The Orang Asli: Fighting for Ancestral Land in Malaysia

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.

In Perak, a state in Northern Malaysia, the first records of indigenous people opposing logging on their ancestral lands date back to 1937. For more than 80 years, Malaysia’s indigenous tribes have tried to lay modern claim to lands their people have lived on for centuries. 

In Perak, the Temiar tribe — one of the largest tribes in the northern part of the Malaysian peninsula — are fighting to obtain rights over 12,465 hectares that they claim as ancestral forests. Several Temiar villages this year erected blockades to prevent a logging company from accessing forests — part of the Air Cepam Forest Reserve in the Perak state — the local government has granted it permission to cut.  

Two blockades were erected near Cunex village at the beginning of the year and near Ong Jangking village in April. Since then, the blockades have been torn down several times by the loggers and local authorities and several villagers were arrested. One court case has already been filed and another is in the preliminary stages of filing by indigenous people against the local government. “Since we first built it, the logging company, sometimes along with local police and/or the local forestry department have torn down our blockade five times. We rebuild the blockade every time the night after they tear it down,” said Anjang, a villager from Ong Jangking village.