ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on West Kalimantan, as the area with most available data, and with some comparisons with Central Kalimantan. The interaction between the interior-dwelling Dayaks and the Malays who controlled the riverine areas, there is a further telling comment: Although it was then West Kalimantan's most important agricultural export, rubber was considered secondary to rice by the local farmers. The conclusion that nearly 50" of the district of KotawaringinTimur had been planted with oil palm, left the affected Dayak communities 'virtually landless and unprovided with smallholdings'. Swidden farming, especially the making of dry swiddens, is declining sharply in the 'heartlands' of oil palm: the lowlands of West and Central Kalimantan. Detailed village-level studies in Sanggau, the oldest oil-palm district in Kalimantan, trace the trajectory of swidden's decline, although it is noticeable that a few villages still reject oil palm or seek to find their own accommodations with the crop, either with or without the plantation.
