Roots that talk to each other
With Professor Gerard Bodeker, on roots, healing foods and Sarawak's superfoods.
In July 2025 Professor Gerard Bodeker and I recorded three short conversations for the Serumpun Leadership Series. Gerard is Serumpun Sarawak's scientific advisor and an international authority on traditional and indigenous medicine. These are the points from our conversations that I stand behind.
Sarawak is home to thirty-four ethnic groups. Gerard noticed that whenever you talk to Sarawakians, they speak of a mosaic, of being mixed, and yet each community values and keeps the traditions it carries. That, he said, is what Serumpun is about.
Serumpun comes from the word for root, and Gerard took it back to the forest. Roots talk to each other. They signal, through vibration and frequency and chemistry, to warn of a threat so that other plants can raise their defences. A root is not something static. It is a living system of communication between different species.
That is why the word works for everyone. There is no hegemony in it. No one is saying we are the best and you are below us. It means diversity finding unity, and helping one another survive and renew across time.
Gerard reminded me that UNESCO already recognises Mulu, and that its biodiversity is ancient: by his estimate seventy million to over a hundred million years old. Over that time, species have adapted to the tropics in ways found nowhere else, and scientists have studied many of them.
In indigenous cultures, he said, what is food always has another side that is medicine. What we are really looking at is healing food cultures.
The world talks about olive oil and the Mediterranean diet. Gerard believes a Borneo diet is possible, but there is a long step between what is available locally and a global supply. “You’re the culinary, nutritional man,” he told me; he is the medicinal and therapeutic one.
Scaling up has to be done carefully. Take Engkabang. Pressed cold through a wooden press, the butter is a different product from the one that comes through steel rollers, just as it is with artisanal olive oil. If the product needs wooden rollers, then use wooden rollers. The technology should follow the tradition, not industrial convenience.
And growth has to respect the people who hold the knowledge: their ownership, their full participation, their consent, and a fair share of the benefit, under the international protocols that protect cultural heritage and rights. Before we get to a Sarawak diet, Gerard said, we have Sarawak superfoods.
Watch the conversations on the Serumpun Sarawak Instagram channel
Before we get to the Sarawak diet, we have Sarawak superfoods.
Professor Gerard Bodeker, Serumpun Leadership Series
No one root is the best. The forest survives because the roots talk to each other.