Seeing the utan from the orang: A decolonial Indigenous approach to orang utan conservation in Sarawak.

Thesis

This thesis takes an Indigenous decolonial turn for a rich, empirical analysis of the seemingly paradoxes of human-environment or human-animal relationships within the multi-scalar forces of conservation. Indigenous relations is more-than-human relations and further, necessitates fresh inquiry into specific politics and strategies of concealment that rural Indigenous communities may employ in response to conservation actions. This thesis seeks to understand the multiple Indigenous strategies to maintain relations with lands and orang utans through an interdisciplinary approach of decolonial and political ecology frameworks, including decolonizing ethnographic methods. In considering human-orang utan relations in ecological time and subtle Indigenous responses to conservation forces and action in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, I build on lndigenous decolonial and political ecology frameworks, including Vizenor’s (2008, 1999) Indigenous survivance and Simpson’s (2007, 2014) politics of refusal. I demonstrate the multiple ways human-orang utan relations are realized within the power relations of conservation work. These findings provide a theoretical and decolonial grounding of understanding the different ways of Indigenous Iban presencing, and provide a way forward in developing a decolonial political ecology of orang utan conservation.

Authors: Rubis, JM

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-veq51ra9r
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Sarawak; indigenous; Borneo; decolonial; orangutan; conservation
• Subjects: environmental geography; decolonial