The Aboriginal People of Peninsular Malaysia

From the Forest to the Urban Jungle

Govindran Jegatesen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138606937
• eBook ISBN: 9780429884528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

To date, most studies of Malaysia's aboriginal people, the Orang Asli, have studied the community in either the rural or forest settings. This book, however, outlines the dynamics of Orang Asli migration to Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia's most urbanised region – and explores the lived experiences of these individuals in the urban space. The book begins by charting the history of the Orang Asli under British colonial rule followed by the community's experiences under the Malaysian government, in an attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the economic and social complexities facing the Orang Asli today. Based on extensive original research, the book goes on to discuss the interesting changes taking place among urban Orang Asli migrants with regards to gender dynamics, while exploring the unique ways in which these urban indigenous migrants maintain close links with their home communities in the rural spaces of Peninsular Malaysia. The book concludes by assessing how research on the urban Orang Asli fits into broader studies of urban and contemporary indigeneity in both Malaysia and abroad.

1
Introduction to the Orang Asli

When women work in the city, most of them want to stay on in the city. Even after they are married, they still continue living in the city. Orang Asli parents tell their children … They say, “O.K. She’s now in the city … all you younger ones, go to the city … follow that big sister. She is in the city.”

Anggrik (a Hma’ Meri woman)

This comment was from a conversation I had with an Orang Asli woman from the Hma’ Meri community, and she communicates a sentiment that an increasing number of Orang Asli parents in the rural settlements of Peninsular Malaysia hold to be true – that the urban space is a place of opportunities. A cursory search into the scholarship on the Orang Asli reveals a wealth of information on the experiences of the Orang Asli in the rural space;¹ some of these narratives date back to the nation’s colonial era² – ranging from studies that explore Orang Asli connections to their lands, their socio-cultural heritage, socio-economic concerns, health, and other critical considerations that seek to understand their lived experiences as indigenous minorities. Much of this scholarship has contributed to our increased understanding of the community, and it follows that much of the work conducted by ethnographers, anthropologists, and sociologists working with the Orang Asli today are built on these writings. However, the experiences of rural-urban migration – and living – as well as implications of this movement on Orang Asli gender roles and contemporary indigenous identity formation have yet to be significantly explored and continue to be phenomena that are little understood. This chapter provides a brief overview of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia and will introduce the Orang Asli – the indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia – who are the subjects of the study. This will entail a cursory exploration of the lives of Orang Asli communities in contemporary Malaysia vis-à-vis their geography, education, employment, socio-economic opportunities, and health.

The Klang Valley

The Klang Valley is an area that comprises Kuala Lumpur (the federal capital) and its suburbs, as well as a number of cities and townships in the state of Selangor in Peninsular Malaysia – which, collectively, form the core of Malaysia’s commercial, administrative, and industrial sectors. For the purpose of this book, the Klang Valley refers to the major cities and townships within the Klang-Langat conurbation³ and it is geographically delineated by the Titiwangsa Mountains (Banjaran Titiwangsa) to the north and east of the Peninsula, and the Straits of Malacca to the west. The region takes its name after the Klang River – the principal river flowing through the valley – which was closely linked to the development of a number of colonial tin-mining townships during British rule. Originally a small tin-mining town at the confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers, Kuala Lumpur’s growth and expansion began in the late 19th century through the joint efforts of the Chinese tin-mining kapitan Yap Ah Loy and the British officer Frank Swettenham.

As the heartland of Malaysia’s commercial and industrial sectors, the Klang Valley has a history of rural-urban migration that continues to this day. The region is Malaysia’s most urbanised and most heavily populated, encompassing all of Kuala Lumpur and some parts of the state of Selangor – the state within which the city of Kuala Lumpur is located. The Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur – known in Malay as Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur – and the Selangor districts of Gombak, Petaling Jaya, Hulu Langat, and Klang, as well as a few local authorities including Kuala Lumpur City Hall, Shah Alam City Council, and Petaling Jaya City Council, collectively form the conventional definition of the Klang Valley region at 2,843 square kilometres. Increasingly however, the Klang Valley region is interpreted to include the southern Selangor district of Sepang (Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Serdang, Bangi, Cyberjaya, and Putrajaya) and Kuala Langat, due to the economic and infrastructural relationships between Sepang district and the rest of the Klang Valley. This extended region of 4,000 square kilometers is known as the Klang-Langat conurbation or Wilayah Lanjutan Klang-Langat. Kuala Lumpur, which lies at the heart of the conurbation, is the most densely populated area at almost 6,900 people per square kilometre. As indicated in Image 1.1, this book defines the Klang Valley to include the wider Klang-Langat conurbation of 4,000 square kilometres (dark shaded), of which the capital is Kuala Lumpur. The northern Selangor states of Kuala Selangor, Sabak Bernam, and Hulu Selangor (light shaded) are generally excluded when defining the Klang-Langat conurbation.

