The Orang Asli (Jahai) in Yala and Narathiwat Province A Preliminary Field Survey

Abstract

This article presents findings from research about the Orang Asli people (also known as the Jahai group)—an ethnic group of 439 people living in Yala and Narathiwat provinces, in the Hala-Bala Wildlife Sanctuary and Bang Lang National Park, which are connected to the Belum forest in Malaysia. The Jahai ethnic group are organized socially into kinship groups. The Jahai people do not have a written language, but they have designs for their weaponry and gifts that men give to their wives. Their organizational structure consists of families and relatives. Men are heads of families, while women are managers. Elderly men and women are the most powerful, able to communicate with their ancestors in different dimensions and provide consultation and advice to group leaders. Jahai society is classless and organized according to the age of the members. Jahai people have mutually dependent relations with outsiders in the plains, namely Malay Muslims and Thai Buddhists. However, today the Jahai are facing economic hardship and wage exploitation due to various factors, including to their lack of official Thai identification and knowledge of the law, and their need for food, such as rice, which replaces their staple of cassava from the forest. Moreover, due to the destruction of the forest resulting from the Bang Lang Dam, they have had to adjust the structure of their organization. There is a large group living at 800 meters above sea level who have split into 7-15 sub-groups to work as wage employees in order to bring rice back to support the subsistence of the larger group. The Jahai people venerate their ancestors and believe that the dead inhabit a parallel dimension which is the same as the present world but it is abundant. Furthermore they believe that the ancestors can restore the abundance of the current natural world by drawing upon the wealth of nature in the parallel dimension. The health and economic situation of the Jahai is critical. Nevertheless, the Jahai people still want to live as hunter gatherers in Thailand rather than in neighboring Malaysia, as it is in Thailand that they can maintain their independent and nomadic livelihood.