The Last Wild Men of Borneo-By Carl Hoffman
So, as I was perusing the library looking for books of art from indigenous cultures to look at, this title caught my eye. A relatively new one, about a pair of men back in the '60s and '70s with an interesting story between them.
Two men who decided to leave their western upbringings to go live in the wilderness of Borneo, (that's Indonesia) among a tribe of people known as the Penan people. A group of nomadic folks that no one knew about until the early 20th century.
The two men whose lives are chronicled in this book are Michael Palmieri, an American who worked as an art dealer, plundering from foreign cultures, and Bruno Manser, a Swiss man with a very hippie upbringing in the postwar economic boom of that part of Europe at the time, who actually lived as a shepherd in the alps, but decided to "go native" as it were and venture out to Borneo to live with the indigenous peoples. The accounts of the latter's journey there, which appear to be gathered from letters and journals and possible interviews spanning decades, do not give a pleasant tale of his first foray into the jungle. It of course would be unpleasant, and risky.
To me, that always seemed like an incredibly arrogant thing to do. Just wander out into the woods with something to prove, with no real plan for how this is going to play out, like the native peoples are just there for you to use as an exercise. What if they don't want you there? Who says you can just blend into that community and use their resources? Why should they trust you? Because you're white? For most of history, interaction with Europeans has been disastrous for natives, what makes you so special?
But in any case, the story is definitely not boring. He's just lucky he didn't get injured or sick while he was sleeping out in the jungle alone. Fool.
The life of Michael Palmieri takes up a significant portion of the book, with his life being more of an action adventure type thing. Having come of age in the '60s and '70s, he lived the carefree lifestyle that appears to mark those times. He lived as much as he could and tried to experience everything just because it was there. Dodging the Vietnam war and traveling abroad, his luck shot up when he encountered a member of the Afghan royal family, before the revolution, and was contracted to move antiquities and art out of the country for western buyers, and apparently made a killing off of it. He was in high society now, rubbing elbows with movie stars and pro athletes. Kind of answers the mystery of why people go into the plundering business, though the life seems to be mainly self-centered and self involved. It certainly gave me reason to re-assess and add to my already constructed notion of what life was like back in the '60s and early '70s, having not been there myself, and am glad
for that, the more I learn.
Accounts of beaches in India loaded with hippie tourists, living in shacks and strutting around naked, presumably doing very little with their lives, smoking hash and doing drugs all day, proving whatever this proves, that we are "earthy" or "authentic" when to a later generation you just read as spoiled brats with well to do parents. Probably not the spiritually adept, fascinating individuals you imagine yourselves to be. The generation that seemed sure that things would stay this way forever, and we would be young forever, was eventually proven wrong, (and how).
But enough of my rant about "those gosh 'dern hippies." Back to Michael Palmieri: By a stroke of luck, he wound up with the right people, and was in the right place at the right time, and had just the right skill set to become filthy stinking rich, and then decide to move to Borneo to "get away from it all" or whatever and continue the Bohemian life. He did apparently encounter Bruno Manser briefly, but they were not best buddies or anything. And as I understand it, Palmieri was quite a bit older and in a different phase of life.
The really fascinating thing is that Bruno Manser, the Swiss man, eventually took up the cause of fighting against a logging company and deforestation in that area. He teamed up with members of the Penan tribe and staged rebellions against the people cutting down their homeland, to the point where, in the year 2000, he actually mysteriously vanished. Poof. Without a trace. Maybe the Malaysian government got him? Maybe the pressure got too intense and he committed suicide or decided to go off the grid to protect himself? No one knows. But since then he's not turned up.
Really a fascinating lesson about the lives we lead, how anything is possible, and learning of someone else's journey lets you know what sort of options you might have for yourself.
Two men who decided to leave their western upbringings to go live in the wilderness of Borneo, (that's Indonesia) among a tribe of people known as the Penan people. A group of nomadic folks that no one knew about until the early 20th century.
The two men whose lives are chronicled in this book are Michael Palmieri, an American who worked as an art dealer, plundering from foreign cultures, and Bruno Manser, a Swiss man with a very hippie upbringing in the postwar economic boom of that part of Europe at the time, who actually lived as a shepherd in the alps, but decided to "go native" as it were and venture out to Borneo to live with the indigenous peoples. The accounts of the latter's journey there, which appear to be gathered from letters and journals and possible interviews spanning decades, do not give a pleasant tale of his first foray into the jungle. It of course would be unpleasant, and risky.To me, that always seemed like an incredibly arrogant thing to do. Just wander out into the woods with something to prove, with no real plan for how this is going to play out, like the native peoples are just there for you to use as an exercise. What if they don't want you there? Who says you can just blend into that community and use their resources? Why should they trust you? Because you're white? For most of history, interaction with Europeans has been disastrous for natives, what makes you so special?
But in any case, the story is definitely not boring. He's just lucky he didn't get injured or sick while he was sleeping out in the jungle alone. Fool.
The life of Michael Palmieri takes up a significant portion of the book, with his life being more of an action adventure type thing. Having come of age in the '60s and '70s, he lived the carefree lifestyle that appears to mark those times. He lived as much as he could and tried to experience everything just because it was there. Dodging the Vietnam war and traveling abroad, his luck shot up when he encountered a member of the Afghan royal family, before the revolution, and was contracted to move antiquities and art out of the country for western buyers, and apparently made a killing off of it. He was in high society now, rubbing elbows with movie stars and pro athletes. Kind of answers the mystery of why people go into the plundering business, though the life seems to be mainly self-centered and self involved. It certainly gave me reason to re-assess and add to my already constructed notion of what life was like back in the '60s and early '70s, having not been there myself, and am glad
for that, the more I learn.
Accounts of beaches in India loaded with hippie tourists, living in shacks and strutting around naked, presumably doing very little with their lives, smoking hash and doing drugs all day, proving whatever this proves, that we are "earthy" or "authentic" when to a later generation you just read as spoiled brats with well to do parents. Probably not the spiritually adept, fascinating individuals you imagine yourselves to be. The generation that seemed sure that things would stay this way forever, and we would be young forever, was eventually proven wrong, (and how).
But enough of my rant about "those gosh 'dern hippies." Back to Michael Palmieri: By a stroke of luck, he wound up with the right people, and was in the right place at the right time, and had just the right skill set to become filthy stinking rich, and then decide to move to Borneo to "get away from it all" or whatever and continue the Bohemian life. He did apparently encounter Bruno Manser briefly, but they were not best buddies or anything. And as I understand it, Palmieri was quite a bit older and in a different phase of life.
The really fascinating thing is that Bruno Manser, the Swiss man, eventually took up the cause of fighting against a logging company and deforestation in that area. He teamed up with members of the Penan tribe and staged rebellions against the people cutting down their homeland, to the point where, in the year 2000, he actually mysteriously vanished. Poof. Without a trace. Maybe the Malaysian government got him? Maybe the pressure got too intense and he committed suicide or decided to go off the grid to protect himself? No one knows. But since then he's not turned up.
Really a fascinating lesson about the lives we lead, how anything is possible, and learning of someone else's journey lets you know what sort of options you might have for yourself.
