The tropical rainforest of Malaysia has been the home for the Semelai people for generations upon generations. They've built their homes beneath its broad canopy and harvested its verdant richness for goods to trade with the outside world.
An exhibition exploring the lifestyle and world view of this aboriginal people -- and examining how they are being affected by the intrusions of the modern world -- will open on Saturday, May 25, at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Titled "People of the Lake & Forest: The Semelai of Tasek Bera," the display features photographs, artifacts and music of the Semelai, which have been collected by Rosemary Gianno '78 M.Phil., '85 Ph.D., anthropology professor at Keene State College in New Hampshire and guest curator of the exhibit.
A cultural anthropologist with a special interest in Southeast Asia, Professor Gianno began her research in Malaysia in 1980 as a graduate student at Yale studying the collection and trade of resins and other rainforest products. "The Semelai have for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years traded sustainable-yield forest products that have reached distant markets while their own way of life remained rainforest-adapted," explains the Yale alumna. "These plant derivatives, notably natural resins, have found their way into varnishes, paints, glues, perfumes, incenses and other substances."
Today, she notes, environmentally conscious organizations are attempting to reintegrate natural products such as these into the global economy both to provide greater financial support to the indigenous people who rely on the rainforest's resources, and to create economic incentives for protecting the world's remaining rainforests. Nevertheless, says Professor Gianno, "with the commercial logging of forests and the changing world economy, the indigenous technology of the Semelai is not only significant, it is rapidly disappearing."
"People of the Lake & Forest" is a collaborative project of the Peabody Museum and the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery at Keene State College, where it was first put on public display in January of this year. The exhibit will remain on view at Yale until February of 1997.
The show is also one of a series of exhibits that the Peabody Museum has developed to address the unique cultural and economic characteristics of people from around the globe. "The plight of the world's indigenous people has never been more germane to the world's future than it is now," says Richard L. Burger, director of the Peabody Museum. "It is only through the insights of anthropologists like Rosemary Gianno that we begin to understand the remarkable lifeways of these groups and the pressing problems they face in the wake of the expanding world market system."
"People of the Lake & Forest" is dedicated to Harold C. Conklin, the Franklin Muzzy Crosby Professor of the Human Environment, professor of anthropology and curator and director of the division of anthropology at the Peabody Museum. Professor Conklin, who is retiring this spring, was thesis adviser to Professor Gianno when she was a student at Yale, and is curator-in-charge of the exhibit.
The Peabody Museum of Natural History, located at 170 Whitney Ave., is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5 for adults; $3 for children ages 3-15 and senior citizens over age 65; and free for members of the Yale community with I.D. For information, call the InfoTape at 432-5050.