Notes from the editor.

In This Issue

We begin this issue with a memorial section dedicated to two extraordinarily gifted scholars, Reed Wadley and Robert Barrett. Both died, tragically, at the peak of their intellectual powers.

Of the two, Reed was the youngest. I first met Reed in 1994 at the BRC meetings in Pontianak. He had just come down from the Emperan, the low-lying border region of West Kalimantan, where he was then doing fieldwork. As others who knew him will attest, his vitality was palpable. It was impossible, too, to miss the seriousness with which he approached his work, his intellectual generosity, and, for me, his devotion and shared enthusiasm for all things Iban, including, in his case, ukir tanah bau (Iban, 'shoulder tattoos'). From then on, we corresponded regularly right up to the last weeks of his life. As evidence of his strong sense of professional duty, among the last work he completed was a review of Rob Cramb's book, Land and Longhouse, which he, like your Editor, greatly admired. As a tribute to his memory, Reed's review appears in the Book Review section later in his volume.

Reed, in addition to being a BRC Fellow, was also a member of the Borneo Research Council's Executive Board and his untimely death was a particularly grievous loss for the BRC, as many of us saw him as playing a pivotal role in the Council's transition to a younger generation of active members. He was also, of course, much more. To the many of us who had the pleasure of knowing and working with him, Reed was a wonderful friend and an exemplary colleague. Even while undergoing painful medical treatment, he devoted precious time to putting in order his unpublished research notes and arranged for their deposit in archival collections in the United States, the Netherlands, and Sarawak (see "Brief Communications" in this issue), in order that this material would be available for the use of future scholars. In one of his very last email messages, he wrote that he was preparing letters of introduction and notes to be conveyed to his Iban "family" on behalf of a graduate student who was about to depart for West Kalimantan. That's the sort of person he was. As some of you may know, in the months before his death, a colleague and friend, the historian Eric Tagliacozzo, invited those who knew Reed to record their experiences and thoughts in a memory book, which was then printed and bound in Japan and presented to Reed's wife, Dr. Oona Paredes, as a remembrance for both her and their young son, Lucas. Following his death, Dr. George N. Appell, on behalf of the Borneo Research Council, established a special fund in Reed Wadley's memory, the Reed L. Wadley Memorial Fund, to provide supplemental grants to graduate students in anthropology who are planning to do research in Borneo. More information on this fund can be found in Dr. Appell's memorial for Reed that immediately follows these Notes and on the BRC website (www.borneoresearchcouncil.org).

Finally, as a further tribute, the BRB is planning, with the help of Dr. Carol Colfer and others, to put together a future special issue, or a section of a future issue, in honor of Reed which will deal with the Danau Sentarum project, to which he was deeply committed (see BRB, 2000, Vol. 31).

Dr. Appell opens our memorial section with a personal tribute to Reed, a shorter version of which appeared in the American Anthropologist Newsletter. This is followed by a bibliography of Reed's published writings. Next, Dr. Carol Colfer gives us a vivid account of her experiences of working with Reed as a professional colleague and of knowing him over the years as a friend. Finally, we are grateful to Christina Pomianek, who, writing as a graduate student, offers a moving appreciation of Reed as a teacher and mentor.

Rob Barrett I knew for a somewhat longer time. We first met in 1988 at an Iban cultural symposium in Kapit, Sarawak. Over the next year I saw much more of Rob in the Saribas. At the time, he had begun fieldwork at Ulu Bayor. The beautiful old Ulu Bayor longhouse was then, before the construction of an access road, most easily reached by traveling up the Ulu Paku road, beyond the longhouse where I was working, to Danau longhouse on the Paku River, and from there hiking across the watershed separating the upper Paku from the Bayor stream. Shortly after he had settled in, the people of the Ulu Bayor longhouse decided to organize a Gawai Antu celebration to , honor their recently deceased ancestors. The celebration was one of the grandest in living memory. Over a thousand people attended, including three groups of performing bards. Rob was appointed to the entertainment committee and I joined him in arranging for the printing of Gawai programs and invitations to be sent to guests. We also purchased and had engraved trophies for the Kumang and Keling beauty contests which are now an essential part of major longhouse ceremonies in the Saribas. Rob had a great sense of humor and took a special delight in this conjunction of modern novelties with what continues to be an elaborate and venerable ritual occasion. But beneath his sense of fun, Rob was also acutely sensitive to the feelings of others, and much of his humor took a self-deprecating turn.