Semai
Valentine’s Day and Peace
Tomorrow, February 14, people in the United States and many other countries will celebrate Valentine’s Day, not as an official holiday but as a folk celebration of romantic love. If you can ignore the commercial aspects of the occasion, this unofficial holiday celebrates the love among couples that can foster nonviolence. For an advocate of […]
Semai Foods in Malaysian Restaurants
The Semai and some of the other Orang Asli societies have been introducing to Malaysian chefs tasty wild foods which the latter are starting to incorporate into the dishes they prepare for their restaurants. An article published in Aljazeera.com on November 1 explains that the original people of Malaysia are experts in finding and using […]
Teaching Traditional Semai Skills
Raman Bah Tuin, a 48-year-old Semai man, moved out of the Malaysian forest and founded the Jungle School in order to teach traditional Orang Asli skills to young people and curious tourists. A report in the news website Free Malaysia Today on August 10 provided a glimpse into the work of the school, located in […]
Malaysian Teachers Introduce Islam to Orang Asli Kids
Some Malaysian teachers are attempting to convert the Semai and other Orang Asli children in their schools to Islam. According to a news report on July 27, two different experts who spoke at a round-table dialogue on the education of the indigenous children described the subtle ways that teachers use for introducing their religious beliefs […]
Semai Criticize New Government
Tijah Yok Chopil, a prominent Semai leader, gave a speech on Tuesday last week in which she castigated the one-year-old Pakatan Harapan government of Malaysia for continuing to ignore the rights of the Orang Asli. An article on May 28 in the Malay Mail reviewed her charges. Tijah said that the Orang Asli were quite […]
Dam Builders May Triumph After All
Malaysia’s Perak state has decided to go ahead with the construction of a hydropower dam on the Geruntum River, despite the fact that it will harm the lands of a group of Semai villages. The Semai in the town of Gopeng have expressed their opposition to the dam-building project since it was first announced by […]
A Semai in Parliament
Ramli Mohd Nor, a Semai man from the Cameron Highlands who won a by-election to the Malaysian parliament in late January, gave his first official speech last week. According to one of the news accounts of his maiden address, Ramli is the first Orang Asli individual elected to the Dewan Rakyat, the lower house of […]
Chini Lake Pollution Getting Worse
Two weeks ago the New Straits Times (NST), a major Malaysian newspaper, published a report about the environmental degradation of Tasik Chini, the second largest lake in Malaysia. The health of the lake and the surrounding forest ecosystem is important to the Orang Asli villages around it—mostly Jakun people but also some Semai. A news […]
Cameron Highlands By-election
On November 30, the Election Court in Malaysia declared the results of the 14th general election last May in the Cameron Highlands district to be void due to corrupt practices. The High Court agreed on December 13 and a by-election was scheduled for January 26. The winner of the Cameron Highlands seat in parliament for […]
Malaysian Politician Visits the Semai
A veteran Malaysian politician was unexpectedly stranded in an isolated Semai community in the Cameron Highlands on New Year’s Eve. The sense of being trapped fostered feelings of sympathy for the poverty of the Orang Asli. According to one news report, Lim Kit Siang, a long-time leader of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), entered the […]
