This short film follows a Dayak community from Sungai Utik village in Indonesia, who have endured months of constant rain.
The unseasonable weather has meant that nobody in the village has been able to farm their lands as usual, which could cause them to lose their crops for that year. Their ancestors say that they can ask the sacred Entawa tree for clear skies, and so the villagers conduct a ritual to call for the unceasing rain to stop.
Kynan Tegar is a young Dayak Iban filmmaker from Sungai Utik, West Kalimantan, the same village in the film. Since finishing formal primary school he has pursued his passion for photography, videography, nature and learning the in-depth culture of the Iban people. He lives in the local traditional longhouse and learns about the ancestral knowledge from the adat leader Apay Janggut, who defended the community fiercely from illegal logging.
This film series examines the critical contributions that Indigenous peoples and local communities make to protecting the world’s biodiversity, and complements the Local Biodiversity Outlooks (LBO).
Other films in this series:
- Traditional knowledge provides resilience to a changing climate
- Nana Yala (Mother Earth)
- Zenu Indigenous Women: Protectors and Growers of Mother Earth
- Froxán Commons – A community restoration project in Galicia, Spain brings native species back to their forests
- Li Kiampka (Our descendants)
- How the Ogiek of Kenya are using mapping to advocate for their land rights
- A Pgaz K’Nyau community in northern Thailand supports biodiversity and their local economy by producing honey
- Tarimat Pujut: Living in Harmony with Nature in Peru
