the piece: Ibid., 51–55.
As the two continued to correspond: Ibid., 238.
“The petitio
n,” wrote Ritchie: Ibid., 60.
Five days later Ritchie went to see Abdul Taib Mahmud: Ibid., 61.
“A reporter of the largest Malaysian daily”: Manser, Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald, 225.
In mid-November, Ritchie and a crew: Ritchie, Bruno Manser, 63.
At the meeting the next day in the forest: Ibid., 91.
“On the next day I even dare”: Manser, Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald, 225.
“Before they arrive, they shoot”: Ibid.
“Oh, Lakei Ja’au!”: Ibid. All of the descriptions of this escape are from this same section of Bruno’s journals.
The next morning: Ibid., 226.
Nine
These “cult objects and other savage utensils”: Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 5.
Back then public museums and art galleries didn’t exist: Michael M. Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992), 16.
Or even, in many cases: Kenn Harper, Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of Minik the New York Eskimo (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2000), 21.
In 1753 the physician Sir Hans Sloane: Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes, 18.
Many of the original ethnographic objects: Ibid., 17.
The cabinet of curiosities: Ibid.
Exotic flora and fauna: Ibid., 51.
“the touchstone of artistic value”: Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, 17.
At the Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893: Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes, 51.
“All alone in that awful museum”: Widely quoted and originating in André Malroux, La tête d’obsidienne (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), 17–19.
In March 1935 the Museum of Modern Art: MoMA press release, March 9, 1935, https://moma.org/d/c/press_releases/W1siZiIsIjMyNTAzNCJdXQ.pdf ?sha=640f4315112d8f36, accessed April 17, 2017.
“My interest in primitive art”: Kathleen Bickford Berzock and Christa Clarke, eds., Representing Africa in American Art Museums (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), 125.
In Europe, with its long history: “The Story Behind a Collection,” Musée Barbier-Mueller, http://www.barbier-mueller.ch/vie-du-musee/presentation/historique/?lang=en, accessed April 17, 2017.