Help Communities in Borneo Protect their Heritage

The DISSOLVA 2016 Borneo Project, Gakushuin University’s Overseas Outreach Programme, is about to start with a fresh new group of students. With thanks to community leaders and youth from Ulu Papar, in early May this year we conducted a study tour to Kinabatangan to learn about the essentials of community-based ecotourism and also had a meeting in Buayan in preparation for the summer.

The inspection visit to Sabah, held 2 - 9 May, provided an opportunity for the Buayan community to learn from the community in Mukim Batu Puteh and to prepare for the future. 'For us the timing was crucial', says Shinobu, 'as from 2017 onwards, Gakushuin’s formal involvement through our outreach programme ends so we would no longer be able to support such experiences anymore."

To help the community start up community-based eco-tourism (CBET) in Buayan, we envisage 11 interrelated projects to be pursued during the project this summer (from 4 - 22 August): tree planting; waste water treatment; office renovation; signage development; society registration; homestay registration; handicraft-making; mapping; oral history publication; a CBET study tour; and a CBET exhibition.

In relation to the oral histories publication project initiated by local community researchers, we met with Imelda and Jenny, who are now leading the project, discussing details of the Ulu Papar folklore storybook publication in four languages and a Sabah community-based ecotourism exhibition in the local district library. The manuscript of the folklore tales is now with Buayan-born UMS history researcher Imelda who is working to complete translations into English, Malay and the Dusun dialect used in Buayan. When the basic translation is finished, it will be translated into Japanese by Gakushuin University students, with the aim to make the end result a quadrilingual publication.

To kick off efforts using this meaningful cultural outreach tool, we are planning a presentation of these stories this summer to the students of SK Buayan, the primary school in Buayan. One possibility is to do this in the form of a play. Combined, arts and culture are a powerful force that can change the reputation and the trajectory of a community.

Photo caption:

An eight-year collaboration among Dusun communities, local government authorities and NGOs fostered the emergenceof youth as community researchers with the capacity to actively engage in efforts to preserve their environment. Jenny, one of them from Buayan, co-led the GlobalGiving project on oral histories, building on intensive efforts carried out during the earlier collaboration.