[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

1.0

Introduction During our trip to Gopeng, Perak we had spent half day on Saturday evening (10

December 2011) to visit and walk around indigenous village at Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum to observe their lifestyle and environments. This is a very good opportunity for us to compare and learn what a village have that different from the suburban and urban area. What can be improve and what are the advantage would be to live in Kg.Poh. We manage to interview 5 villagers about their daily life.

1.1

Basic necessity Basic necessity that people need to live are air, shelter, food, water and clothing. There

do have all such necessity even though the shelter and cloths its not good enough as what other people have at suburban or urban area. However, their air, water and food are more natural, fresh and not polluted by chemical or hazardous gases. The water source for the indigenous community is from the reservoir area of the mountain and forest. They get water for free for their daily life need such as drinking water, cooking, farming, wash cloth, and other daily life activity. In fact, the river is just near to their house, which is in front of some house either. Moreover, the authority also gives aid in term of providing pipe to supply the water directly to their house, like what we have in town. The different is the water supply is directly from the main source and not polluted.

Water source and pipe to the houses

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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

Furthermore, government also give aid by building a modern house from concrete for them, even not all villagers get the aids in the first stage of development. Some of the house is still maintain the typical house of orang asli.

The modern or concrete house of the Orang Asli

The typical house of Orang Asli

Even, this village is far away from town, but they also supplied with electricity by the government. The villager told us that, not every house has television and some of the houses that have television might also have Astro. It shows they are not being left out from the technology era.

Two houses that has Astro

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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

Next, government also never leaves this village from development or lacking other basic necessity such as clinic. This village has one small Klinik Desa for them to get medicine and treatment. The clinic known as Balai Rawatan Kesihatan.

1.2

Religion Based on our observation most of the indigenous people in Kg.Poh are Christian since

we found on Anglican Church over there. In addition, in that evening the church have visitor from Georgetown Baptist Church. Even though, the village has dominant religion but there a still has small portion of the villagers has no belief or pagan.

1.3

Transportation Since this village is far away from the town and neighbor village they need

transportation. But not all family can afford to have one. There are only one or two house that has car park in front of their car and some have motorcycle.

Basic transportation (motorcycle)

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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

1.4

Economy of Indigenous people Based on our findings, the Orang Asli in Kampung Poh basically involved in the green

economy, primarily small-scale agriculturist who go for hunting, fishing and gathering from nearby forest, estates and large farms. Tin mining is the former activity and also source of economy and some go for rubber tapping activity. The hunters explore forest and provide variety of forest products such as wooden products. Trading is another former activity but still, there are few of them still doing it as source of economy. Half of the Orang Asli engaged in business selling vegetables, fruits and livestock. Some of the villagers plant vegetables and local fruits such rambutan, langsat, durian and jackfruits, the all time favorite fruits themselves and sell them out at the town. During the fruit season, Orang Asli together with the locals, selling fruits at fruit stall nearby village and some other favorite spot. Some of them are also laborers, working at the town. Majority of the housewives are full time housewives, and according to them, basically the husband who will go to work and the wife stays at home doing the house works and feeding the children. Very few of them we can see go for fishing in the river nearby. Upon the visit, we find it interesting to see daily routines of the Orang Asli such as housewives went fishing with their children at the river nearby, and few Orang Asli men gather variety of forest productions.

Tapioca trees

Chicken that they

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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

1.5

Education of Indigenous people Education becomes almost compulsory to the Orang Asli in Kampung Poh. Based on

our findings, majority of the Orang Asli children in Kampung Poh attending the pre-school education at the kindergarten, some of them went to primary and secondary school nearby and some received training and technical and vocational fields. the name of school that the kid go is SK. Ulu Geruntum. Religious education is given in Church build in the village located in the middle of the village. Based on our conversation with few Orang Asli children, the parents usually send their children themselves to the school using motorcycle. Weekly prayers in Church are done and managed to instill the moral and religious value in Orang Asli. They believe that basic education starts at home and church. Language spoken at home and at school is different. At school the Orang Asli children speaks Malay and remains their mother tongue at home. From our observation, we come to a realization that the Orang Asli nowadays is more educated compared to the previous generations. They accept development, encourage the children to get education by sending their children to schools and they are able to speak Malay fluently and understand them very well. There are huge differences from what we have seen now the Orang Asli decades ago.

Indigenous children

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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

2.0

Environment conservation The legislations which concerns Orang Asli are the National Land Code 1965, Land

Conservation Act 1960, Protection of Wildlife Act 1972, National Parks Act 1980, and most importantly the Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954. The Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954 provides for the setting up and establishment of the Orang Asli Reserve Land. Due to that, the aboriginal people in this area are very particular of what they do in their daily life due to their concern on these gazette laws. However, if the government did not impose such laws, the aboriginal people for sure will take care of the environment because they believe the natural flora and fauna resources are the main contributor for their survival of their predecessor. They thought that they must appreciate it and take care of it. The eco tourism in this area also contributes as one of the Orang Asli source of income. The natural beauty of the village attracts many tourists inside or outside country. Thus, more or less it leads to the Orang Asli that act as a tourist guide to gain income from this. The Orang Asli here who feel the outside people are willing to come from that far just to experiencing the panorama and participate the recreational activities believe that they have to preserve their environment. The ambience and creators sounds as well as the fresh oxygen released by trees are very relaxing. They (aboriginal peoples) believe that they are special, live in the very rural area although some of them already get the modern lifestyle, but their concerns towards the environment preservation remain their top priority. Their act also to ensure preservation of the unique biological heritage of the nation for the benefit of their present and future generations.

