Introduction
During the first days of my fieldwork among the Orang Sakai of Riau (1996–97), I was confronted directly with the Indonesian state culture of development. The words pembangunan (development) and the ideologically related kemajuan (progress) were on people's lips. Whenever I suggested that I wanted to see anything ‘traditionally’ Sakai, people responded that they ‘ingin maju’ (wish to progress). It had struck me very early on that these cassava-raising shifting cultivators had internalised the Indonesian discourse of development so much so that it formed part of their own present-day cultural discourse with other Sakai and non-Sakai alike. It is a discourse that not only had become culturally theirs but defined for them a modern identity vis-à-vis the Indonesian state and other Indonesian peoples.
It was only after my Indonesian fieldwork and the ‘development obsession’ I had encountered among the Orang Sakai, that I could reflect on a particular discourse I had encountered three years earlier (1993–94) among the Meniq, former hunter-gatherers of Muban Sakai (Yala province, Southern Thailand). I came to recognise that too as being a culturally internalised discourse of development, albeit not so obviously and obsessively in the visitor's face. Yet, it was clearly a discourse that had given these former hunter-gatherers an underlying ‘development’ identity in relation to other Meniq who were still practising the hunting and gathering way of life, and in relation to the people they call hamiq (outsider people, non-Meniq).
While I was carrying out my fieldwork among the Meniq and Sakai and was being confronted with Southeast Asian cultures of development, several anthropologists were putting forward a critique of development, arguing that as a total enterprise designed to ameliorate the living conditions of people, it was a hegemonic culture rooted in the Western experience.Footnote 1 These critical approaches have paved the way for researchers to view the development enterprise as itself forming a bureaucratic culture articulating with and working through local cultures. In these approaches, development is seen not as a scientific certainty, but as a corpus of knowledge rooted in a particular kind of universal ideology that dismisses other universal possibilities and presents itself as the prime model for others to follow.
Jonathan Rigg has noted that development's presumed universal lexicon actually translates into slightly varied meanings and definitions in particular national cultures.Footnote 2 The national differences provide development with its local national flavours. These different sets of meanings and semantic possibilities give indigenous groups a new cultural perspective on themselves in relation to the greater society they live in — a perspective that devalues their forest lifestyle and categorises them as representing the inverse of the national ideal. Within the interactive space of national development their original life patterns and identities are ideologically disparaged and thus negated of any value. They are regarded as those people in the developing nation who suffer from a deficiency of culture. Later, when the life patterns of the tribal group have been transformed to conform to national rural life, members of the group construct new ethnised and culturalised identities based on this particular national-cultural devaluation of their pre-development way of life.
In this article I compare the Thai and Indonesian rhetorical discourses of development. I shall also compare the transformations that have taken place among these groups and explore how these particular discourses of development are reflected in their modern identities. What makes this comparison interesting is that it is not a search for what is universal in national development discourses and projects and their impact on different indigenous peoples, but rather an examination of the different cultures of development that become part of the indigenous target groups' own cultural reality as they are simultaneously being transformed by it. Elsewhere I have called this ‘development enwrapment’.Footnote 3 I have suggested that the development of indigenous tribal peoples is different from that of rural villagers. Under development, a tribal group experiences not simply economic and cultural transformation, but a total exposure to the national culture and the ideologies that support it. Their ability to exist as autonomous societies that maintain negotiated economic and cultural symbiosis with state societies is destroyed. Although new negotiations take place within the nation-state and its bureaucracies, the tribal group loses societal autonomy; it ceases to be tribal and becomes a state-defined ‘primitive’ ethnic minority which is the target of specific types of development engineered by the state.
Finally, whereas new models of development have emerged such as sustainable development (or as in the royal Thai version, self-sufficiency development), what interests me in this study is the positivist development ideology which originally brought the tribal peoples out of the forest during the 1960s and which further guided the logic of policies directed at them throughout the late twentieth century.
