Rumah Nor

Here's a short film about the Iban and Dayak people's struggle to protect their lands against logging companies in Borneo. Some scenes in my realistic teen novel, My Blue Country, are set in the same area as these longhouses, around Sebu and Bintulu. Indeed, a lot of this looks familiar to me and I think I drank tuak and ate sticky rice in bamboo with these very people! (My book is based on my year-long participation in Canada World Youth/Jeunesse Canada Monde 1972-73.) And I remember dancing to the gongs the way the Tuai Rumah (Headman) dances at the end of the film. I wish these people well. Surely there is no question here as to who is right and who is wrong; but will right prevail? This is also research for my new book as one of my characters, Penny Li Jauh, a Baba-Nonya woman from Malacca, is married to an Iban man. (I've got the whole world in this book.)