Akar Nusa
At a Semai village meeting, nobody shouts. The headman speaks at length. Each side speaks at length too. The aim is not to find a guilty person. The aim is to put things right between neighbours, and then everyone goes home.
The story
The Semai are an Orang Asli people who live in the forested central mountains of Perak and Pahang. According to the Peaceful Societies project at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, there were about 43,500 Semai in 2007. A COAC figure for 2000 is lower, about 34,248, so numbers depend on the year and who is counting. COAC counts the Semai among the Senoi group, and they speak an Aslian language.
Traditionally the Semai grew cassava and rice, fished, hunted, and traded forest products such as rattan. Today some Semai go to school, work in professions, or work in towns. One village, Ulu Geroh, runs a tourism business. Some other villages face poverty linked to forest loss.
The Semai are best known to outsiders through the anthropologist Robert Dentan, who lived with them in the 1960s and wrote about them as a nonviolent people. The Peaceful Societies page notes that the Semai describe themselves as nonviolent. It explains how disputes were handled: through separation, gossip or shaming. Today a formal meeting called a bcaraa', borrowed from neighbouring Malays, is also used. Its purpose is to settle the dispute and bring the people back together.
The same page adds caveats. The Semai do quarrel and sometimes get angry, though aggressive anger is rare. A few murders have been recorded. When the British recruited some Semai men in the early 1950s to fight in the Emergency, some became fierce fighters, and then went back to peaceful ways. And Semai themselves worry whether their peacefulness can survive outside pressure such as land seizures. So the "peaceful" label is something to explain carefully, not a stamp to put on a whole people.
Land matters. COAC reports a land rights case won by the Semai of Kampung Senta, one of the cases it has supported in court.
On DNA: mother-line studies of Senoi peoples, which include the Semai, found lines from both the Semang's ancestors and from Indochina. A Y-chromosome study of 243 people included 21 Semai, though it did not single them out for any conclusion we can summarise here.
Where you can still see it today
- In Perak and Pahang. Semai villages are in the central highlands. Ulu Geroh welcomes visitors through its own tourism programme, according to Peaceful Societies. Please contact the community first.
- In the language. Semai is a living language.
- In community meetings. The bcaraa' is a living practice.
- In land and rights news. COAC reports on land cases involving Semai communities.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
A mother line or father line found in a Semai person may be very old in the Peninsula or may link to the mainland. A region estimate may show Southeast Asian and East Asian links.
DNA cannot show that someone is Semai or tell how they would behave. Character is not in the genes. DNA also cannot decide race, religion or bumiputera status.
