Mythologies of the Orang Asli Tribes

Orang Asli (lit. “first people”, “native people”, or “Bumiputra”, or “original people”, “aborigines people” or “aboriginal people” in Malay) are a heterogeneous indigenous population forming a national minority in Malaysia. They are the oldest inhabitants of Peninsular Malaysia. As of 2017, the Orang Asli accounted for 0.7% of the population of Malaysia, numbering approximately 198,000. Although seldom mentioned in the country’s demographics, the Orang Asli are a distinct group, alongside the Malays, Chinese, Indians, and the indigenous East Malaysians of Sabah and Sarawak. Their special status is enshrined in law. Orang Asli settlements are scattered among the mostly Malay population of the country, often in mountainous areas or the jungles of the rainforest.

Orang Asal Indigenous Lands of Malaysia

As a collective, the term Orang Asli can be transliterated as “original peoples,” or “first peoples.” The word orang means “people” and the term asli comes from the Arabic word “asali,” meaning “original,” “well-born,” or “aristocratic.” The Orang Asli of Malay Peninsula (or West Malaysia) are divided into a great number of different tribal groups, some of which have very little contact with each other. The various Orang Asli tribes, which include 19 subethnic groups, have traditionally been grouped for administrative purposes under three main categories: the Negritos, the Senoi, and the Aboriginal-Ma-lays (refer to Table 1). Each group is unique in that it has a language and a mode of living quite different from the others. Each group includes a number of related tribes who speak similar languages and who follow a similar way of life, although some of the tribes are rather mixed. Differences between the Negritos, the Senoi, and the Aboriginal-Malay groups are also shown by their physical appearances.

Malaysia’s mysterious Orang Asli people have lived in the heart of the country’s deep jungles for more than 60,000 years. Culture Trip uncovers their story of long spells of isolation, slavery and how they helped Malaysia become the first country to win the war against Communism. Malaysia’s Orang Asli have some of the highest rates of poverty and make up less than 1% of the population. But these enigmatic communities date their ancestry to early waves of human migration out of Africa and have lived in the jungle for millennia. According to scientists, humans migrated out of Africa approximately 100,000 years ago. Some spread into the Arabian Peninsula and around the Indian Subcontinent. Eventually, they arrived first in Malaysia before moving to Indonesia and Australia. Genetic studies date Malaysia’s Orang Asli back to India somewhere between 42,000 to 63,000 years ago. After settling in Malaysia, they adapted to the jungle where they lived almost undisturbed for thousands of years. This makes the Orang Asli, or ‘Original People’, Malaysia’s oldest inhabitants.

Orang Asli is a collective term (which means original or first peoples in Malay) for some 18 ethnic groups of less than 150,000 in total who are widely regarded as comprising peninsular Malaysia’s original inhabitants (in the sense that they pre-date the arrival of Malays). They are generally divided into three distinct groupings: the Negrito, Senoi and Proto-Malay. The Temoq, Senoi and Negrito speak related languages known as Aslian, which belong to the Mon-Khmer family, while the ancestors of the Proto-Malay spoke languages that, like Malay, belonged to the Austronesian family of languages. The Proto-Malay group are similar in appearance to Malays, but of diverse origin. They live along the Strait of Malacca and in southern Johor. Some have adopted Islam and are being absorbed into the Malay community. While perhaps half of the Orang Asli live in or close to forests, may be involved in hill rice cultivation or traditional hunting and gathering activities, others such as the Orang Seletar and Mah Meri live near the coast and fish. Still others, such as the Jakun, are involved in agriculture. A few Negritos continue a semi-nomadic lifestyle. About 70 per cent practise traditional animist religions, about 10 per cent are Christian and 15–20 per cent Muslim, though the percentage of Orang Asli who are Muslim has been steadily increasing in more recent years, especially among the Proto-Malay.

One evening in November 2021, in the village of Kampung Kaloi in Malaysia’s Kelantan state, villagers gathered at the community hall. Their blind shaman, Along Busu, sat alone and stared straight ahead. His wife Muna Angah lay behind him. She had been coughing for months. Doctors at the nearest hospital, about 55km away, could not diagnose her illness. Along was about to do what his ancestors have done for generations — conduct a ritual called sewang to consult superhuman beings for guidance. The 13 households of Kampung Kaloi are indigenous peoples, or Orang Asli, of the Temiar tribe. They had moved here in 2016 from a larger settlement called Kampung Wook. Temiars believe spirits live in the earth, rivers, and trees. But sewangs are harder to do these days. For these rituals, indigenous people usually forage for plants once commonly found in virgin or selectively-logged forests.

