What’s Become of the Seafaring Orang Seletar?

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past: some unfamiliar, others forgotten, all fascinating.

When Stamford Raffles arrived on the shores in 1819, there were already people living here. Among them were a group of sea nomads called the Orang Seletar. At the time, they made up about 20 percent of the local inhabitants of Singapore. Who are the Orang Seletar? They are people who used to live on boats in the waters between the northern coast of Singapore and the southern coast of Peninsular Malaysia. That was the past, though. In Singapore today, the Orang Seletar have largely assimilated into the local Malay community. In Malaysia, though, they’ve managed to hang on to their identity. There are nine Orang Seletar villages dotting the southern coast of Johor. My name is Jimmy Yap, and I’m the editor-in-chief of BiblioAsia. Today, our guest, Ilya Katrinnada, will tell us more about the Orang Seletar. In 2018 and 2019, she was part of a project that sought to archive the voices of the Orang Seletar who live in Malaysia. She also played host to them when they visited Singapore in 2019. Ilya is an educator and writer who’s interested in the intersections of creativity, community and education. She graduated from Asian anthropology. Hi, Ilya. Welcome to BiblioAsia+.

Ilya
Hi, Jimmy, Thanks so much for having me here.

Jimmy
My pleasure. Can you tell us a little bit – how did you get involved with the Orang Seletar community? Why did you get involved in this oral history project to document their lives?

Ilya
Actually, this project was started by my research team lead, Chan Kah Mei. So shout out to Kah Mei if you’re listening to this. She started the project when she was on sabbatical from her work. She had read Isa Kamari’s book, Rawa. Have you read Isa Kamari’s book before?

Jimmy
I have not – neither in English nor in Malay.

Ilya
She read the English version of it. Rawa basically tells the story of the Orang Seletar community through the eyes of an Orang Seletar called Rawa during the post-independence part of Singapore’s history. During that time, there was a lot of development in Singapore. So what happened to Rawa and his community? That was what Isa Kamari was writing about in the book. And she wanted to turn the book into a film because it talks a lot about not just the Orang Seletar community, but also about Singapore’s mangroves. Isa Kamari did a really, really good job in detailing how lush the mangroves are in Singapore, and she was very impressed by it. It’s also a piece of literary writing that is told from the perspective of an Orang Seletar, which is very rare, because if you look at historical sources about the Orang Seletar, it is always written from the perspective of the other. In order to write the screenplay, Kah Mei wanted to meet the Orang Seletar herself. So she went to Johor Bahru and she went to a village, Kampung Sungai Temon, which has an Orang Seletar cultural centre. There are a few restaurants as well. They’re very welcoming to tourists. So she went there, and she met them. She realised that there are a lot of stories from the Orang Seletar community that have not been formally recorded and documented, so she started this oral history project. At that time, I had just graduated from university. I majored in anthropology and she needed someone to help her out with the project. So I jumped on board at that time.

Jimmy
It sounds very exciting. When Raffles came in 1819, he noted that there were Orang Seletar living here. Do we have documentary evidence of how far back the Orang Seletar have been in these waters?

Ilya
Portuguese sources in the 15th century did mention the selat. Selat means straits in Portuguese. But it didn’t refer to specifically the Orang Seletar, but more of the sea nomads that were around this region. I think that was the earliest documentation.

Jimmy
Right, but as you said, this is just the Orang Laut.

Ilya
Not the Orang Seletar.

Jimmy
Not the Orang Seletar, specifically. Are they the ones who are most closely related to the Johor royal family? Or is that a different Orang Laut group?

Ilya
Mostly related. I’m not sure in terms of the comparison, but they had a close relationship with the Johor sultanate then.

Jimmy
Tell us, how many times did you go to Johor to interview these people, because I guess that’s what you did, you went down to Johor to interview them.

Ilya
In 2018, I think, over a period of two months, we went about maybe twice a week. So that was quite intense. They were day trips to visit different villages. We tried to interview the elders in the community. Then after those two months, we got a bit busy with work and life, so the visit became about once every month.

Jimmy
The Orang Seletar used to live on boats. Do they still live on boats, or do they live on land but they have boats?

