Sarawak Culture Sarawak Penan Culture People of the Forest : The Penan

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Long Keluan Long Keluan Long Keluan
Long Keluan Long Keluan Long Keluan
Long Keluan Long Keluan Long Keluan
Long Keluan Long Keluan Long Keluan

Main Penan Settlements

Long Keluan

Long Keluan or Ba’ Keluan is situated some twenty minutes drive from Long San. According to Jagai Asat, the village chief, they settled in this area in 2000 with 35 bilik/amin with an average of 15 people in a family. Most of the inhabitants of this particular settlement have travelled out of their village in order to find employment elsewhere. 

They either go to Long Lama, Marudi or Miri in search of employment and a hope for a better life. The Penan of Long Keluan are provided with a generator for electricity supply by the government. Jagai reports that the generator was provided to their settlement in 2008. For their water supply, the villagers  depend solely on the Keluan River. Like other sedentary communities in Sarawak the villagers of Long Keluan farm and rear chickens. They plant vegetables, tapioca and hill paddy. One inherited and valuable skill that this group of Penan have is the art of blacksmithing.

In the village there are three blacksmithing workshops that take up the task of preparing machetes or parang ilang, hoes and beluing (hand sickle)  for the Kayan, Kenyah or other groups, who highly regard their blacksmithing workmanship and
skills. 

            Merinting Saran, one of the village blacksmiths, states that he began to take up blacksmithing full time in 1997. In general, he claims that the blacksmiths in the village can normally finish one parang a day. However, they rely heavily on scrap metal, such as disposed leaf springs of timber trucks as raw material for their blacksmithing. The scrap metal is obtained from the timber camps which dot the surrounding areas. Iron bars (bareh in Penan) for blacksmithing used to be bought from traders in Long Akah  or Marudi in the past but this has since ceased, due to the fact that the bars are no longer commercially available.

 
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