Establishing a local Indigenous advisory council for the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways

Project Lead: 

Ian Wallace, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, UNM

Affiliations:

Collaborating Partner: Colin Nicholas, Ph.D., Founder and Coordinator, Center for Orang Asli Concerns (COAC), 29 Jalan USJ 1/28, 47600 Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Project Description:

The Indigenous Peoples of Malaysia, known collectively as the Orang Asli, are currently experiencing rapid environmental and lifestyle changes that are having major negative impacts on their health.1-5 To better understand the causes and health consequences of such environmental and lifestyle changes, we and a large multidisciplinary team of research collaborators developed the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OA HeLP). 6 Our team is comprised of biological and cultural anthropologists, physicians, biomedical researchers, ecologists, and human rights activists from Malaysia and North America. The overarching goal of the project proposed here is to further enhance involvement, knowledge, and power of Orang Asli in the work of OA HeLP by forming an official project advisory council comprised of Orang Asli community leaders. To accomplish this goal, we will organize a 2-day workshop at the Center for Malaysian Indigenous Studies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in May of 2025 that will bring together a diverse group of 50 Orang Asli community leaders, including women and men, elders and younger people, Orang Asli from remote forest camps to people living in large cities, hunter-gatherers to factory workers, people with no formal education and those with doctorates. Workshop participants will be recruited through the Center for Orang Asli Concerns (COAC), the largest and longest-running human rights group in Malaysia focused on the Orang Asli. COAC was founded by one of us (C.N.) over 40 years ago, and since then has become a nexus of communication, political organizing, and activism among Orang Asli communities throughout Malaysia.