Ilya
In the past, they used to live on boats made of wood, made of seraya and meranti wood, among others. These boats had thatched roofs that were made of mengkuang [screw pine] leaves. The mengkuang leaves helped protect them from the sun, from the rain. But now they don’t live in these boats anymore; they have homes on land, by the sea. And the houses that I’ve seen, most of them are made of concrete. There are some structures that are made of wood as well. They have boats, but these boats are fibreglass boats. They no longer have wooden boats because it’s more efficient for them to go fishing using fibreglass boats.

Jimmy
Do they still make their livelihood from the sea and it’s just that they no longer live on a boat?

Ilya
Yeah, most of them still do fishing-related activities. They rear mussels, which is something that they did not used to do actually. They go out to fish and then they sell it at the market, but there are also a growing number who work inland, whether it’s working in the offices or factories.

Jimmy
When you first went to meet the Orang Seletar in their kampong, what surprised you most about that whole experience?

Ilya
A lot of things surprised me.

Jimmy
Okay. Like what?

Ilya
The first one will be the contrast between the environment in the village versus the environment right outside of the village.

Jimmy
What do you mean by that?

Ilya
In most of the villages that we went to, you had to drive quite a distance, maybe like 5 to 10 minutes from the main road in order to get to the village.

Jimmy
All right, okay.

Ilya
And for one of these villages in Danga Bay, we actually passed by a lot of fairly new condominiums. Then when we arrived at the village, it was a stark contrast. There were no condominiums.

Jimmy
It’s kind of old and rundown, maybe?

Ilya
Maybe not very rundown. But yeah, there’s a very stark contrast between the shiny waterfront kind of residences outside of the village and what we saw there.

Jimmy
Apart from the physical differences in the kind of houses, what else surprised you?

Ilya
I think one thing that was very intriguing to me was that even though all of the villages that we went to – we went to four different ones; they identify as Orang Seletar – each village had quite a distinct identity. So, for example, one of the villages that we went to, they’re mostly Christian. Then there’s another village that we went to that is mostly Muslim, and quite a number intermarried with Malays. And then there’s another village which is very interesting: there were Muslims, and then there was a Chinese towkay. And there was this other Orang Seletar in that village who still identifies as animistic.

Jimmy
These three communities that were living in one village?

Ilya
Yeah, in one village. And they seem to be very harmonious – there’s no tension or anything. We didn’t feel that.

Jimmy
So the Orang Seletar were traditionally animists. Or maybe some have become Christian, some have become Muslim. What percentage of them remain animists?

Ilya
Out of the four villages that we went, we only really met one person who still holds on to his animistic beliefs.

Jimmy
Oh, interesting. So everybody else has moved on to embrace a different faith. That’s really interesting.

Ilya
Yeah. But even though they embrace a different faith, they still do carry on. They still remember the teachings of their ancestors. Because for people who are animistic, they believe that there are spirits in the environment. So even though the Orang Seletar have converted to Christianity, for example, they still do believe in the presence of spirits. But instead of asking their ancestors for help to protect them from the spirits, they will ask their god.

Jimmy
Right now do they still call themselves Orang Seletar? I mean, they haven’t been to Seletar in very long, right?

Ilya
Yeah. They are formally recognised as Orang Seletar, at least in Malaysia. But actually they claim not to name themselves Orang Seletar; they call themselves Kon.

Jimmy
So they call themselves Kon.

Ilya
Yeah.

Jimmy
But they have a distinct identity as being different. Even though they might be Christian or Muslim now, they still know that they are not, for example, Malay or…

Ilya
Yeah, they don’t identify as Malay.

Jimmy
They identify themselves as belonging to a particular ethnicity, regardless of the religion that they might have. What language do they speak?

Ilya
They have their own language. It’s the Kon Seletar language, and it sounds nothing like Malay.

Jimmy
Oh, it sounds nothing like Malay. So you couldn’t understand.

Ilya
No, I couldn’t understand at all. But interestingly we did have a conversation with them about language. They said that because there’s a lot of intermingling between them and the Malay and Chinese communities outside, the language has also evolved. For example, the word for “eat” in their language is kayo. And now some of them will say maan, and maan is very closely related to makan, which means “eat” in Malay.

