My films begin with questions I cannot answer with a camera alone. After filming in East Kalimantan, I wanted to understand more carefully what I had heard in Pampang and Sungai Bawang: why families who once lived entirely from the forest chose to leave it, and whether the life they moved toward has kept its promise.

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In the 1960s, Dayak Kenyah families migrated from the Apokayan interior of Borneo and settled closer to Samarinda, founding the villages of Pampang and Sungai Bawang. Drawing on interviews with village leaders, elders, academics, and NGO workers, this paper traces how the community’s understanding of sustainability has shifted across three pillars: ecological, economic, and cultural. Before relocation, living sustainably meant keeping a balance with the forest, sustained by long-cycle farming, animist belief, and shared life in the longhouse. Today, it means building secure livelihoods while keeping culture alive for the next generation.

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The paper argues that the gap between what relocation promised and what it has delivered has two sources. Some of it reflects tradeoffs the community chose willingly, in exchange for schooling, healthcare, and paid work. The rest comes from conditions it never chose: customary land lost to mining and palm oil concessions, poor infrastructure, and limited digital access.

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One carving captured much of what I observed: a tree trunk with branches reaching in different directions, each ending in a different flower. Community members told me it represents the Dayak people spreading across different places while remaining connected through the same roots.

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This research grew out of the same fieldwork as Dayak: The Quiet Warriors. I later returned to Sungai Bawang with my sister to donate 210 chairs to the village church.