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Q: anthropology ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: anthropology
Category: Miscellaneous
Asked by: craigeperkins-ga
List Price: $2.00
Posted: 21 Apr 2003 11:36 PDT
Expires: 21 May 2003 11:36 PDT
Question ID: 193386
What is the Senoi Culture like now?

Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 21 Apr 2003 12:14 PDT
Would you be interested in information about a recent film on Senoi
culture, as well as a link to a 1991 article about the Senoi, and
information on a 1995 book on the Senoi?
Answer  
Subject: Re: anthropology
Answered By: tehuti-ga on 21 Apr 2003 14:13 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hello craigeperkins

The Senoi are one of three tribes making up the Orang Asli aboriginal
group in West Malaysia, of which the Senoi make up 54%.
“Traditionally, the Orang Asli are hunter-gatherers, fishermen and
arboriculture cultivators.  Of particular interest is that a majority
of the Orang Asli still depend on the forests for livelihood in
varying degrees. Forest dependence has affected many facets of their
way of life.”  From “Entrepreneurship Among The Orang Asli
Proto-Malays (A Malaysian Aboriginal Tribe) In Rompin, Pahang: Are
they progressing in entrepreneurship?” by researchers from Kolej
Pengurusan Bisnes, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (Pengurasan Business
College of Tenaga National University.)
www.geocities.com/mohdddalins/orangaslismeforum.doc

There are about 40,000 Senoi in total, “the Senoi were adept at
swidden agriculture (shifting cultivation) as well as fishing,
trapping, hunting and gathering rainforest products. Their blowpipe
skills are legendary.  These days the Senoi also cultivate rubber,
fruit crops and cocoa and many have entered mainstream Malaysian life…
But even if they live nowadays a modern lifestyle, their culture with
beliefs and tradition still lives on in them or is adapted by other
cultural groups.
The Orang Asli and the Malays believe in Animism: Everything contains
its own spirit (semangat = 'the soul', 'the spirit of life').
Inhabiting rocks, trees, rivers, lakes, buildings etc. these spirits
had to be appeased as it is believed that they had power over all
natural forces.”
From “Orang Asli - The original people” (on the web site Asia Info by
Claudia Jankewitz http://www.asiainfo-by-cj.com/english/malaysia/culture/orang_asli/orangasli_f.html
)

The guide to Malaysia by Sears Travel, at
http://www.searstravel.ca/en/content/TravelGuides/index.jhtml?SearchValueID=9296
also maintains that the Orang Asli, including the Senoi, have for the
most part forsaken their traditional lifestyle, although a few small
groups might still remain deep in the jungle: “Since the 1980s, when
the only highway into the interior… was finished, the whole region has
been transformed…  Much of the primeval landscape, hitherto the
preserve of Orang Asli, a few Malays and the odd Chinese trader, has
been rapidly tamed, providing economic incentives for people from both
east and west coasts to move into these areas. This encroachment has
had a huge effect on the indigenous tribes of the interior, and since
the late 1950s the greater part of the Orang Asli have opted out of
their traditional lifestyle. It's probable that only a few hundred
truly nomadic tribespeople remain, and even those have been tainted by
economic progress. Orang Asli expert, Iskandar Carey, wrote in the
1970s, "There are groups of Senoi in the deep jungle who have never
seen a road, although they are familiar with helicopters, a word for
which has been incorporated into their language." The Centre of Orang
Asli Affairs coordinates a variety of policies, including health and
educational drives. Though inevitably diluting the purity of Asli
culture, these initiatives have lifted their standard of living and
begun the process of integrating the Orang Asli into mainstream,
multiracial Malay culture.”

