Something piqued my thoughts this morning. And since then, my brain has been working hard.

I was in church - today it so happened that I stayed for the ministry (it’s like a lecture of some sort) and thus had the opportunity to listen to some announcements and publicity stuff for certain events (yes, even churches need publicity to get people to go for events and what-not). One of these announcements revolved around missionary work in some remote corner. Granted the speaker could use more help to spicy up his ‘introductory speech’ and the projector he used needs fixing…but I was thinking about one thing he mentioned: “we are there to preach God’s word to these people but first of all, we need to learn their language and culture and etc…”

This got me thinking.

Does missionary work comprimise the cultures of nomadic/ancient tribes and Aboriginal communities?

Sociologists and anthropologists argue that while culture is constantly evolving and changing, the groundwork of the unique cultures worldwide are disappearing fast due to the impact of globalisation and the media in many small little corners of the globe. Fijians and African cultures/tribes who - in the past - found huge women attractive (beauty was in the fat) are now constantly bombarded with messages that THIN is in. They have already begun to lose bits and pieces of their unique culture. Anthropologists are worried that towards the end of this century, the world will no longer be seeing a variety of different cultures but just one homogenous bunch of mixed up subcultures.

What if missionary work displaces their way of life, their beliefs, their practices, their norms? If the Orang Asli (OA) believe in the animistic aspect of nature and thus revolve their life solely around these beliefs - that every natural object has a spirit and thus are capable of rendering guidance to us human beings - wouldn’t the introduction of God being one person (or at least three in the concept of the Trinity) upset this concept? What if a change in their beliefs lead to a change in the way traditional education is passed down from one generation to another? If a family of shamans were to convert to Christianity and believed that their healing practices were sacrilegious to the Christian God, how would that affect the entire community?

Where do you draw the line between ‘killing’ a culture completely and introducing a new ‘modern’ and ‘civilised’ way of living? Even so, what do you define as ‘modern’ and ‘civilised’?

After spending a good four months reading up books on the OA of Malaysia (it was for a paper on development and communication) and how religion has turned their cultures and world upside down - literally - I am a bit hesistant to endorse any form of missionary work in Malaysia or elsewhere UNLESS they can prove to me that these people are and will still be able to retain their traditional way of living and more importantly THEIR IDENTITY.

Studies by Robert K. Dentan have shown that many OA communities in Malaysia - we have about 100 over (if I can still remember it correctly) - are displaced because of conflict over religion and identity. These has lead to a breakdown in the traditional society and roles of individuals in the community. Alcoholism, aggression/violence, prostitution and the like - things which were never part of the OA community - are now becoming commonplace. What is worse is that the OA have grown so dependent on the government for everything that their children no longer have the ability to understand and comprehend their own identities and culture, their people no longer have the ability to care and feed themselves as well as their own communities. Once jungle-keepers who feed off well from the land, they are now placed in urban landscapes and forced to pick up agriculture - something which many OA tribes have training or educational background in.

Reports flooded Dentan’s research about how the government ‘forced’ the OA to partake in a rubber plantation project, arguing that rubber will sustain the community, provide them with what they need without realizing that it takes twenty years for a rubber tree to mature and thus be able to produce the sap (which in turn will be turned into rubber). There was even one report about how the government wanted the OAs to care for the farm animals, so they provided these jungle keepers with cows. What was interesting about this report was this: they flew all the cattle in my helicopter…and they had to fly out all the by-products like milk and meat out. I seriously do not see the logic of teaching these tribal people how to fend for themselves by depending on us when they already can do that (and have done it for years!) WITHOUT our help.

The worst thing is that we are making it harder for them to LIVE as who they really are.

(Note: Dentan together with three/two other authors (one of them is Kirk Endicott) co-wrote a book which contains all these reports. The title is “Malaysian and the Original People: A Case Study on the Impact of Development on Indigenous People” - (I think that is the one) ~_~ I hope to be able to find this book…if not, I’ll buy it from Amazon or somewhere.)

The issue of the religion is also discussed in Dentan’s book where there is a conflict between the OAs and the Muslim religion. Many are forced into converting to a religion that they do not believe in and at times, it can be said that there is often an unofficial race between the Christians here and the government (that represents the Muslim community) to convert as many as possible to the religions respectively. In Malaysia, there is also the issue of the definition of bumiputra and how that term is applied to the OA - it is argued by Dentan that the there is the rush to convert all OAs because by the constitution, a bumiputra is a Muslim and a Malay - and thus logically, they have to be…both. This has lead - I believe - to an identity crisis in many OA children - are they Orang Asli or Malays? Who are they? What are their cultural roots?

