Men, Thunder God, Animals

Some 500 Western Penan live along the upper reaches of the Belaga River in Kapit Division, Sarawak and are nowadays still heavily reliant on hunting for their living.   The Penan eat almost all creatures, both in the forest and the river, such as wild boar, deer, monkey, fish and so on.

In most cases, Penan hunters leave for hunting wordlessly, and then also return home silently if they obtain game animals.  On the other hand, if they return home without game, they murmur “piah pesaba” (angry words for animals).

The Penan usually say that people should butcher, cook and eat the meat as soon as possible after killing animals for food.    In general, their relations with animals are always as simple as this.

In contrast to such laid-back attitudes towards animals, the Penan pay great attention to treating (game) animals.  The Penan believe that playing with animals or treating them badly angers the Thunder God (balei gau), causing strong storms, heavy rain, flooding or human petrification, which are the most feared natural disaster for the Penan. 

With this in mind, the Penan usually strive to quell the Thunder God’s anger caused by human misconduct (penyalah) in terms of their mistreatment of animals, by invocating ritual phrases, if thunder and lightning appears in the sky.  They are likely to perform the migah langit (prayer for the sky) ritual.

What I would like to explore is the Penan relations with nature, and with animals in particular, by analyzing data concerning both their attitudes towards animals and their ritual behavior.

(A Penan man cooks a monkey)