Malays and Orang Asli: contesting indigeneity / Rusaslina Idrus

In Malaya, the Malays without doubt formed the first effective governments⋯ The Orang Melayu or Malays have always been the definitive people of the Malay Peninsula. The aborigines were never accorded any such recognition nor did they claim such recognition. There was no known aborigine government or aborigine state. Above all, at no time did they outnumber the Malays⋯ I contend that the Malays are the original or indigenous peoples of Malaya and the only people who can claim Malaya as their one and only country1 Mahathir Mohamad, 1970: 162-3, 1702 We were here long ago wearing clothes made of bark before the Malays came wearing their tanjak? Selangor Orang Asli elder, personal communication Malays, as spelled out in the statement above by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, lay claim as the indigenous people of the land. This positioning is based on their stance as the first group to establish a government, traced to the 15th-century Malaccan Sultanate. The Orang Asli,5 the "other" indigenous group and acknowledged as the aboriginal people of the Malay Peninsula, however, do not enjoy the same privileges as the Malays. In fact, they are often discriminated against and labeled as primitive and backward. Historically, Malays and Orang Asli have a long history of interaction, albeit a complex one.6 While violence was part of this relationship, so too was a longstanding history of alliances and mutual dependency. In the precolonial period, Malays were reported to have raided Orang Asli villages and captured them for slaves.7 On the other side of this, Orang Asli played an important role in the Malay kingdom. Alliances through marriage and trade with Orang Asli groups were much sought after by the Malay settlers.8 Indeed, Orang Asli played an important role in the formation of the Malaccan sultanate in the 15th century. Malays were also dependent on Orang Asli as their primary source for forest products, an important commodity for international trade in the region.9 In Negeri Sembilan, Orang Asli played a significant part in the royal Minang court. The two groups also share many legends and overlapping myths of origins.10 Colonial economic expansion and more direct British intervention at the end of the 19th century marked a changing relationship between the two groups.11 The creation of a more distinct "Malay aristocracy," the decrease in economic demand for forest products and the importation of racist ideology all tipped the balance toward Malay dominance and the marginalization of the Orang Asli. However, these two groups, due to their long history of interrelations, are arguably not so distinct from one another; thus, how did one group become the privileged indigenous group, while the other a marginalized group labeled as backward and primitive? In this chapter, I explore the positioning of Malays as indigenous by examining their relationship to the Orang Asli - the other indigenous group. My interest is not in uncovering who is more authentically indigenous than the other; rather, my aim is to focus on the different positionings, and to explore the historical and political processes that shape these claims. Here I adopt Tania's Li position that "a group's self identification as tribal or indigenous is not natural or inevitable, but neither is it simply invented, adopted, or imposed. It is, rather, a positioning which draws upon historically sedimented practices, landscapes, and repertoires of meaning, and emerges through particular patterns of engagement and struggle."12 By unpacking the layered histories of relationship between the two groups, I examine the complex processes that simultaneously position the Malay as indigenous and the Orang Asli as a marginalized group. In particular, I focus on how their shared claims as indigenous peoples have at times merged and at other times been made distinct. Drawing on archival material, I will illustrate how during certain historical moments, Malays and Orang Asli were aggregated into one category, with the Orang Asli in most cases becoming invisible, while at other times, the two groups were positioned as distinct and accorded different rights and entitlements. In a broader perspective, this essay shows how the positioning of the Malays as indigenous with special privileges, and the Orang Asli as a marginalized group are thus neither primordial nor inherent, but a result of a culmination of historical and political processes.