On the side note, after searching my computer, I found the report I wrote two years ago and in the appendix, I gave my lecturer short excerpts on the background of policies that affect the OA community. Here in this entry, I’ll give some short excerpts from the research paper that I wrote:

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…It is quite obvious that if today there were four million aborigines, the right of the Malaysia to regard the Malay Peninsula as their own country would be questioned. But in fact there are no more than a few thousand aborigines.
– Mahathir bin Mohamad, Premier of Malaysia (Quoted in Mohamad - The Malay Dilemma, 1970)

We stay poor and everyone else gets rich. The Chinese get rich. The Indians gets rich. The Malays get rich. And they all get rich from the land of us indigenous people. Is that fair?
– Bah Tungkoot, Semai man
(Quoted in Dentan, R. K. et al, 1997)

BACKGROUND OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF MALAYSIA

The Orang Asli comprises of at least nineteen groups that total up to about 90,000 people in 1995 with a range of 100 to 20,000 individuals in a group (Dentan et al, 1997). Each group is distinctly different in cultural, religious, economical, political and social terms. Although different, they share a common root as their ancestral roots can be traced to the first occupiers of the Malay peninsular. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Orang Asli are direct descendants of the Hoabinhians, the earliest well-documented inhabitants of the Malay Peninsular (Rambo 1979:61; Solheim 1980; Bellwood 1985; Benjamin 1985; Adi 1985 in Dentan et al, 1997). Hoabinhians sites found in the Malay Peninsular have dated back to periods ranging from 8000 B.C., to about 1000 B.C. Therefore such evidence would suggest that Orang Asli groups have occupied the peninsular region first before the ancestors of today’s Malays began settling in the peninsular coasts (Bellwood 1985:270 in Dentan et al, 1997).

Vastly spread across the peninsular (Map 1-2, Appendix), Orang Asli groups occupy lands where the population is low and the land is rich in natural resources. Depending on their location, certain groups of Orang Asli practise economic activities that include forest foraging, horticulture, trade, fishing and farming (Table 1-1, Appendix). They are not actively in touch with the outside world and the market economy, harvesting and producing for their own consumption and small-time trade.
The Orang Asli was self-sufficient and economically stable. They lived their lives in isolation from the outside world, occasionally coming into contact with the local traders. It was not until the end of World War II and the Emergency period (1948-1960) that the Orang Asli began playing a significant role in Malaysian politics, at their own expense. Resettlement programs lead to high death rates among Orang Asli groups. There was lack of shelter, poor nutrition, unsanitary conditions and total social and psychological upheaval in these settlements (Carey 1976:308; Jones 1968:297 in Dentan et al, 1997).

Other plans involved the movement of Orang Asli back to their original (Carey 1976:308; Jones 1968:297 in Dentan et al, 1997). It too failed. The job of winning over the Orang Asli was handed over to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, which expanded and given new responsibilities. The “Aboriginal Peoples Act, 1954 (Revised 1974)” (Malaysian Government 1994 in Dentan et al, 1997) was enacted by the British government to “protect the Orang Asli from the evil influence of Communists” (Dentan et al, 1997). The government later issued a “Statement of Policy Regarding the Administration of the Aborigine People of the Federation of Malaya” (Ministry of the Interior, 1961 in Dentanl et al, 1997) which contains government policies regarding the Orang Asli. These policies lack impact and in many instances, divert from its original provision (Mohd Tap 1990:45-46,450 in Dentan et al, 1997).

THE ASSIMILATION POLICY
The Statement of Policy (Ministry of the Interior, 1961 in Dentan et al, 1997) puts forward that the goal should be the “ultimately integration [of Orang Asli] with the Malay section of the community” (Ministry of the Interior, 1961:3 in Dentan et al, 1997) and further adds that it should be “natural integration as opposed to artificial assimilation” (Ministry of the Interior, 1961:5 in Dentan et al, 1997). Although it made mention of the preservation of the “institutions, customs, mode of life, persons, property and labour of the aborigine people” (Ministry of the Interior, 1961:5 in Dentan et al, 1997), the policy made no mention of the teaching of aboriginal languages or to educate the public and create awareness about the Orang Asli. Neither did it mention the ability to allow nomadic Orang Asli groups to pursue foraging way of life (Ministry of the Interior 1961:8, 10, 13-14 in Dentan et al, 1997).

