Saturday June 4, 2005
Know them, understand them
Story & pictures by Liz Price
An Orang Asli statue.
How many KL-ites have visited the Orang Asli Museum in Gombak? It is in the city, yet few people seem to go there. Indeed, I wonder how many people are knowledgeable about the indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia? Do you know how many different tribes there are?
Questions like these are answered as soon as you step inside the entrance hall of the museum. On the display boards, I counted 18 different tribes in all.
These tribes belong to three main groups: Negritos, Senoi and Proto-Malays.
The Negritos are hunter-gatherers. They were the ones who decorated cave walls with their charcoal drawings, including in the Lenggong area of Ulu Perak. The Senois are shifting cultivators and the Proto-Malays are farmers or fishermen.
Did you now that the Jakuns (Proto-Malays) lived in the Batu Caves area a century ago. In 1885, William Hornaday, a famous American naturalist, wrote about the “Jacoons’’ who accompanied him on hunting trips.
The Orang Asli population totalled 92,529 people in 1993. They live in areas covering the length of the peninsula, from the Malaysia-Thai border to Johor. Contrary to popular belief, not all Orang Asli are jungle dwellers.
While most live in the jungle at elevations between 610m and and 1,830m above sea level, some 40% of Orang Asli are actually lowland and coastal dwellers. Thousands of them are found at the fringe of Malay villages along the west coast. There are also many Orang Asli groups who are sea-gypsies and island dwellers.
The entrance hall at the museum houses a display on the Senoi Praaq, “the fighting people’’. The term refers to the two battalions of the Police Field Force whose members were almost exclusively Orang Asli. The first battalion was formed in 1957 and operated as an independent unit. It proved to be a very successful jungle-fighting unit and was instrumental in helping the security forces win the jungle war against the communist terrorists. The second battalion was formed in 1970.
The items used by the early battalions are on display here and the battalions themselves still exist to this day.
In the next room, are items used by the various aboriginal groups for personal adornment. The traditional tunics are bark cloth, made from the bark of trees such as the wild breadfruit tree.
You can read about how these clothes were made and see them on mannequins. The Temiar men used to wear loincloth and the women dressed in short skirts. These days the men favour shirt and trousers and the women, sarung kebaya.
Bamboo and wood combs and pins are popular hair adornments. Jewellery include bracelets, armlets and leglets made from coloured beads, seed, river shells and even the teeth of monkeys. The Negritos paint their faces and bodies with red, black and white dyes extracted from vegetables. Some highland males used to have their noses pierced and inserted with porcupine quills. Women used flowers to adorn their ears.
For rituals, headdresses made of certain leaves considered sacred to the community are worn.
Music has always been important to these people. They have string instruments, drums and wind instruments made from bamboo and wood. The nose flute, and the genggong (Jew’s harp) are still the hallmark of the Orang Asli musical repertoire. The sounds produced resemble the singing of birds and the chirping of insects in the forest.
In the southern part of the Malay peninsula, especially among the Temuans, bamboo, string instruments and gongs are favoured, along with the violin. They are used at all wedding ceremonies and are often played to the beat of modern Malay songs. The gongs are their only metal-based instruments.
There is a tableau here that shows a wedding group. Some of the cloth pieces are stunning with the vivid colours of reds and yellows contrasting against black patterns. The handicrafts on display include rattan baskets, bags and hats.
Upstairs you’ll find scale models of bamboo rafts and dug-out canoes. Some rafts consist of just six bamboo poles tied together. Larger rafts have 50 or more poles expertly lashed together, forming two layers. Small dug-out canoes were used in the south of the peninsula, but today they have been replaced with motorboats.
The Orang Asli museum helps you understand the people better.
Food
Many of the Orang Asli groups live deep in the forest and depend on nature for food. Their main food consists of hill rice, millet, maize, tapioca, sweet potato and long beans. Fishing and hunting are also common.
The Orang Asli generally have a large kitchen in the middle of their dwelling, which is shared by a number of families. They employ various methods of cooking, such as roasting in bamboo, cooking on a tripod or grilling over an open fire.
Things like bamboo containers, rattan baskets and plates made of large leaves are also common. Ladles are made of half coconut shells attached with a wooden handle. Bottles are made of gourds.
The museum also gives you an idea of the Orang Asli’s leisure activities, medicine and beliefs.
Hunting is vital for the Orang Asli, and the blowpipe is the preferred weapon. It is made of bamboo and artistically decorated.
The darts are usually made from the bertam palm and the tips are rubbed with poison from the Ipoh tree. The blow pipe has a range of up to 40m and is a very accurate and dangerous weapon in the hands of a skilled hunter.
The hunters also use bamboo caltrops, which are spikes planted in the ground with the sharpened ends facing upwards. The intended victims are usually pigs and wild boars. Aside from their hunting implements, the Orang Asli do not have any other weapons because they are non-violent people.
Traditional dwellings
Semi-nomadic communities like the Negritos stay in simple sheds, made in a semi-circle or horseshoe shape, with a big fireplace in the middle. These dwellings are easy to construct, and require minimum amount of material, labour and time.
The sedentary Temiars used to have longhouses which were smaller than the Iban longhouses of Sarawak. Many were between 40m and 50m in length, about 10m wide and raised 3m off the ground. The basic materials used were bamboo, timber and nipah leaves. No nails were ever used. Each family would have its own cubicle, with a corridor running down the middle of the house.
The central area had a fireplace, and here ceremonies, dances and other group activities were held. Today, longhouses give way to individual housing units as the extended family system dies off and their self-sufficient ways are replaced by the cash economy.
Many Orang Asli are animists who believe in the existence of spirits. As with most tribal people, the halaaq or “medicine man” plays a central role in communicating with the spirits and vice versa.
Outside the museum is a handicraft shop that stocks many wood (usually merbau) carvings made by the the Mah Meri of Pulau Carey, Selangor and the Jah Hut of the Krau Game Reserve, Pahang.
The museum, opened in 1998, aims to preserve the history of the aborigines, gather material on their culture and facilitate research. Maybe this is one of the places you should take the kids to this school holiday? W
Getting there The Gombak Orang Asli Museum is about 23km northeast of Kuala Lumpur. The museum, on Jalan Gombak, is open daily from 9am-5pm (except Friday). Admission is free.
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