One subgroup of the Senoi is the Temiar.  There are about
14,000-20,000 Temiar in Malaysia. They have set up a web site with
information: Temiar Web http://www.temiar.com/
“The Temiar are an easy going peaceful people… slowly being pushed
from their homelands by international timber companies, hydraulic
power companies, and the Malaysian governments attempts to settle them
out of the forest into reservations. Many Temiars live within or on
the fringes of the rainforest, some live in towns and Temiar
settlements can be found in the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.
Outside of the rainforest Temiars have worked in professions such as
medicine, politics and law, within the retail trade and within the
media and the arts. … still find it difficult if not almost impossible
to open up a bank account or get a bank loan. Those Temiar that are
still situated within or near the rainforest subsist on slash and burn
cultivation, hill rice harvesting, fishing, hunting and trading. "Few
Temiar are now 'tribespeople' any more: most of them have become
peasants or proletarians belonging to one of the several indiginous
minorities that make up Malaysia's ethnic mix" (Benjamin 5: 1993). The
Temiar "do not see themselves as forest people. They see themselves as
people who live in cleared spaces which happen to be surrounded by
forest" (Jennings 25: 1995). The Temiar, as are all the Orang Asli,
are administrated by the JHEOA (Department for Aporiginal Affairs).
Within the last few years the Orang Asli have formed their own
political organisation POASM (Orang Asli Association of Peninsular
Malaysia).”  (References are to Benjamin, G. Danger and dialectic in
Temiar childhood. 1993, Jennings, S. The Senoi Temiar. 1995: Routledge
– no further information supplied).  http://www.temiar.com/temiar.htm

The web page just cited goes on to say that the Senoi are best know
for supposedly being proponents of a theory of dreams, the Senoi Dream
Theory, as publicised by K Stewart in his PhD thesis of 1947. 
Supposedly this has made their society free of violence and crime. 
However, this picture has now been widely discredited.  A film was
made about the Senoi use of seances for healing or mourning. “This
film has often been described out of context "as a type of erotica,
idealised in a way that travesties the Temiar.” However, the article
concludes “The world has much to learn from Temiar culture,
paritcularly in terms of controlling violence, aggression, conflict
and bullying….  The Temiar want to grow and play a full part in
Malaysian society and the world at large, do not want their culture to
remain static but they also do not want to have it crushed by big
business and politics. The Temiar feel pushed and pulled by
organisations who make promises for their welfare and then never make
good that promise. The Temiar have many positive things to offer us
all, we need to ensure that their current needs are met in terms of
the preservation of their homelands…  and that they are given the
rights and responsibilities of other Malaysian citizens.”

The site provides a bibliography of studies on the Temiar, Senoi and
other groups of the Orang Asli, including studies dated up to 1997, at
http://www.temiar.com/oaresources.html and it lists other relevant 
web sites at http://www.temiar.com/oalinks.html

An extensive and detailed critical paper about Senoi Dream theory,
dated 2003 is available at
http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/senoi.html “Senoi Dream Theory:
Myth, Scientific Method, and the Dreamwork Movement” by G. William
Domhoff, March, 2003

Domhoff makes the point, “The people who were said to first practice
this new way of thinking about and using dreams, the Senoi, are an
aboriginal people who live in the jungle highlands of Malaysia.
Numbering between 30,000 and 45,000 for the past 50 years, they live
near rivers in loose-knit settlements of fifteen to 100 people. The
Senoi are characterized by the dreamwork movement as an easygoing and
nonviolent people. Their ideas about dreams are so appealing because
they are believed to be among the healthiest and happiest people in
the world. There is reportedly no mental illness or violence precisely
because they have a theory of dream control and dream utilization
unlike anything ever heard of in Western history. The main source on
the Senoi use of dreams is the work of Kilton Stewart (1902-1965), who
first learned about the Senoi during a stay in Malaya (now Malaysia)
in 1934…. These accounts of the Senoi people and their use of dreams
have an otherworldly, utopian quality about them. They seem almost too
good to be true…. In fact, none of this is true. It is all a fairy
tale. It is not a hoax, but it does show how gullible most people can
be due to persuasive dream hucksters and the general American will to
believe that there must be some good and pure people somewhere in the
world. As I show in Chapter 2, drawing on detailed field work by
anthropologists that has been totally ignored by the dreamwork
movement, the Senoi do not practice Senoi Dream Theory. Senoi peoples
certainly have a dream theory and a dream practice, but it is nothing
like what American dreamworkers believe. If anything, it is just the
opposite.”
You can read the rest of what Domhoff has to say by following the link
above.

Further sources of information:
Forest dwellers under forces of change
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80893e/80893E0b.htm (chapter
from In Place of the Forest: Environmental and Socio-economic
Transformation in Borneo and the Eastern Malay Peninsula  by Harold
Brookfield, Lesley Potter, and Yvonne Byron, United Nations
University Press, 1995.  The whole book is available online at
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80893e/80893E00.htm )

Search strategy on Google: Senoi today
craigeperkins-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars

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