Alberto Gomes, a professor at La Trobe University in Australia, said the government should design policies that serve to protect the land and livelihoods of Orang Asli communities over those that merely aim to develop and modernise them.
“When you displace the Orang Asli and open their land to developers, you are not just displacing and dispossessing them, but you are also robbing Malaysians as a whole of the environmental and ecological knowledge the Orang Asli community provides,” he said.
Gomes said environmentalists tend to ignore the Orang Asli’s expertise when setting out conservation policies.
“They (Orang Asli) are displaced and taken out for the purpose of conservation when they have been the ones taking care and protecting the area in the first place,” he said.
Gomes said Malaysians tend to have skewed perceptions of indigenous communities, assuming them to be primitive and in constant need of help, which in turn influences the policies drawn up to assist them.
Centre for Orang Asli Concerns coordinator Colin Nicholas slammed natural resources and environmental sustainability minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad for propounding a unified policy on Orang Asli issues, saying policies already in place have not been properly enforced.
“Every ministry and department should do its job. There should be a unified enforcement of already existing policies under the different ministries instead,” he said.
Earlier this week, Nik Nazmi was reported as saying that all ministries must work together to produce a unified response to issues affecting Orang Asli communities.
He said lack of coordination among ministries had resulted in a failure to address issues affecting the Orang Asli in a holistic manner.
However, Colin said the community’s experience with the Orang Asli development department (Jakoa), an agency under the rural and regional development ministry, suggests that a unified approach may be counterproductive.
“An Orang Asli child has to go through Jakoa to be considered disabled, but any other Malaysian just has to go through the social welfare department.
“However, Jakoa does not have the expertise, people or capacity to handle all these issues. That’s the danger of a unified policy,” he said.
Orang Asli activist Amani Williams-Hunt Abdullah, better known as Bah Tony, said the government has failed to listen to input from the Orang Asli before formulating policies.
“There has been a lack of consultations with the Orang Asli when ministerial departments make decisions affecting them. Even when they do, it’s selective, and they do it with the headmen.
“However, the headmen don’t fully represent the voices of the community. Decision-making is a communal process for the Orang Asli,” he told FMT.