Jimmy
You were saying that they make a living from the sea. So they fish, they rear mussels. What else do they do?

Ilya
For the village in Danga Bay, they actually have a restaurant as well.

Jimmy
Oh, for tourists?

Ilya
Yeah, for tourists, for locals as well. Recently, they reopened a restaurant. A Chinese businessman invested in the restaurant, and they cook seafood. Some of the seafood is caught from the sea around them, and some are bought. Oh, and for that village in Danga Bay, they also conduct cultural activities. Like I mentioned just now, there’s a museum there. They bring tourists around the museum, pre-COVID especially, and then they bring tourists around the mangroves near the village.

Jimmy
On boats?

Ilya
Yeah, on fibreglass boats.

Jimmy
Oh, did you do that?

Ilya
Yes, I did.

Jimmy
Was that cool? What did you see? Was it exciting, interesting?

Ilya
Yeah, it was very interesting. The guy who led us on the tour, Jefree, is also a photographer. He would just pluck certain leaves that we saw along the way and he would tell us, “Oh, this nyirih [cannonball mangrove] – for example – is used as a medicinal plant.” Then we saw different types of crabs as well. Along the way he also mentioned that a lot of the mangroves are currently being destroyed. At the same time, a lot of the natural heritage is no longer there.

Jimmy
Especially for those who have become Muslim, there’s been some intermarriage with the local Malay community. Do they tend to move out from the kampong or do people move in?

Ilya
For the Muslims that we met, the people moved into the village. For that one particular village near Pasir Gudang Port, the headman is a Muslim. He also married a non-Orang Seletar, and his children are Muslim as well. They also married Malays. So they moved into the village.

Jimmy
Presumably they also speak Malay. I mean, they speak Kon Seletar but they also speak Malay.

Ilya
Yes.

Jimmy
I had very important question that I wanted to ask you. What was the food like?

Ilya
The food?

Jimmy
Would you consider it similar to Malay food?

Ilya
Interestingly, we’ve actually never eaten at the villages before. Because the one that we always go to, the one with the restaurant, they’re not Muslims. They go hunting for wild boars.

Jimmy
Oh, I see. Okay. You were saying that Jefree took you out as a tour guide through the mangroves. Do they still maintain this link with the land? Sorry, with the sea. This is an example of the sort of land-focused perspectives; all our metaphors relate to land, but actually it’s the sea right? You’re right.

Ilya
I would say that the older generations, yes. Because they lived through the times when they were still roaming around the Johor straits, so there’s still a very strong connection to the sea. But for the younger generations, I wouldn’t think so.

Jimmy
They’re just staring at their phones, like all young people.

Ilya
They still do go out and rear mussels, catch crabs to help their parents. But interestingly one of our interviewees, Mina, she kept saying that the children nowadays don’t like to go out and look for crabs because it’s so hot. And she would say that last time in the past, she always had to go and do it, but now her grandkids don’t like to do it anymore.

Jimmy
Right, they prefer just going to the supermarket and buying it, maybe. In your essay for BiblioAsia, you wrote that the Orang Seletar have their own version of the origin of the name Singapura. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Ilya
Yeah, this is one of their favourite stories to tell. Every village that we went to they will always say we have this version of history.

Jimmy
I’d like to hear it.

Ilya
They said that, in the past, when Sang Nila Utama came to Singapore, Sang Nila Utama actually met their ancestors who were around the Johor straits. He asked the ancestors, What is this island? And they said, Oh, it’s Singa Pulau. So Singa Pulau became Singapua.

Jimmy
Ah, okay. For the Orang Seletar, does singa also mean “lion”?

Ilya
Yeah.

Jimmy
Oh, okay. Singa Pulau. And you brought them around when they came to Singapore in 2019. Somebody organised it and thought, “Let’s check out your old hangout?”

Ilya
It was actually because Drama Box at the time was organising a play. So, shout out to Drama Box. Drama Box used our interviews to create a play, a verbatim play, about the Orang Seletar as part of the bicentennial.

Jimmy
What was it called?