THE ISLAMIZATION POLICY
A shift from integration to assimilation was seen in the 1970s when the government began an ‘Islamization’ program to convert all Orang Asli to Islam (Mohd Tap 1990:228 in Dentan et al, 1997). The move for Islamization was in the line with increasing debates on the validity of the Malay special rights with arguments stating that the Malays were not bumiputras (‘sons of the soil’) because they were not indigenous to Malaysia. Dentan argues that the government’s current goal of turning all Orang Asli into Malays explains why they have been denied “the rights and freedom of ordinary citizens as well as the special privileges it guarantees to other indigenous communities” (Dentan et al, 1997). Such a move will only leave the Orang Asli destitute and with no choice but to convert to Islam. When such conversions are completed among the Orang Asli groups, the debates on the Malay special rights and their origins will cease. However that is not the case as the Orang Asli, like other indigenous minority groups in the world today, hold fast to their disappearing culture, religion and way of life.

Results of Orang Asli Policies on the community
Poverty and Insecurity
Policies that have been set up by the government are aimed at developing Orang Asli economies but instead have made them more reliant and vulnerable to market prices. The Orang Asli are removed from their self-sustaining economies to a more agriculture base where they are now involved in small scale rubber farms. Thus, this only serves to make them reliant on the fluctuations of market demands on rubber. In most instances, the amount of land provided in the regroupment scheme is inadequate for subsistence crops. The Orang Asli also faced the problem of supporting themselves before their rubber trees mature and began to produce income (Endicott, 1987).

Not only that, they also have no training and experience in farming or agriculture. Instead of being more independent with economic improvement (Nicholas, 1990), the Orang Asli are now vulnerable to exploitation by middlemen and in some cases, officers from the Department (Dentan at el, 1997). The JHEOA (Department of Aboriginal Affairs) Director-General concedes that Orang Asli are the poorest, earning MYR2100 (US$830) annually as opposed to MYR76000, the annual income of an average Malaysian (Dentan at el, 1997).

Dependency
One result that has been ‘unexpected’ from regroupment policies is the dependence of the Orang Asli on the government. Since the 1940s, especially during the World War, “the Orang Asli have been transformed to a community that is totally dependent on the Department (JHEOA), and the government for even the most trivial of things like, like buying pencils for their school going children” (Mohd Tap, 1990 in Dental et al, 1997). Also, the dependence of Orang Asli has been an excuse for the government to shift blame whenever regroupment schemes fail. Blaming the Orang Asli has only served to enforced more negative stereotypes of Orang Asli (Dentan et al, 1997).

Social Problems
Issues such as alcohol abuse, fights, and prostitution are the results of traditional social organization and norm breakdowns in settlements. With exposure to all-night dancing parties, it has become a norm to consume cheaper forms of alcohol (palm toddy and rice wine). Most drinkers are men and conflicts often arise from alcohol abuse. Incidents of violence and spousal abuse, which have been previously unheard of, are now on the rise in these settlements (Dental et al, 1997). Orang Asli women are also involved in prostitution, mainly for financial reasons. The erosion of traditional knowledge is also a problem as young Orang Asli in villages have no proper schooling and have lost respect for their elders, due to their exposure to the modern world (Dentan et al, 1997, Mohd Tap 1990 in Dentan et al, 1997). As concluded by Mohd Tap, “drinking, dancing and gambling seem to be expressions of their frustration and inability to fulfil their expectations of the ‘good life’” (Mohd Tap, 1990 in Dental et all, 1997)

So back to my question: Would missionary work change the culture of many ancient tribes around the globe as they have in Malaysia? I find myself in a quandry. I don’t know whether to support the missionary work that is being put into place right now or to be against it for the reasons above.

All I know is that I am bloodily against the idea of forcing these people to adopt a culture and religion that isn’t theirs just because we do not understand their way of living or for political/self-righteous gains. And based on what I do know about the OA, I am somewhat skeptical whenever someone comes and tells me that this will be for them and that it will better their lifestyle. Being a person who is so into culture and sociology/anthropology, I find it disheartening whenever I read about how one little culture is disappearing because of globalisation/media or some bloody government’s attempt to solidify their standing. -.-

Who are we to say that the OAs of Malaysia (or anywhere else) do not have a satisfying and fulfilling life? Who are we to say that their religion is blasphemous? Who are we to say that they are barbaric and uncivilised people?

Honestly, this makes me sick just like how Monsanto, Nike and McDs make me sick (read my previous entries for context). If only I could bring the Malaysian government to a world court for this…geh.