In 1980, Rosemary Gianno, then a graduate student in Anthropology at Yale University, made the first of a series of extended trips to Malaysia. Her purpose was to learn about the Semelai of Tasek Bera, their culture, their technology, their role in the trade of forest products — how, in other words, Semelai culture had adapted to the forest environment. Gianno's documentation of the Semelai way of life, compiled over the course of more than a decade, includes tape recordings of music, village life, and traditional stories. While at Tasek Bera, Gianno lived in a Semelai community, Kampong Bapak. This exhibit provides her perspective on Semelai culture, a perspective informed and enriched by her knowledge of the language and her experience living among the people of Tasek Bera, learning how they think about the world.
The Semelai are one of the aboriginal, or Orang Asli, peoples of central
Malaya (peninsular Malaysia). They speak Semelai, a language belonging to the
Mon-Khmer Family, probably the most ancient in mainland Southeast Asia. The
Semelai who live around the sprawling lake call themselves Semaq Tasik, the
"Lake People." These people have long focused their lives around the lake, Tasek
Bera, while striking out away from it to farm, hunt, and collect forest
products. Canoes have been their main form of transportation, other than
walking, and long, elegant dugout canoes have been a ubiquitous presence. Most
families have at least two such craft of different lengths: the smaller canoe
allows one person to check traps or go line fishing in the early evening,
whereas the larger version can hold up to four or five for group or family
outings.
Many of the Semelai live around Tasek Bera, which is an
equatorial riverine swamp, although many young Semelai today seek wage labor
outside their traditional homelands. Indeed, much of what the Peabody Museum's
"People of the Lake and Forest" exhibit depicts can no longer be seen at Tasek
Bera. This lake might be thought of as an island of water surrounded by a sea of
rain forest. For generations the lives of the Semelai people have revolved
around this watery and luxuriant environment. Two mountain ranges flank Tasek
Bera, curling in protectively around the lake as they follow the seacoasts and
then gradually leveling out as they proceed south.
In Tasek Bera
contrasting ecosystems merge. Approaching it overland, the traveler perceives a
land gradually but grudgingly giving way to water. From firm highlands and
majestic dryland forest, one enters a forbidding zone where only stunted forest
remains and solid land gives way to a muddy solution of soil, decomposing
matter, and water. This region is, in turn, succeeded by a sun-drenched belt of
swamp rushes; the water is still hidden, concealed within the organically rich
substrate. Finally the traveler enters the clear, benign central channel, with
its open expanse of tranquil deep water. During the annual cycle of wet and dry
monsoons -- those celebrated winds of this region -- the channel and its
tributaries appear to pulsate as they swell with water, drowning the fields of
rushes, and then recede. Frequently no current can be seen, making the water
appear to rise directly from an invisible underground source.
The
Southeast Asian rain forests have not only provided indigenous peoples with a
context for agriculture; they are also rich with a wide variety of renewable raw
materials and resources. Rattan palm vines, considered the muscles or veins of
the forest by the Semelai, wind their way through the upper canopy. These have
long been an important resource for export trade; if your home contains cane
furniture, you may be a consumer of a Semelai product. Rattan is also important
locally; for example, in Semelai houses, in the past, beams, houseposts, and
roofs were lashed together with rattan strips.
Resin, another major
forest resource harvested by the Semelai, is a secondary product mainly composed
of terpenoids, a class of hydrocarbons produced by certain kinds of trees. (In
everyday English, resin is often called "pitch" or "sap"; ambers, used in
jewelry, are fossilized resins.) Some of the terpenoid constituents of resins
are essential oils, which give them a balsamic fragrance. In New England,
conifers, such as pines, produce resins, but in the tropics many types of
broadleaf trees produce them as well. Resinous trees are particularly abundant
and varied in the Southeast Asian rain forest. One species, Dipterocarpus
kerrii, in the Tasek Bera area produces an oleoresin (resin with high essential
oil content) whose oil fraction can be sold to be used as a base for perfume.
Other tree species produce resins that harden much faster, forming stalactites
that hang from trees. This kind of resin can be traded to varnish manufacturers
or crushed to make boatcaulk or tinder.
Technology is an important dimension of any culture and important to an
understanding of it. Certainly Semelai technology is a critical aspect of their
adaptation to Tasek Bera. The Semelai have long been accomplished forest
farmers, practicing shifting cultivation (swidden agriculture). This type of
forest management reflects a very extensive subsistence pattern, as distinct
from the intensive wet rice cultivation practiced by some Malays. Swidden
farming serves several purposes: it clears the area for planting; enriches the
soil through the ash deposited; controls plant and animal pests; and softens the
soil for planting. At any one time only a small percentage of the landscape is
under cultivation; the rest of the forest is allowed to regenerate.
To
clear swiddens in their forest/swamp environment, the Semelai use a wide variety
of cutting implements and the expert use of fire as tools. A plot of ground in
the forest is chosen and the trees and underbrush are felled and allowed to dry
for a month or two. Then, on a hot, dry afternoon the swidden is set ablaze.
After firing, the Semelai plant hill rice and other crops (including many
varieties of manioc, bananas, sugarcane, legumes, yams, taro, pineapples,
gingers, turmeric, and various herbs). as well as plants of ritual importance,
and Derris sp., poisonous vines used to stun fish. As in most cultures, among
the Semelai, fibers and weaving play an important role; Pandanus leaves and
other materials are used to make containers for transportation and storage,
baskets, and mats.
