. Every student in South-East Asia has been taught in history lessons about numerous examples of economic exploitation of the larger groups, such as those associated with indentured labour in the agricultural plantations and estates in Malaya and the culture system introduced by the Dutch in Java, but they have learned less of the problems faced by the tribal minorities.
Lately, exploitation has moved in a big way into the remaining forests, within which many tribal peoples have continued to preserve their identity after having been driven from areas long ago converted to agriculture, or absorbed among the more densely settled majority populations of these areas. Although the variety and amount of forest resources that are currently being exploited still represent only a small portion of the wealth that the tropical rain forest environment offers, their extractions frequently result in the degradation and extinction of the remaining resources, and generate an enormously heavier impact on the forest-dwelling people than in the past.
There are other causes of socio-economic and environmental destabilization of indigenous societies. Severe depopulation of tribal peoples was another familiar feature of the early years of frontier development until as late as the turn of the twentieth century. In Borneo, for instance, the introduction of new types and strains of viruses and diseases by foreign traders and European administrators in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a major cause of massive depopulation of many tribal communities, and the total extinction of some tribal clans (Lien, 1987). Other causes include punitive raids to impress tribal populations of the overwhelming force available at the government's disposal, and thereby to gain their 'co-operation' (Hose, 1926; Pringle, 1970). Such raids inevitably resulted in severe loss of life, directly by war and indirectly through seriously disturbing the subsistence economy. There have also been more subtle means of interference, such as the extension of government control to establish 'law and order' in frontier areas, followed by the introduction of formal and 'orderly process' of native administration replacing traditional systems. Setting one people against another has sometimes formed part of this process, such as the use of Iban tribesmen by the Brookes in their establishment of control over Sarawak.
Now there is the 'rule of law', and the impact of legislation and regulation relating to land, forest and natural resources. All these laws, except in Thailand, have been inherited from colonial governments without significant amendments. However, what is new and different about the current situation is the speed at which new development, taking advantage of these laws, has reached tribal communities. An increasingly complex process of change now affects almost all tribal peoples. In the post-war era, many new developments causing serious environmental and other problems have surfaced, while the number and intensity of the more common ones such as mining, logging, commercial agricultural and resettlement projects, dam and highway construction, and tourism have increased. Nowadays, tribal people in some regions are also forced to move from their homelands for strategic, military and security reasons.
Independence has brought about new perceptions and contexts of development' along with socio-political relationships and alignments. In some regions, such as in the mainland countries of South-East Asia and in the Philippines, government authorities see the existence of autonomous tribal populations within the boundaries of the state, or demands by tribal populations for some degree of political autonomy, as a challenge to their authority and a possible pretext for aggression by foreign powers. As each of the SouthEast Asian countries progresses, it develops new and complicated legislation which frequently and directly, though unconsciously, affects the livelihood, but takes little consideration of the needs, of tribal peoples. Economically, modern agricultural developm