KUCHING, Dec 5: Society for Rights of Indigenous People of Sarawak (SCRIPS) is organising a one-day special training course on the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Documentation of Oral History here Dec 8.
Its secretary-general, Michael Jok, said the objective of this training is to teach and train the participants to do land mapping for their native customary rights (NCR) land themselves.
“It is very important for the indigenous community to be updated with modern technology, like the usage of GPS, to mark and locate their NCR land within their respective kampung or longhouse territorial domain.
“It is a kind of DIY (do-it-yourself) method,” said Michael in a press statement today.
He said there were about 6,000 indigenous communities in the state and not all these communities had written documents about their respective community.
“Therefore, SCRIPS is giving this training so that each community can document the oral history of their respective longhouse or kampung.
“Like the African proverb that says ‘every time an old man dies, a library is burnt’, which means our elders are our main resource personnel on oral history.
“Since they are still around, let’s get their stories on their respective community. SCRIPS can assist you in the proofreading before you consider your documentation as your official document,” he said.
Those who wish to attend this training can call the person-in-charge Ahmad Awang at 010 9756596. The training fee is RM100 per person. — DayakDaily