Ilya
Tanah.Air: A Play in Two Parts. We thought that it would be out of courtesy to invite them over to watch the play. But of course, if we wanted to bring them to Singapore, we might as well bring them on a tour. That would be interesting for them. For the tour, what we did was that we brought them to different locations in Singapore which they mentioned in their oral history interviews. So places like Singapore River. Of course, Seletar Reservoir. When we went there, it was interesting because there’s this board at the Seletar Park that has a picture of their ancestors on it. They were able to name the man in the picture.

Jimmy
Oh, that’s so cool.

Ilya
Yeah. We walked along the boardwalk and I could sense from their facial expressions that, for those who have been there, maybe they had a flashback. And they talked about how different the place is now as compared to last time. And what was interesting also: they were looking at the sea and how many fishes there were.

Jimmy
Okay. You can’t take the sea out of the Orang Seletar, right?

Ilya
Yeah. Then we went to Sembawang Park. Sembawang Park faces Johor Bahru, right? They were just pointing out, like, oh, that’s Kilo’s village. Kilo is a man, an Orang Seletar man, who lives in one of the villages that we could see from Sembawang Park.

Jimmy
Oh, so from Singapore we can see some of these settlements, these villages.

Ilya
We could point out the direction of the villages but we can’t see them.

Jimmy
Right. Although we call them the Orang Seletar and we mentioned in our intro that they lived in the straits. Presumably because there are boats, they could go around Singapore and up the north and the east and west coast of Malaysia as well?

Ilya
But they stayed mostly around the northern coast and southern coast of Johor. They didn’t go out to the bigger sea. Partly because their boats are quite small, so they couldn’t withstand the currents of the bigger sea.

Jimmy
In Malaysia, it sounds like they’ve managed to maintain a large part of their culture and the language. But that’s less so in Singapore. I think in your essay you write about how the Orang Seletar were resettled. Would it be accurate to say that most of them lived in the Orang Seletar villages in Johor, but some of them also lived in Singapore?

Ilya
You mean during the resettlement period? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly the percentage of people who migrated and people who stayed. We did also try to find Orang Seletar living in Singapore, but we couldn’t find any.

Jimmy
Okay, it’s much harder, although there has been a resurgence in interest in the indigenous people of Singapore, the Orang Laut. So hopefully we will meet someone or you will bump into a Singaporean who has Orang Seletar parents or grandparents. That would be quite cool.

Ilya
If you’re listening to this, please reach out.

Jimmy
All 11 of you, please. All 11,000, I mean. All 11,000 people who are listening to this podcast, if you know someone who is related to the Orang Seletar, please get in touch with us. When they came to Singapore, you also took them to [the merlion]. There was a picture of all of them at the merlion.

Ilya
Yes.

Jimmy
You also succumbed to the more modern parts of Singapore.

Ilya
Yeah, we walked around the Singapore River. They were very cute – they brought along their headdresses, and they let us wear it and we took a photo. They were very proud to wear it. Even at the play they were wearing it. The night before, one of the ladies was asking for a penknife so that she could weave the headdress. She wanted to make sure that everybody had one.

Jimmy
How many of them came to Singapore?

Ilya
I think about 10.

Jimmy
And was it just the oldies who had lived on board or did it include young people as well?

Ilya
It included young people as well. Some of them brought along their kids.

Jimmy
Right. Okay. So cool. Are you still in touch with them?

Ilya
Yes. Currently, we are trying to get their signatures for the oral history interviews. Because initially we thought that just verbal consent was enough, but apparently we needed to get their signatures.

Jimmy
So now you’re trying to get them to sign off on the documents?

Ilya
Yes.

Jimmy
How many hours of oral history interviews are we talking about here?

Ilya
We have about 10 interviews, each of them I think was one to one-and-a-half hours.

Jimmy
I think it’d be wonderful. I hope you manage to get their signatures and we’ll keep them in the oral history archives and digitise them.

Ilya
Yeah. And we will share it with them as well.

Jimmy
Presumably the interviews were done in Malay rather than Kon Seletar. Right now, what do you do?

Ilya
I work as a special education teacher.

Jimmy
All right, cool. How long have you been doing that?

Ilya
For about two years.

Jimmy
Okay. Do you enjoy the work?

Ilya
Yes, I do.

Jimmy
What do you like about it?

Ilya
Every day is a different challenge.

