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The strange case of the missing village rights to land: G.C. Woolley's compilation of customary law in the colony of North Borneo.

Article Excerpt
I consider it a mistake to allow any body of men, who have monetary interests, to have absolute control over a territory; for as long as human nature is what it is there must always be a temptation for the directors and shareholders in such a company to sanction.... revenue-producing schemes which may be exceedingly damaging to the native peoples entrusted to their care. In fact there must be a possibility of those who are largely interested in the company caring little from what sources and what manner dividends are procured.

Evans 1922:43

Introduction

G.C. Woolley prepared a series of Native Affairs Bulletins in the late 1930s for the North Borneo Chartered Company. These detailed the customary law or adat of various peoples in then North Borneo as he understood them. He wrote in Bulletin No. 1 on the adat of the Timogun, a Northern Murutic speaking group, the following, which appears in Chapter XI: Agricultural Customs:

Each kampong had its own flat agricultural land, and no one else could come and occupy any of it without leave from the Headman, who would usually only give it if the applicant had a wife or relatives in the village: for the shifting cultivation of hill clearings (ladang) all were supposed to keep to the watershed of their own village stream (1962:28).

This piqued my interest as evidence for the argument I have made in a number of papers that the village among most, if not all, the swidden agriculturalists of Borneo held residual rights to land.

Woolley's Native Affairs Bulletins

Woolley prepared and/or compiled six Native Affairs Bulletins for the British North Borneo Chartered Company. These I have listed in the table below along with their publishing dates listed as far as I have been able to ascertain. With the exception of No. 1, as noted above, Woolley does not include information on the rights held by the village over its domain.

Date Dedication Wong's Title Reprinted Date Dates * 1 The Timoguns: A Murut Tribe 1962 June 1936 of the Interior, North Borneo 2 Tuaran Adat: Some Customs January 1953 June 1936 of the Dusuns of Tuaran, West Coast Residency, North Borneo 3 Murut Adat: Customs January 1953 ? 1939 Regulating Inheritance amongst the Nabai of Keningau, and the Timogun Tribe of Tenom 4 Dusun Adat: Customs January 1953 December Regulating Inheritance among 1937 the Dusun Tribes in the Coastal plains of Putatan and Borneo 5 Dusun Adat: Some Custom of January 1953 ? 1939 the Dusuns of Tambunan and Ranau West Coast Residency, North Borneo 6 Kwijau Adat: Customs January 1953 ? 1939 Regulating Inheritance amongst the Kwijau of the Interior * Wong (2006). Woolley translated the work of Pangeran Osman bin O.K.K. Pangeran Haji Omar, who was Deputy Assistant District Officer of the Putatan District at the time. For further information see Wong 2006.

These bulletins are curious bits of amateur ethnography at a remove from the field. They are the products of interviews of native chiefs and sometimes headmen. They do not have the depth of understanding that Rutter (orig. 1929; 1985) displays in his summary of the ethnography of North Borneo. In reading these, it is like looking through an imperfect lens full of bubbles so that ethnographic reality is distorted. Every now and then a bit of very interesting ethnographic information slips by the distortion of the lens. But the implications are lost as the context does not come through.

Woolley's Distorting Analytical Lens

This ethnographic distortion is the result of Woolley's use of Malay concepts and categories to describe the indigenous categories. With the exception of No. 1, his studies are focused on moveable property classes, classes of heirs, marriage, adoption, and, in one or two instances, illicit sexual conduct. While they all start on property, there is no systematic inquiry of ethnographic materials. For instance, only one deals with a cemetery.

All the bulletins, with the exception of No.1, divide property into pesaka, 'inherited property,' penchurian sendiri, 'acquisitions as a bachelor or spinster,' penchurian laki-bini, 'acquisitions during marriage,' and brian, 'bride-price.' The economic activities that provision these societies are generally ignored with only a superficial nod to swiddens or wet rice fields. Land tenure is restricted to occasional remarks on the inheritance of individual interests in land.

The distortion of a Malay lens is clearly shown in the category of property called penchurian laki-bini, 'property of the husband and wife.' All of the agricultural societies in Borneo that I am aware of treat property accumulated by a married couple and their children as property of the domestic family, a jurally corporate unit. For example, among the Rungus property accumulated by the family is called indopu 'an do nonbkob, 'durable goods (or property) belonging to the domestic family.' There is no property belonging to the husband and wife as a unit. This is also the case among the Iban (see Freeman 1955, 1958, 1970). Freeman describes the Iban bilek, or domestic family as a jurally corporate group in terms of accumulating property.

But Woolley's distortions in describing property interests by the use of a foreign lens is an issue for another paper. Here we want to focus on the omission of information on the village as a jural unit holding rights of various types over land in the village domain.

The Distortion of Woolley's Lens: Was Woolley Right or Wrong About Village Rights?

Specifically, while Woolley details the rights held by the Timogun village over land in Bulletin No.1, in the other bulletins he does not mention village rights to land. It is pertinent to question whether Woolley was right that there were no rights to land held by the village in other ethnic groups in Sabah. Or was he wrong? If he was wrong, as I shall demonstrate, the question must be posed "why?" Is there a problem of political correctness as happened in Sarawak, which we shall shortly discuss? Or does this represent the usual willful ignorance of the peoples of North Borneo and their customary law by the officers of the Chartered Company? This willful ignorance has continued through the colonial period following World War II, and continued on into the period of independence in which North Borneo became the state of Sabah in the nation of Malaysia (see Appell 1991). (1)

Dates when the Native Affairs Bulletins were written

One might argue that Bulletin No. I was the last one written and by then Woolley had discovered village rights. Therefore, an important question is the date when these bulletins were prepared. Bulletin No. 1, along...

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