Upon finishing my research paper and reconfirming deadlines, I realized that the final blogpost was due November 21st, not December 4th as I had thought. Therefore I apologize for the tardiness of this post, but it includes some very useful websites pertaining to Malaysia’s Oran Asli, the topic of my paper. For anyone looking into information concerning the issues surrounding the Indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia, these sites are great resources. They also show how the Orang Asli are utilizing technology as a platform for advocacy.
1. http://www.coac.org.my/
This is the official website for the Center of Orang Asli Concerns. A great website to learn about who the Orang Asli are and the issues that they face. I believe that the site was set up by Colin Nicholas, one of the leading academics in Orang Asli studies. He has written a lot about Orang Asli history on the site and the site also includes up to date news, articles as well as publications about Malaysia’s Orang Asli.
2. http://orangasal.blogspot.fr/
This is the website for the Indigenous Peoples Network of Malaysia (Jaringan Orang Asal Se-Malaysia in the Malay language) which is an umbrella group for 21 organizations that focus on issues related to Malaysia’s Indigenous peoples. This group advocates for all of Malaysia’s Indigenous groups and also represents them nationally and internationally as well. Unfortunately the site doesn’t look like it has been updated for a while, but has a lot of information about Indigenous issues in Malaysia written in both English and Malay.
3. http://unseenfacesunheardvoices.blogspot.com/2016/04/kami-wanita-orang-asli-dengar-suara-kami.html
After doing my research I learned that the primary way in which the Orang Asli community communicates amongst themselves and to the outside world through the internet was with the use of blogs. This blog is dedicated to issues related to women in Southeast Asian communities. This page deals with female activists in the Orang Asli community and details how a capacity building workshop has helped train these women on technology which has allowed them to tell digital stories and create advocacy videos to raise awareness of the issues they face. A couple of the videos can also be viewed here.
4. http://iva.aippnet.org/malaysia-orang-asli-are-highlighting-their-plight-on-social-media/
This is an article from the Indigenous Voices of Asia website that details how Orang Asli groups are using technology like social media to make their grievances known. This article features how a workshop conducted amongst Orang Asli villagers has helped them learn how to document their grievances and highlight their plight using social media. Using technology, these communities now have a way to fight back against government agencies who claim that their villages are operating problem-free.
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGWuZns-5U8
This post is a video of a Temiar community, one of the 19 Indigenous groups that constitute Malaysia’s Orang Asli. In this video we can see how the Temiar people connect to the land around them and utilize the land harmoniously, as is the case with most of the world’s Indigenous people. The video also shows a Temiar ceremony with song and dance and highlights some of the cultural rituals of the group.