The local wisdom of Dayak said that nature is part of your life. When you devastated forest, you created a wipeout not only for your life, but also for your next generations. There’s an ancient idiom, river is the blood and land is the breathing for whole beings.
Forest has the undeniable meaning for Dayaknese. Preserving the forest is the natural bear-ability as a Dayaknese, as the Dayak Iban in Jalai Lintang do. They live with no ambition to enrich themselves excessively, and keep on communal living innately.
Bandi (usually called Apai Janggut), the leader (Temenggung) of Iban community in Jalai Lintang, Sungai Utik, said, his community entrust to sustain farming land, forest, river and lake as “supermarket” for all humankind.
He said, the traditional rights (well-known as Adat-rights) cannot be accused by whoever as it’s an eternal inheritance of their forefather.
Jalai Lintang hamlet encompasses of seven small villages: Lauk Rugun, Mungguk, Pulan, Apan (Langgan Baru), Ungak dan Sungai Telebian. Those are in Sungai Utik Village, north Putussibau, Kapuas Hulu.
Jalai Lintang was a pilot project for community based forest protection program from 2004-2006, by European Union, Indonesian Ecolabelling Organization, Indonesian Forest Watch and Alliance of Indonesian Traditional Community.
This project empowered local community of having more significant role in taking part for the sustainable forest management program on 9,400 hectares of forest in Sungai Utik. For two year-effort in preserving forest, the Jalai Lintang community received a tribute of certification on traditional (Adat, red) forest, from Minister of Foresty of Indonesia, M.S. Kaban several years ago. In Sungai Utik there’s one long house (with 28 doors), occupied by two hundred persons.
