The native peoples of Sabah are increasingly losing their cultural heritage and space as a result of land alienation to government agencies and big companies and the history of sale of NT lands by earlier generations of native land owners to private companies. This crisis has been severely compounded by the many instances of land grabs by big companies with strong connections to the ruling politicians, incompetence and possible fraud on the part of land officers and a "don't care attitude of their elected representatives". Villagers are being forcibly evicted from forest reserves even though the law provides for the enhancement of traditional villages as "forest communities" with forest reserves. Some villages have even been in existence before the gazetting of the forest reserves.
