Why can we citizens comprising of 34 over million not spare our indigenous brothers and sisters their right of livelihood?
In Peninsular Malaysia, the indigenous population (officially known as the Orang Asli) numbers approximately 227,900.
These 18 tribes who live off their ancestral lands have lately come out from their forest habitats crying out for justice.
While modernising Malaysians have entire cities, towns and villages to carve out a living, we do not seem to be caring for the original tribal people who lived on this land long, long before we – Malays, Chinese and Indians set foot on this land.
Today, in our rage and race to take a slice of the economic pie of this peninsula we have literally infringed and continue to ravage the deep forests.
The deforestation agendas that continues to see the enrichment of timber tycoons and their cartel operatives; the building of mega dams just so the modernising population can have their ever expanding needs met; the reclamation of riverines and virgin lands in the name of agro advancement to enrich modernising Malaysia – all of these have plagued the tribal communities with untold hardships and miseries.
Today many Malaysians are growing up not even knowing anything about the very humans who lived here even before their own ancestors arrived.
And the fact remains that our education system too has failed miserably in creating awareness, appreciation and respect for our rare, precious and diminishing orang asli.
How can we proudly parade and lay claim to our respective religious tenets, when we chose to completely ignore the plight we have allowed to befall the natives of this land?
How can we be proud owners of a seeming modern Malaysia when away from our sight are more than 200,000 natives enduring a threatened livelihood?
While the government can lay claims to having agencies looking into the welfare and the rehabilitation of our fellow native citizens, we never questioned whether these are morally virtous attempts.
It is very sad indeed when we read of news about some natives walking up to the prime minister’s residence having faced a mountain of hardships and unending disappointments in life.
It is agonising to read about how helpless, unarmed natives have to set up blockades with bare hands to defend their ancestral land and livelihood only to be bulldozed by heavy machinery, threatened by hired thugs or even get arrested.
Why are we the vast majority of 34 million citizens who all arrived on shores of this country we call home today not willing to or helpless in ensuring a mere 200 thousand original occupants of this land have their rights protected, nurtured and defended?
It is time that our national conscience was rekindled. It is long overdue for our national will to be awakened for all the morally right reasons.
The original natives of this land have a right to their ancestral livelihoods and land.
What right have we to impose our malay, chinese, indian, muslim, christian, buddhist or hindu beliefs, traditions and cultures upon the natives of this land?
As an independent nation, the day we learn to coexist with our very own orang asli, appreciate their anthropoligical existence that will be the start of a truly socially progressive nationhood. – July 23, 2026
J. D Lovrenciear is a Scoop reader