17.8 THE ENVIRONMENT AS SEEN BY LOCAL PEOPLE
As Map 7 shows, Botem-Tai people see their village and the roads leading to it as huge, set in an incidental agricultural landscape; whereas to someone passing by on the Federal Road the landscape is an endless plain of oil-palm-bush, the villages so incidental to it as to be almost un-noticed. However, the local people are right, for the human element of the landscape is the most important: it is a landscape created by mankind.
They see themselves as part of a much wider world and their communications with that world are important (the bus stop is a very important place), because it represents access to resources that are no longer available at home. But the intrusion of that world into their lives as represented by the oil industry is sensed as a threat: the oil flares, the pipelines and the oil spills are constantly referred to.
The land is seen as the resources that are taken from it. Perhaps the area of cultivated land is seen as small compared with the village because it does not produce much, although the women who carry the produce into the village on their heads comment on the big distances between some of their farms and the village.
Little reference is made to forest apart from something that was in the past and only one chief who regretted its loss.
Chief S............ of Bien Guara:
There is no forest left; now we know the use of the forest; God did not make mistakes; we are misusing the land; it is we who make the forest to farms.
The typical understanding of the environmental problems facing the Botem-Tai people is voiced by two women:
Mrs D. A.:
The land is not fertile at all. This is not what used to be. I agree that there is great pressure on the land. But does that problem come from God? God has a way of balancing things. If not of these artificial problems created by other people, I think the problem of land pressure would have sorted itself out. Our grandfathers know how to do these things. They would consult the gods and everything would be all right. We have sinned and that is why foreigners have come to spoil our land. We must retrace our steps.
Mrs N. A.: The land has changed. ... I do not know what is responsible for the low yield. I do not believe it is over-pressure on the land... There must have been some outside influence, we do not understand. I do not know what is responsible for the low yield. ... Some say the ground has been poisoned. Others say the air is not good because it is polluted. Others say our ancestors are angry with us. ...Me personally, I do not know...
The general feeling is that pollution from the oil industry and extracting the oil away has made the soil infertile. No one has any doubt that oil spills have polluted water supplies and fishing resources: the evidence is clear.
