From Cultural Activity to Cultural Tourism: A Case of Indigenous Community in Malaysia
Indigenous communities in Malaysia comprise of many tribes which practices different believes and culture. Although they are minorities which represent approximately 12 % or the country population, their culture managed to attract attention from domestic
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From Cultural Activity to Cultural Tourism: A Case of Indigenous Community in Malaysia Siti Suriawati Isa, Hassan Mohamed Zakaria and Siti Salwa Isa
Abstract Indigenous communities in Malaysia comprise of many tribes which practices different believes and culture. Although they are minorities which represent approximately 12 % or the country population, their culture managed to attract attention from domestic and international tourists due to its uniqueness of it. Majority of Malaysia’s indigenous communities live in East Malaysia. They are called Orang Ulu or Dayak in Sarawak, and in Sabah, they are called Anak Negeri, while in West Malaysia, there are three major indigenous communities identified or better known as Orang Asli. These three groups are as follows: Semang, Senoi, and Proto-Malay. The general objective of this study was to look at the traditional culture of Malaysia’s indigenous communities in West Malaysia that have significant potential in attracting tourists. Three tribes have been identified by this study, which are Che Wong, Mah Meri, and Temuan. The usage of their traditional culture for tourism activities has been investigated. For the first initial stage, personal face-to-face interview with the stakeholders and Orang Asli community have taken place at their villagers. This will assist this study in designing questionnaire in the next stage. The result shows that all three tribes have been engaged actively in tourism activities. Keywords Culture
Indigenous communities Orang Asli West Malaysia
S.S. Isa (&) H.M. Zakaria Department of Recreation and Ecotourism, Faculty of Forestry, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] S.S. Isa Department of Industrial Design, Faculty of Art and Design, Universiti Teknologi Mara, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 M.A. Abdullah et al. (eds.), Regional Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences (RCSTSS 2014), DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1458-1_91
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1 Malaysia’s Indigenous Communities Background Just like many countries in the world, Malaysia has its own indigenous and native communities all over the country. The country can be divided into two parts, the Peninsular Malaysia or East Malaysia and West Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak). These indigenous groups can be divided into Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia group. In Peninsular Malaysia, they are called as Orang Asli (original people) while the one in East Malaysia is called as the native people. Both groups are considered as Bumiputra (son of soil) together with the Malay ethnic which means they have certain privileges in Malaysia. The word of Orang Asli came from Orang Asal who is the oldest inhabitants of Malaysia. However, in this study, the term of Orang Asli will be used to refer to this community. The total population of Orang Asli or native people in Malaysia is reported as around two million or 12 % of Malaysian population which is esti
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