Those South East Asian types found moving as a tribe in the Kalahari Desert, are they the descendants of the Orang Laut who had Oceania and the Pacific as their country. Wallace was intrigued by them as I found out by researching his works at the Royal New Zealand Asiatic archives. Are these yellow coloured people related to the Bushmen and the Hottentots.Only David Hatcher Childress can give us insights.
By the way it was the brilliant author of Civilization that mentioned the 5000 Orang Laut south of the Burmese Delta as the only people who lived permanently in the sea.But I have forgotten the name of the author The pigeon holes of my mind are cluttered by something worse than cholesterol.
Correct but God has given in a balanced manner different races and tribes with different excellences so that we are forced to learn from one another. Otherwise we would remain exclusive and parochial and having Chosen People kind of mentality.
Those harbouring this do not know the true nature of Cause and Effect. The suffering of mankind continues unendingly because of this, one of the many of the basic dissatisfactions of man.
The Origin is ONE. We are a branch of ONE. Mankind has to study the tree carefully to understand this.
Those orang laut who originated from Singapore and who now live in flats as individuals and not as a community and elsewhere such as along the Johore Straits or in Pulau Karimun, Pulau Boseng, and other areas of Riau should be traced with assistance of professional tracers within Red Cross and funds from Indigenous Peoples Council or something like that. Every people have their special talent and limitation. Theirs is that they can withstand extremes of weather and no wonder there is a theory that the Hottentots and Bushmen of Kalahari Desert may well have descended from them.Childress who speculated about this is not easily dismissed
Part some academic statements have to be analysed and not summarily dismissed for example
"The barbarians who speak Austro-Asiatic tongues of Munda type form the lowest substratum of the population of India Not only were they the original inihabitants, but vast reservoirs of "uncivilised" mankind still survive in the hill districts, away from the great roads and centres of culture. The Santals of Chota Nagpur and the Kols are at this stage today. Students of India were too long blind to the permanent influence of this factor, both racial and linguistic. It needed the curiosity of Sylvain Levi, directed to place-names , to raise the question in all its bearings and it needed the competence in Austro-Asiatic philology of his disciple J.Przyluski to produce definite results which are already very remarkable. It is established that the most ancient element in India is of the same race as the peoples of Nicobar Islands and Malacca." Ancient India and Indian Civilization by
Paul Masson Oursel, Helena De Willman -Grabowska and Phillipe Stern .Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, ,England 1934.
Now the Church are going all out to convert the Moken in the Delta area of Burma where they have presumably run to after Cyclone Nargis and they are also in Pulau Karimun and have opened a large church right outside an Orang Laut settlement. Now this will mean they will lose their survival culture which manifests itself in guru selam skills, basic flute music, ground burial rather than burial at sea, and invocation of hantu energies to steel themselves up and which surprisingly still haunt the culture of their landed brothers even in Royal Perak. Well they believe in a Creator God like the Red Indians and the spirits are just the ministering angels of the Absolute.
Along the coast of southern Thailand , particularly those islands , they also abound there. In Karimun they rear pigs , keep dogs and some have married the Chinese who both respect and exploit them .Their hero fought for Indonesia's independence and the legend is that when he was captured by the Dutch, the huge ship on which he was imprisoned floundered. They want their contribution to Indonesia's independence to be recorded and this is waht they expect me to do. I interviewed them only several months ago or less.
The Orang Laut in Singapore have mostly been modernised. Most of them are living in HDB flats and private houses. I believe many have also been assimilated into the Malay race.
December 11, 2008 Thursday, 06:08 AM
