The period from 1950 to the present has seen consistent programmes by the state government and foreign Christian missionaries to settle Penan into longhouse-based villages similar to those of Sarawak's other indigenous groups.

[9] Some, typically the younger generations, now cultivate rice and garden vegetables but many rely on their diets of sago (starch from the sago palm), jungle fruits and their prey which usually include wild boar, barking deer, mouse deer but also snakes (especially the reticulated python or kemanen), monkeys, birds, frogs, monitor lizards, snails and even insects such as locusts.

They are outstanding hunters and catch their prey using a 'kelepud' or blowpipe, made from the Belian Tree (superb timber) and carved out with unbelievable accuracy using a bone drill – the wood is not split, as it is elsewhere, so the bore has to be precise almost to the millimetre, even over a distance of 3 metres.

The Penan's struggle began in the 1960s when the Indonesian and Malaysian governments opened up large areas of Borneo's interior to commercial logging.

Since both the settled, semi-nomadic and nomadic Penan communities were and are reliant on forest produce, they were hit hard by the large scale logging operations that encroached on their traditionally inhabited territories.

The logging caused the pollution of their water catchment areas with sediment displacement, the loss of many sago palms that form the staple carbohydrate of Penan diet, scarcity of wild boar, deer and other game, scarcity of fruit trees and plants used for traditional forest medicine, destruction of their burial sites and loss of rattan and other rare plant and animal species.

[14] For the forest people of Borneo, like other native tribes, such plants and animals are also viewed as sacred, as the embodiment of powerful spirits and deities.

They argued that the logging companies were located on land given to the Penan in an earlier treaty, recognised by the Sarawak state government, and were thus violating their native customary rights.

Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing today the Penan and other indigenous communities such as the Iban, Kelabit and Kayan (collectively referred to as Dayak) have set up blockades in an attempt to halt logging operations on their land.

These succeeded in many areas but the efforts were hard to sustain and ended in large-scale clashes between the indigenous communities and the state-backed logging companies, supported by the police and Malaysian army.

In 1987, the state government passed the amendment S90B of the Forest Ordinance, which made the obstruction of traffic along any logging road in Sarawak a major offence.

In the late 1990s, in neighbouring Kalimantan, the Indonesian government set aside millions of acres of forest for conversion into commercial rubber and palm oil plantations.

The Penan explicitly outlined their wants and requirements to the Sarawak State Government of Abdul Taib Mahmud in the 2002 Long Sayan Declaration.

He later conducted public awareness stunts such as paragliding onto the lawn of Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and attempting a hunger strike outside the offices of Japanese shipping companies in Tokyo.

[25] Other rumours include those of suicide after years of unsuccessful campaigning or getting lost in the dense mossy forests around Bukit Batu Lawi in the Kelabit Highlands, close to the border with Kalimantan.

"[29] Malaysian authorities also argued that it is unfair to accuse Malaysia of destroying their own rainforests while the western civilisation continued to cut their own forests down.

— Rhett A. Butler The government's defence of large-scale logging as a means to economic development has also been challenged as unsustainable, indiscriminate of indigenous rights, environmentally destructive and mired in invested interests, corruption and cronyism.

[34][35] Such allegations are not new, as Malaysia Today claimed in 2005: There is often a mutually beneficial relationship between logging companies and political elites, involving the acquisition of large private wealth for both parties through bribery, corruption and transfer pricing, at the expense of public benefit through lost revenues and royalty payments and at the expense of social, environmental and indigenous communities' rights ...

The awarding of concessions and other licences to log as a result of political patronage, rather than open competitive tender, has been the norm rather than the exception in many countries.

[36] In August 2009, hundreds of the Penan of Borneo rainforest protested with road blockades against new palm oil and acacia plantations in Sarawak.

Furthermore, the Murum dam is the first in a series of large-scale hydroelectric projects being planned by the Sarawak State Government, which will see the displacement of thousands of indigenous people.

In this same month, the Penan tribes in Sarawak's northern region set up blockades to prevent the implementation of a 500 km-long Sarawak-Sabah Gas Pipeline (SSGP).

Most see the Penan's lifestyle as uncivilised and antiquated (compare White man's burden), an example of this is a regularly recited poem by ex Minister for Environment and Tourism Datuk James Wong.

And yet could Society in good conscience View your plight with detached indifference Especially now we are an independent Nation Yet not lift a helping hand to our fellow brethren?

Many Malaysian organisations have joined the debate such as Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM), Borneo Resource Institute (BRIMAS) and Rengah Sarawak.

Many of the Dayak population have also struggled to get accustomed to a settled lifestyle and adopt agricultural skills, which they must employ more and more as their forests increasingly dwindle.

"[43] With the help of such NGOs many Penan communities have mapped their proposed ancestral lands and filed claims in Sarawak's courts in the hope of preventing and deterring illegal logging of their forests.

A precedent was set in 2001 when an Iban village of Rumah Nor won a court victory against Borneo Pulp and Paper and the Sarawak Government for violating their Native Customary Right (NCR) or adat.

Indigenous action has therefore shifted from the human blockades of logging roads to empowerment through the political and legal system and international publicity.

This decision was made on the recommendations from the Council of Ethics’ assessment that Samling Global, and two other companies, “are contributing to or are themselves responsible for grossily [sic] unethical activity”.