Jimmy
And are you planning to do any more writing?

Ilya
Yes, I am planning to write one more article about the Orang Seletar in collaboration with Jefree, who is the photographer.

Jimmy
Oh, right, who is himself an Orang Seletar, right?

Ilya
Yeah. A lot of his pictures are in my article in BiblioAsia. He has a lot more photos that are yet to be seen. So, yeah, we are working on that.

Jimmy
Okay, fantastic. We hope to be able to see this article out in print very soon. We have come to the end of the Orang Seletar-specific part of the interview. We’re just going to wrap up this interview by asking you the same questions that we ask all our interviewees. Tell us, without thinking too hard: who do you think is the coolest person in Singapore’s history?

Ilya
Lieutenant Adnan bin Saidi.

Jimmy
Okay, I can get behind that. Which historical figure would you like to have dinner with?

Ilya
Hajjah Fatimah.

Jimmy
Okay. Why Hajjah Fatimah?

Ilya
She was a very successful tradeswoman, which was not easy at the time. She also uplifted the poor when she built the mosques. So I just wanted to ask her how she did all that.

Jimmy
Have you ever worshipped at the Hajjah Fatimah Mosque?

Ilya
Yes.

Jimmy
It’s the one that’s sort of slanting slightly, right?

Ilya
Yeah.

Jimmy
Can you only tell that from the outside? When you’re inside, can you tell that?

Ilya
From the inside, no.

Jimmy
It’s quite cool. It’s just slightly off-centre. Very cool. But there’s no danger of it becoming the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Ilya
No, I hope not.

Jimmy
Okay. What do you think is the most underrated or intriguing period of history?

Ilya
To me, I’m very intrigued by the precolonial. Anything that is precolonial. Because a lot of it is intertwined with mythical and spiritual aspects, so I think it leaves a lot to your imagination.

Jimmy
Okay, cool. What are you reading now?

Ilya
Currently, I’m reading Snowing in Bali by Kathryn Bonella.

Jimmy
Oh, what is that?

Ilya
It’s a book about the drug trade and dealership in Bali. Singapore is mentioned in one part of it because one of the drug dealers came to Singapore for an operation.

Jimmy
Okay. All right. Medical tourism. Complete the sentence: history is…

Ilya
Open to debate.

Jimmy
And, finally, BiblioAsia is…

Ilya
BiblioAsia is something that students should read.

Jimmy
Yeah, that’s what I think. I hope they read it, but I think that a lot of what’s in our magazine isn’t in the A Level syllabus.

Ilya
That’s part of the reason why it’s interesting.

Jimmy
Exactly. Because otherwise it becomes very narrow. But actually history is much more than.

Ilya
It’s so rich.

Jimmy
It’s very rich. Singapore is very small, and we haven’t done enough to really excavate huge swathes of our history, but at the same time, what we have done is actually quite interesting.

Ilya
Yeah. I think it will make the younger generation more interested to know about Singapore history.

Jimmy
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Ilya, for joining me on BiblioAsia+. If you want to learn more about the Orang Seletar, check out Ilya’s article on the BiblioAsia website at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. Thank you, Ilya, once again for joining us.

Ilya
Thank you, Jimmy.

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.

Ilya Katrinnada, “The Orang Seletar: Rowing Across Changing Tides,” BiblioAsia 18, no. 1 (2022).

Mazelan Anuar, “Orang Laut,” Singapore Infopedia, published March 2020, National Library Board.

Isa Kamari, Rawa (Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books, 2013). (From National Library, Singapore, Call no. RSING 899.283 ISA)

Clifford Sather, The Orang Laut (n.p.: Academy of Social Sciences in cooperation with Universiti Sains Malaysia, Royal Netherlands Government, 1999). (From National Library, Singapore, Call no. RSEA 306.08095951 SAT)

Mariam Ali, “Singapore’s Orang Seletar, Orang Kallang, and Orang Selat: The Last Settlements,” in Tribal Communities in the Malay World: Historical, Cultural, and Social Perspectives, ed. Geoffrey Benjamin and Cynthia Chou (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002), 273–92. (From National Library, Singapore, Call no. RSING 305.8959 TRI)

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Gibson Analytics. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Ilya for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.