"The Park is the People": (Mis)Representations of Nature and Indigeneity at Gunung Mulu National Park in Malaysia

Deforestation from timber and palm oil tycoons have displaced Indigenous communities throughout Sarawak, Malaysia in the past few decades. However, Gunung Mulu National Park, a World Heritage Site strictly protected from extractive industries, reproduces the same neoliberal logics that perpetuate the separation of Indigenous Penan people from their lands and livelihoods. This thesis explores the divergence between Penan land narratives and the nature narratives presented at Mulu Park. It uses qualitative research methods to ask how Mulu Park and the UNESCO World Heritage system perpetuate neocolonial structures of environmental governance that result in the misrepresentation of Penan narratives and continued dispossession of their livelihoods. It concludes that Mulu Park and the World Heritage paradigm are entrenched in neoliberal logics of conservation management, normalize “universal” knowledge, and employ anti-political approaches to community inclusion that produce a neocolonial conservation scheme that misrepresents and separates Indigenous Penan from their lands.