Bunga Moyang & Taman Teman Padi: Enduring craft practices of the Mah Meri and Semai peoples of Peninsular Malaysia as cultural and spiritual resistance against Indigenous epistemicide

Abstract (English)

The Mah Meri and Semai are two of 19 culturally and linguistically distinct indigenous groups in Peninsular Malaysia, collectively referred to as Orang Asli (OA). Bunga Moyang (ancestral spirit flowers), crafted by the Mah Meri, are made specifically from nipa palm fronds for their moyang (spirit guides, guardian spirits, and ancestors) for curative and celebratory purposes. Taman Teman Padi (garden of paddy companions), crafted particularly by the East Semai, is made of various plants, with specific items such as the tiger milk mushroom, a white spheroid rock, and a Serama chicken egg, all of which are favoured by the ruai bak (rice soul). Both craft practices are culturally and spiritually linked to the Mah Meri and Semai cosmologies, belief systems, and ways of knowing and being.

These enduring craft practices point to OA resistance and resilience in the face of multigenerational struggles for rights to self-determination and their customary lands. Their resistance and resilience is defined by acts of authentic existence, critical to the preservation of OA cultures, spiritual beliefs, and traditional knowledge. These acts of resistance have inspired a push back and counter narratives against the legacies of colonisation and the contemporary forms they manifest within Malaysia.

Anthropological research on the Mah Meri and Semai groups are mostly done in the early years of post-independence, where impacts of accelerated environmental degradation by extractive economic policies, state-funded assimilation of the OA into the Malay-dominant society, and systemic removal of OA's attachment to their customary lands were not yet discernible. Current researches rarely link OA craft practices, threats to their cultural traditions and spiritual beliefs, and the increasing dispossession of their customary lands. These disruptions are not just environmental but also cultural and existential, threatening the survival of intergenerational Orang Asli traditional knowledge and governance systems.

This paper aims to contribute new perspectives to anthropological works, guided by OA community-led collectives such as the Mah Meri Tompoq Topoh and the Semai Jelai Asli Craft, on how the OA communities respond to the threat of epistemicide and their survival as a people/community. Central to this discourse is their acts of authentic existence—living, dynamic craft practices linked to ancestral practices, rituals, and adat (customary law) that continue to thrive despite external pressures threatening their lands and communities, which subversively interrupt Indigenous epistemicide. This paper underscores the significance of OA-led collectives and the transformative power of their enduring craft practices that continue to uphold their adat and honour the wisdom that their ancestors have learned, practised, and handed down. These acts reclaim OA space within knowledge domains, asserting their right to self-determination in cultural and environmental spheres; and challenge external and internal, past and present, epistemic and material forms of colonisation.