Untouched Waterfall at Kg.Ulu forest Biological diversity includes one or a combination of speciesGeruntum and richness, species

interactions, interactions between organisms and the non-living components of the

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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

environment, behavior, life- history and physiological diversity, physical diversity of a habitat, made up of the diverse shapes and movements of different organisms, the sum of all the biological diversity of all the different habitats or ecosystems in this area of Orang Asli at Gopeng. It is in maintaining this complexity in ecosystems that there is environmental stability and consequently ecological services of value to the aboriginal people be well assured in the sustainability. They still can get many fishes from the river that located at the back of their house. Means that the river is still able to remains its capabilities in holding all resources for the living of these people. The biodiversity are preserved from the long time ago yet help the continuance of the fishes to reproduce and act as the food for the people there. The way they use the environment also very careful in term of not causing any side effect towards the environment. They use the resources from the natural but they also still preserve it for their next generation or the availability of those resources and not overuse it for something unimportant as well as extravagant purposes.

The indigenous pets

Bamboo house

2.1

Pollution in Kg.Poh

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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

Kg.Poh is a calm and peace place with a fresh air. However, upon our visit there we found that there is an unused or old pipe are not being manage by the authority. In our knowledge those day, there is a water pipe goes down from the mountain to supplies water to Ulu Kinta, but we cannot see the actual pipe. Back to the point, the if the old pipe is not being taken care the rust will go down to the river nearby and pollute the water.

Broken and unmanaged pipe

In addition, some of the houses still use firewood to cook their food. To some extend and amount it is alright since the nature can response to the carbon dioxide emitted and will not give big impact compare to smoke from a factory.

Firewood under the indigenous house

3.0

Comparison between rural and urban area.

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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

Upon visiting and observing the indigenous people settlement which is Kampung Poh, Gopeng, Perak, we came out with a few aspect such as water source, the environment and facilities to be compared with urban area. We choose Shah Alam, Selangor as the urban area to be compared with Kampung Poh as the rural area. 3.1 Water Source

We met and asked one of the family members regarding their water sources. Native people who in lives in Kampung Poh get their water sources directly from the waterfall or stream located near the village and also can be seen upon walking along the village. We found that the water from the stream is clean and used in their daily activities such as cooking, washing and drinking. While in Shah Alam, we depend on the tap water directly to be used in our daily activities. The tap water is not safe to drink directly without boiling it. It is because the tap water contains substances such as chlorine in order to treat the water in contrast with water that was taken directly from the stream. 3.2 Environment

While we were observing the settlement, the obvious difference we noticed is the quality air at Kampung Poh and in Shah Alam. The air in Kampung Poh is clean and fresh with just only a little of smoke coming from the motorcycle and cars used as a medium of transportation in the village but only minimal. Whereas it was a total different in Shah Alam, the quality of air is not clean because of the smoke from motorcars and factory in Klang area which affect Shah Alam air. It shows that being outside of your house in Shah Alam is not healthy contrast to Kampung Poh. Besides that, upon walking along the road and area of Kampung Poh we found out that it is clean with no rubbish being litter irresponsibly. However, in Shah Alam we can easily found rubbish being littered along the roads, pavements, drains and back lot of shophouses. Unfortunately, we found rubbish in certain area in Kampung Poh which we believe were left by the visitors from the outsides.

3.3

Facilities
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[INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY]

Kg.Poh, Ulu Geruntum

Even though Kampung Poh is located in rural area far from the nearest town, we found out that the facilities provided for them are quite compatible to their needs. For example, we found a small church which is ample for them since they were in small community, sufficient electricity and quite fine roads for them as they preferred walking and ride motorcycle. Whereas in Shah Alam, the facilities provided are sufficient to fulfill the needs of the people. However, most the facilities given are being misused and vandalize by irresponsible people.

4.0

Conclusion Given the opportunity to be able to visit the indigenous settlement in Kampung Poh,

Gopeng Perak is a wonderful experience. We were able to make observation on their culture and way of living. Based on the results from our observation, we conclude that the native people in Kampung Poh or in other rural area need to improve or provide with a better facilities in their village. For example, better houses, electricity and school in order to ease their daily life. However, people in urban area need to learn the lifestyle and attitude from the indigenous people. The way how they preserve nature and kept their environment clean are valuable lessons for the urban people to learn and adapt in their way of living.

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