Thousands of years ago, the first known people arrived in the Malay Peninsula. They were black, with curly hair, a bit like Africans, Papuans or Australian Aborigines. Nobody knows when the first of them came, and nobody knows where did they come from. Probably they came from South Asia. Maybe they have some distant relations with the Africans, and the black-skinned people of Australia and Oceania, although the genetic research can’t confirm it clearly. They were Negritos- nomadic hunters and gatherers. The whole Malay Peninsula has been covered by lush equatorial rainforest, and these people lived there, in temporary villages, made by wood and straw. And they were the only people inhabiting this land, until around 2000 BC. Then, another group of people came. This time they were Mongoloid. They came from today’s Yunnan or the northern part of Indochina, and they were Austroasiatic, related to today’s Hmong people. They had a different way of life- they established constant villages and did some agriculture. For this, they removed some parts of the jungle and pushed the Negritos from their areas. Later, the third group of people came. It happened around 1200-1000 BC. They were Austronesians- probably again came from Indochina, or today’s Taiwan, now called Proto-Malays. When they came, they established more villages and had to share the land with the first two groups.

ORANG ASLI – FROM SLAVES TO SPECIMENS TO PEOPLE

The Orang Asli are those Indigenous to Peninsular Malaysia. Numbering over 100,000, the Orang Asli are comprised of 18 different communities – most of whom hold their own Languages and Traditions. Living primarily in the Forests of Malaysia, the Orang Asli (which means ‘Original People’ in Malay) have had an historical experience not unlike the Indigenous with the Colonial States of Canada, America, and Australia. In the 18th and 19th centuries slavery was a ‘common feature’ among the Orang, who were commonly viewed as as ‘kafirs’, and ‘non-humans.’ This is what it means to be Original People – heck, this is what it means to be human. And in the face of politics and business, keeping one’s humanity can be the most difficult thing of all, because so often politics and business needs you to compromise yourself and settle down in some nice looking dugout, where you can spend the rest of your days. This is something the Orang understand, but will anyways add that it matters not how the Malaysian Government, the citizenry, corporate interest groups and the international community conducts itself. And it matters not whether any agreements are made with the government or corporations – What matters is that the Orang Asli continue standing and continue living as Original People – with integrity and traditions intact.

In peninsular Malaysia there are 18 officially recognized indigenous tribes. The ancestors of these indigenous tribes were the first people to populate the peninsula more than 4,000 years ago. Since then, they have held to a hunter-gatherer and small scale agricultural lifestyle. The rapid development of Malaysia during the last few decades, intensive logging, expansion of palm oil plantations and other large scale agricultural crops have left indigenous tribes increasingly in a grey area, rendering them as one of the most vulnerable communities in Malaysia. Currently, most of the forests that they depend on for their livelihoods are owned by the Malaysian government; only a few areas are recognized as ancestral forests belonging to the indigenous tribes, and these areas were obtained through legal suits against local governments. At the heart of the conflict between the Malaysian government and the Orang Asli (the Malay term for the region’s indigenous people) are issues of land and ownership, and with those matters questions of life and livelihood. From the government’s point of view, all land except the areas specifically set aside for for Orang Asli settlements (like RPS Dala), belong to the government and can be used for the economic benefits of the state. “All logging permits issued are within the Forest Reserves in Perak, which do not involve any existing Orang Asli settlement. None of the land or area which are currently occupied by Orang Asli settlements had been encroached to make way for logging activity. In short, there is no incident of Orang Asli community being chased or displaced to make way for logging,” Ahmad Faizal Azumu, chief minister of Perak stated in an email.

The Indigenous peoples of Malaysia, collectively referred to as the Orang Asal, represent 14 percent (4.4 million) of Malaysia’s 32 million inhabitants, and speak as many as 112 Indigenous languages. While the Orang Asal make up the majority of the population on Malaysian Borneo, on Peninsular Malaysia, the Orang Asli account for less than one percent of the population. Each of these indigenous communities has its own customary homeland. Their connection with their lands has helped shape the unique identities of each tribe and allowed them to thrive for thousands of years. It also drives each community to preserve and protect their lands. It’s no surprise that the remaining forests in Malaysia are all located in Orang Asal communities. Today, Orang Asal communities continue to strive for recognition of their traditional territories and aim to prevent encroachment from loggers, agribusinesses and developers. To help the Orang Asal continue their way of life, greater public awareness of their plight is crucial.

Malaysia’s Orang Asli & Native Community

The indigenous people of Malaysia are some of the oldest inhabitants of the land. Their historically-rich, mysterious lifestyles, and cultures have been the subject of fascination to many. From the more popular Orang Asli, Iban, and Dusun community, to the lesser known Lun Bawang people, they are usually just referred to as ‘dan lain-lain’ (others). The indigenous community in Malaysia is mainly divided by the Orang Asli who are native to Peninsular Malaysia, and the other native tribes that live in Sabah and Sarawak.There are about 3,652,096 indigenous people in Malaysia and they make up 11.8% of the local population. The literal translation of the Malay term ‘Orang Asli’ is ‘original people’. The Orang Asli are generally classified under three main groups – Negrito (Semang), Senoi, and Proto-Malay (aboriginal Malay), with about 18 ethnic groups under them, collectively.

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