Anna Tsing, in her account of Javanese oil workers who allegedly turned into government-paid head-hunters in the
Meratus Mountains of South Kalimantan during the 1980s, was the clearest voice arguing that the beliefs might, after all.
In recent years, oil exploration of the
Meratus Basin, in Central Kalimantan, was curtailed.
(1) No clear evidence for previous headhunting has been documented for ethnic groups such as the Rungus of northern Sabah, the Tempasuk Dusun, located about 50 miles south of the Rungus (Appell and Appell 2003:102), or the
Meratus Dayak (Guerreiro, personal communication).
She is owned by PT WM Offshore, a subsidiary of PT Wintermar Offshore Marine Tbk, in partnership with PT
Meratus Line.
It is now a 26 per cent shareholder in PT Baramulti Suksessarana (BSSR) PT Antang Gunung
Meratus, a 100 per cent subsidiary of BSSR and BSSR together own approximately 1 billion tonnes of coal resources in Indonesia.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing describes two batterings among the
Meratus of southeast Kalimantan.
The
Meratus of Southeastern Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) afford Tsing with a rare opportunity for describing headhunting from the victims' point of view; a long past of violent harassment from agents of mighty kingdoms, colonial powers and national governments have made them sensibly fearful -- yet boasts of a capacity for violence are still a prerequisite for (male) local political leadership.
Pelsart's rigs at Haraan are about two kilometers from the main exploration camp at
Meratus. Staff there have hot showers, television, and window screens to keep out the bugs.
Among the groups that have merged some of their timber concessions with MUSA are the Porodisa Group, owned by the Sumendap family from North Sulawesi, Indonesia, and the
Meratus Kalimantan Timber Group, which was owned by the Sutrisno family.