Avatar tells real tribe's story

A Malaysian tribe has claimed that the blockbuster movie Avatar tells the real story of their lives today.

Just like the blue Navi race in Avatar, the Penan tribe’s forest in the Malaysian part of Borneo, is threatened by foreign companies. An estimated 15,485 people live in the Eastern Malaysian Sarawak state.

The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia says: 'An ancient tribe of hunters and gatherers in Borneo’s jungles are being threatened by severe poverty and companies that clear land for logging and oil palm projects."

According to Survival, an international organization supporting tribal peoples worldwide, logging and oil palm companies are destroying the Penan tribe’s forest home. The Penan’s land rights are not recognized, and their forests are being cleared for logging, oil palm plantations and hydroelectric dams, robbing them of their means of survival.

"The Penan people cannot live without the rainforest. The forest looks after us, and we look after it. Logging companies are chopping down our big trees and polluting our rivers, and the animals we hunt are dying," a Penan man told the organisation.

In Avatar the film, a paraplegic marine is dispatched from earth to the moon Pandora. Jake Sully, is mentally linked to an alien's body. His mission is to persuade the mystic, nature-loving Na'vi to let his employer mine their home land.

The tribe’s claim is backed by James Cameron, the director of Avatar. He told the Daily Telegraph: “We’re telling the story of what happens when a technologically superior culture comes into a place with a technologically inferior indigenous culture and there are resources there that they want, It never ends well."

The Malaysian government has been accused of exploiting the forest of the Sarawak region since the 1970s. The Human Rights Commission wants the state government to review its nearly 50-year-old Sarawak Land Code to change provisions on native customary land rights.