The Orang Asli

Part of the region that makes up the Klang Valley today is home to the Temuan people, who have a historical presence in many parts of the Klang Valley. They are perhaps most associated within Malaysia’s public consciousness as the victorious plaintiffs in the landmark Sagong Tasi case against the state of Selangor for their forced removal from ancestral lands in 1995 to enable the building of the Nilai-KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) highway – for which they were unfairly compensated.⁴ Another group with a historical – albeit less

Image 1.1 The Klang-Langat conurbation within Selangor state.

Source: Adapted from DOSM, 2010.

pronounced – association with the Klang Valley are the Hma’ Meri (also known as Hma’ Btsisi) or more commonly Mah Meri, who inhabit the coastal regions where the Klang River flows into the Straits of Malacca. Historically, the mobility of the Orang Asli was determined largely by motivation for subsistence that was “spread over a wide geographic range allow[ing] unrestricted movements.”⁵ This would include travelling to areas where tropical fruits were in season, seeking new regions for swiddening (slash-and-burn agriculture), and visiting trading posts at the peripheries of the forest, as well as seeking other Orang Asli communities with whom to trade forest products for household commodities. This facilitated “extensive networks of trade [that existed] long before the current round of ‘globalization.’”⁶ Today, this movement has gathered further traction in the form of rural-urban migration among Orang Asli individuals from various rural localities across the Peninsula into the Klang Valley in search of employment.

The indigenous populations of Malaysia comprise the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia – who are the subjects of this study – the Pribumi of East Malaysia (indigenous communities from the states of Sabah and Sarawak), and the Malay-Muslim community, who are regarded by the Malay-Muslim Malaysian administration as the nation’s definitive indigenous community. Collectively, all three communities – alongside a few minority groups such as the Portuguese-Malaysian Kristang and Thai-Malaysians – are recognised by the government as Bumiputera communities. As of 2018, the Orang Asli number approximately 180,000 individuals and make up less than 1% of Malaysia’s population – as consistently seen from censuses carried out over the years.⁷ The term Orang Asli, meaning ‘original people’⁸ was coined by the post-independence Malaysian government and refers exclusively to the indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia, and does not include the Malay-Muslim population, nor the Pribumi communities of Sabah and Sarawak. The exonym Pribumi literally means “first of the soil” and is a closely related term to the Sanskrit Bumiputera (“sons of the soil”).

The Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia are ethno-culturally unrelated to the indigenous Pribumi of East Malaysia, and are also significantly smaller than the latter communities. The Pribumi number approximately 1.7 million strong in Sabah and 1.2 million in Sarawak⁹ – comprising 39 and 40 ethnocultural groups, respectively. Thus, unlike the ethnic minority position of the Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia, the Pribumi of Sabah and Sarawak collectively form the majority of East Malaysia’s population. Despite ethnocultural differences, the issues faced by both the Orang Asli and the Pribumi share a number of commonalities – primary of which is the issue of land loss and its implications on their cultural identities and subsistence capabilities. Independent of the Malays, both the Orang Asli and the Pribumi groups of East Malaysia are known as “Orang Asal.”¹⁰ While both asal and asli are Arabic cognates indicating original,¹¹ the Malaysian government does not utilise the word asal to refer exclusively to the Orang Asli – preferring instead to use the term in a broader sense to encompass both communities – due to historical Communist-Orang Asli relations during the Malayan Emergency that took place between 1948–1960.

Historically, the majority of Malaysia’s Orang Asli groups inhabited the forest networks at the base of the Titiwangsa range in the central regions of Peninsular Malaysia – predating the establishment of the first Malay settlements and the ancient Hindu-Buddhist Malay kingdoms. Of the three Orang Asli ethnic groups – Semang, Senoi, and the Aboriginal Malay (also widely known as Proto Malay) – the Semang are generally considered by researchers to be the group with the longest continued presence in Peninsular Malaysia. While estimates vary, researchers generally place the arrival of the Semang into Pen-insular Malaysia to approximately 30,000–50,000 years ago.¹² Ancient Semang archaeological sites have been found in the state of Perak, as well as cave paintings in Gua Tambun, Perak, that date back almost 25,000 years. Most evolutionary scientists studying early human movements agree that the Semang are descendants of one of the earliest human arrivals into Southeast Asia,¹³ and that the genetic material from these ancient humans is especially well-represented amon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Glossary of terms
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction to the Orang Asli
• 2 Early and recent Orang Asli history
• 3 From the settlements and into the city: investigating Orang Asli experiences
• 4 Contextualising indigeneity
• 5 Orang Asli and the question of gender
• 6 Inequality: the fragmentation of egalitarianism among the Orang Asli
• 7 Narratives on the Orang Asli and key considerations
• Index