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Orang Asli

Indigenous ethnic groups of Malaysia

  • 45 min read
  • 10 chapters

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Through Indigenous peoples

Lab · Class 6–12Archaeology & Discovery

As of 2017, the Orang Asli accounted for 0.7% of the population of Peninsular Malaysia. 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.

While outsiders often perceive them as a single group, there are many distinctive groups and tribes, each with its own language, culture and customary land. Each group considers itself independent and different from the other communities. What mainly unites the Orang Asli is their distinctiveness from the three major ethnic groups of Peninsular Malaysia (ethnic Malays, Chinese, and Indian) and their historical sidelining in social, economic, and cultural matters. Like other indigenous peoples, Orang Asli strive to preserve their own distinctive culture and identity, which is linked by physical, economic, social, cultural, territorial, and spiritual ties to their immediate natural environment.

Terminology

Prior to the official use of the term "Orang Asli" beginning in the early 1960s, the common terms for the indigenous population of Peninsular Malaysia varied. Thomas John Newbold recorded that "Malays" of Rembau in present-day Negeri Sembilan had given their local forest-dwelling hunter-gathering population the contemporary name of orang benua (Jawi: اورڠ بنوا) meaning "people of the soil or country". Towards the end of British colonial rule on the Malay Peninsula, there were attempts to classify these disparate groups. Residents of the southern regions often called them Jakun, and those in the northern regions called them Sakai. Later on, all indigenous groups became known as Sakai, meaning Aborigines. The term "aborigines", as an official name, appeared in the English version of the Constitution of British Malaya and the laws of the country. Past colonial rule by European and Islamic powers gave both the Malay word Sakai and the English term Aborigines pejorative connotations, hinting at the supposed backwardness and primitivism of these people. During the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s Communist rebels, seeking the support of the indigenous tribes, began referring to them as Orang Asal, meaning "native people": the adjective asal itself from Arabic: أصل, romanized: 'asl "origin". The Communists won their support, and the government, seeking to do the same, began adopting the same terminology. Thus, the new, slightly modified term "Orang Asli", carrying the same sense of "original people", was born. The term was officially used in English, where it is identical in both the singular and the plural. Despite its origin as an exonym, the term was adopted by indigenous peoples themselves.

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