Yaping’s voice trembled, cutting through the cool air-conditioned atmosphere of the meeting room at the Regent’s Office of Bulungan, North Kalimantan, as I attended an entry meeting on May 17, 2026. Before me sat a row of bureaucrats and academics as the customary leader of the Punan Tugung, Yaping, delivered a powerful statement that encapsulated half a century of pain: “We were forcibly relocated in 1972 by the government at that time from our ancestral territory.”

Listening to his story, a dark chapter of history resurfaced. The forced relocation was justified by the government of the era as a means of easier administrative control, accompanied by promises of bringing remote communities closer to healthcare and education services. In the name of civilization, they were expected to abandon their bark-cloth clothing in order to appear more “civilized.” Yet the irony was unavoidable: civilization itself marginalized them onto a narrow piece of land. In the administrative center of Punan Dulau Village today, I encountered the reality that 115 households had been forced to crowd together on just 1.8 hectares of land. Let alone cultivating fields, even building a new house requires them to spend money to purchase land. To sustain their livelihoods and grow food, the Punan Tugung Indigenous community has been compelled to borrow land belonging to the Tidung people in Sekatak Buji.

Yet the spirit of the forest refused to surrender to fate. Forty households chose to resist these limitations, packing up their lives once again and returning to Ikong, their old village located approximately 52 kilometers from the new settlement. There, food security was more assured; they regained proximity to their gardens, hunting grounds, and the rivers where they fished. Unfortunately, their return did not bring peace. Across their ancestral territory of approximately 21,140.8 hectares, the government had already granted a concession permit to a timber company, PT Intracawood.

To reclaim their dispossessed land, the Punan Tugung community pursued a legal pathway through the Customary Forest Verification process. I had the opportunity to join the integrated verification team directly from April 16 to 22, 2026, to examine the anatomy of this claim. In simple terms, this verification process resembles an expedition to piece together fragments of history deep within the wilderness. Our team—comprising representatives from government ministries, academics, and even concession holders—was tasked with gathering and cross-checking the collective memory of the Indigenous community against physical evidence in the field. The beauty of Borneo’s rainforest must not obscure the rigor of this verification process, which we were required to carry out systematically through a series of crucial and demanding stages.

This evidentiary phase began with claim alignment through an initial meeting, known as the entry meeting. Before setting foot on the disputed land, all parties gathered around a single table in the district capital to hear the statements and motivations of the applicants. During this stage, I listened to Indigenous women such as Nurhayati, who spoke up to explain that the forest is a living space where they collect weaving materials, medicinal plants, and daily necessities. Administratively, consent from neighboring villages was also confirmed before us, and they generally expressed support for the recognition of the proposed customary forest.

Once the foundation of the claim had been established in the meeting room, our next step was physical verification in the field. We traveled for hours by road from Tanjung Selor to Punan Dulau Village, followed by a three-hour journey along the waterways in a small motorized ketinting boat toward the old settlement. The harsh terrain forced us to disembark at two shallow sections of the river and drag the boat by hand to prevent its hull from shattering against submerged rocks. Upon arriving at Ikong at around five in the afternoon, the object verification team was divided into two groups and dispersed to two mutually agreed locations to directly trace and verify territorial boundaries.

Simultaneously with this physical survey, a cultural audit known as subject verification was also conducted. While our colleagues in the object verification team traversed the forest, I remained in the old village with the subject verification team to assess the spiritual, historical, and social bonds between the people and their ancestral land. We stayed in a longhouse inhabited by five families, unraveling history through lengthy discussions with customary elders and community members. This evidence was also naturally validated before us at the dinner table. The meals served to us—venison from the hunt, river fish, various tubers, and forest fruits such as tungen (wild durian)—stood as silent testimony to how completely this community’s survival depends upon the generosity of nature.

Lunang Telang Otah Ine’

Witnessing this layered verification process firsthand, I came to realize that it all converged on a single, fundamental objective: restoring the sovereignty of the Punan Tugung people so that they may manage their land and forests without the constant threat of criminalization or displacement. From the outset, they rejected the presence of the timber company because, in their view, it offered no guarantee of prosperity and instead became an obstacle to their ability to manage their customary territory.

For the Punan Tugung people I met, formal recognition of a customary forest is far more than a bureaucratic document issued by the state. It is a pathway toward sustaining the heartbeat of an ancient philosophy: Lunang Telang Otah Ine’, which means “the forest is a mother’s milk.” The forest is, in essence, a nurturing womb that has sustained them since infancy through its gardens and game, and that will one day become the place to which they return, embracing nature once more when their lives come to an end.