In the village, food is normally prepared and cooked
indoors, except on ritual occasions when communal cooking requires a larger
space. In small, one-room houses, butchering and food preparation take place on
a square corner hearth made of packed clay. While women tend to do most of the
cooking, both for ordinary meals and ritual occasions, men can easily take on
these tasks. Living on the shores of a swamp as they do, the Semelai learn to
become expert fisherfolk; their fishing technology is quite elaborate — even
including a Semelai version of a fly-fishing rod! Semelai technology has also
created animal traps of a truly astounding variety and complexity. In the past,
the Semelai set traps in the forest and in their swiddens to capture animals for
meat or to protect their crops. Blowpiping was also an occasional hunting
technique, though the Temoq, neighbors of the Semelai, were much more adept both
in making blowguns and poison and in using them. In fact, most Semelai who owned
blowpipes acquired them from a Temoq; sometimes the Semelai would simply
exchange agricultural produce or money for game killed by Temoq blowpipe
hunters. In the past, too, the Semelai used spears when hunting with dogs or
just carried them in case prey were encountered. Today, most Semelai hunting is
done with shotguns licensed by the government.
The Semelai employ an elaborate cosmology and healing ritual system to
understand the causes of life, death, and sickness. In it, for example, the
souls of those who are dying of natural causes enter the bri kmuc, the "forest
of ghosts" in the underworld. The forest is extremely beautiful and seductive,
with many flowering and fruiting plants and trees, colorful birds and a stream
plentiful with fish. The farther the soul travels along the road through the bri
kmuc the closer it is to death.
When a person is sick, the Semelai
shaman performs a trance ritual in which his soul leaves his body to search for
the soul of the patient; Semelai shamans can draw detailed maps of these
journeys. The all-night ritual includes man dozen different drumbeats; each
drumbeat signifies the shaman's arrival at a different location in the Semelai
universe and honors a particular plant, animal, spirit, or place that either
abets or interferes with the shaman's journey. The prowess of a shaman can be
measured by how far he has managed to penetrate into the bri kmuc and return
alive.
At death, the souls of those who die of natural causes are
believed to reside in srga (derived from Sanskrit surga, "heaven"), which has
been described as a bandar ("town or city"). This conveys a sense of the place
of the dead as a foreign culture, recalling the ethnic landscape of the Malay
Peninsula where the village-dwelling Semelai have traditionally gone down to
larger towns inhabited by Malays and Chinese to trade. Those who die violent
deaths go to the lawot darah; they become paqreq, very dangerous spirits that
can cause epidemics and other calamities. The road that looms above is nrakaq,
similar to the Christian concept of Hell.
Historically, the Semelai have lived in either nuclear or extended families, not
in larger longhouses or communal groupings. Because they tended to move to new
fields every year or two, they also had no need to make houses that would last.
Often there were no more than two or three households with associated swiddens
at a particular location. Nowadays, because the Semelai have been pressured by
the government to settle down, their people build sturdier houses within much
larger villages; many of these houses have been influenced by Malay or Chinese
designs.
In general, while Southeast Asian cultures have defined roles
for men and women, there is also a high degree of "crossing-over," that is,
instances where men perform tasks generally done by women and vice versa. Among
the Semelai, moreover, social roles have been changing as they adapt to their
new circumstances. As late as 1980, for example, both men and women were
practicing midwifery in Tasek Bera. By 1992 all the female midwives had died or
stopped practicing; only men remained, and all the new practitioners were men as
well. It is unclear why this particular change has taken place, since male
dominance of midwifery is very rare cross-culturally. Nor has it been adapted
from neighboring cultures -- both Malays and Malaysian Chinese continue to have
female midwives. The phenomenon may be related to a more general tendency:
greater male focus, status, and power where capitalism has been recently
introduced and Islamic influence is felt.
Living in close proximity in
Peninsular Malaysia, a territory a little smaller than the state of New York, is
a remarkably diverse range of cultures. The principal, most populous groups, the
Malays, Chinese, and Indians live in towns and cities; agriculturally the Malays
have practiced wet rice cultivation, a labor- and land-intensive practice. The
Semelai who engage in shifting cultivation have been much less sedentary. Others
of the eighteen Orang Asli peoples on the peninsula, such as the Semang, have
been highly nomadic gatherer/hunters.
Until recently, Tasek Bera was
surrounded by a lush, incredibly diverse lowland tropical rain forest dotted
with agricultural clearings. Now, this ancient and prolific ecosystem is vastly
diminished. Since Malaysia's laws concerning logging have not been effectively
enforced, little of the lowland forest remains. The area around Tasek Bera,
because of its swampiness, had been one of its last refuges. Today, most of the
countryside surrounding Tasek Bera is dominated by cash crops. Palm oil, which
is extracted from the fruit of the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), is exported,
mainly to industrialized countries like the United States, where it is added to
many processed foods. Rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) plantations are also
widespread. Thus, while there are still many trees, they now lack variety.
Rosemary Gianno teaches at Keene State College in New Hampshire. The
artifacts were collected for the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New
Haven, Connecticut; she retains the rights to her photographs. The exhibition
was jointly created by the Peabody Museum of Natural History Yale University,
New Haven, Connecticut, and the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery Keene State
College, Keene, New Hampshire. This exhibition would not have been possible
without the support, assistance, and friendship of the Semelai of Tasek Bera,
especially Hokin Sujin, Eng Tek, Baki Hoken, Nujen Tokgunung, Layang Mali Sahat
Sipin, Nayan Pandak, Nonek Sin, Kak Hakek, Atai Tokdun, Pitok Hai, and Yanah
Sujin. To them Rosemary Gianno and the two museums express their deep gratitude.
The exhibition and accompanying programs received substantial support from The
Connecticut Humanities Council and The New Hampshire Humanities Council.
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