An introductory note on the names of the two indigenous groups discussed in this paper
The settled Meniq of Muban Sakai discussed in this paper live in Banrea (Yala) and speak what linguists have identified as a Mon-Khmer language. The Meniq of Banrea (later to become the people of Muban Sakai) numbered 80 souls in the early 1960s. Since then the population has dwindled, as many died on exposure to the outside world while others migrated to Malaysia. During my fieldwork in 1993, there were 10 families (about 30 people) officially living in Muban Sakai. However, the actual number of people living there fluctuated, as not only did villagers migrate to Malaysia but Malaysian-dwelling Meniq sometimes came to live there as well.
The Meniq of Muban Sakai do not hunt and gather any more but live their lives as rural villagers. They were formerly hunter-gatherers, but the younger people have never experienced this way of life. Other unrelated Meniq of Southern Thailand are the nomadic and semi-nomadic forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers of the provinces of Phattalung, Trang and Satun; and the border-crossing Jahai groups of Narathiwat province. This paper is only concerned with the settled Meniq of Muban Sakai.
Although we do not really know the actual origin of the name ‘Sakai’, it is generally associated with the Malay language and was used by Malays as an exonym for non-Muslim tribal forest-dwelling peoples. In Malaysia the use of this name has been officially abolished at the request of the indigenous peoples because of its negative connotations associated with slavery, oppression and general disrespect.Footnote 4 Siamese/Thais originally had another name for the Meniq people: ‘Ngo Pa’ (‘wild’ or ‘forest rambutan’).Footnote 5 It would therefore seem that during the twentieth century, Thai authorities innocently took up the name ‘Sakai’ from the Malays and used it to label the village they were constructing for the hunter-gatherers.
In Sumatra, the Orang Sakai of Riau are traditionally speakers of a Malay (Austronesian) dialect who practised (and most still do practise) swidden cultivation. In the past (and to a lesser extent today), they also hunted and gathered food from the forest while collecting forest products for trade. They have no cultural connection with the Meniq of Yala, although both groups are historically forest-dwelling people living on the margins of the Malay world civilisation (Alam Melayu). Moreover, the population density of the Sakai of Riau is much greater than that of the peninsular Meniq, who number approximately 2,500 people. Today, the Orang Sakai of Sumatra number approximately 5,000 people but are concentrated within a much smaller area than the Meniq of the Thai/Malay Peninsula. The Meniq settlements of Muban Sakai of Yala in Southern Thailand are of the same size as one small Orang Sakai settlement of approximately 10 houses in Riau. While all Sakai groups have been exposed to Indonesian development policies there are major differences of wealth between different groups and between families.
As already mentioned, the name ‘Sakai’ is a Malay exonym applied to certain non-Muslim forest-dwelling peoples. In the Riau context the indigenous people have only recently come to accept ‘Sakai’ as an ethnic name, albeit reluctantly. As far as they are concerned, this was not their original name. It is interesting that the Sakai here do not know where the name comes from and at present there is a local theory going around that this name originated from the Japanese when they occupied the area in the early 1940s. However, there seems to be an acknowledgement that this label was originally somewhat negative. In this paper I shall therefore refer to them as ‘upstream Mandau people’ (orang sungai Mandau hulu) when describing them in the pre-1960s period and use the name ‘Orang Sakai’ for the post-1960s period.
A comparison of Thai and Indonesian development discourses in relation to the Meniq and Orang Sakai
The nation-state's developmental aim in relation to tribal peoples living within its territorial boundaries is to transform them from what is implicitly seen as a primitive and backward existence into a modern rural way of life. Moreover, as an ideological tool by which the nation-state interacts with tribal peoples, development gives the target group certain definitions of who they are vis-à-vis the rest of national society, who they should be, and how they should achieve it. These definitions are rooted in the modernist's ideological mirror of primitivism and underlie the more explicit developmental dichotomy of progressed versus not progressed and rich versus poor. Although development does not necessarily use the term ‘primitive’, its representatives, who are well versed in the developmental lexicon, confidently impose these development dichotomies onto their target groups. By virtue of the way the target population live, the tools they use and their physical appearance, the officials of development implicitly assume that the people they are interacting with are primitive. Such a perception of tribal peoples harboured by developmental ideology originates from the earlier European evolutionary framework of classifying peoples into stages of human cultural development.Footnote 6
The actual word ‘primitive’ is not used in either Thailand or Indonesia,Footnote 7 although in Indonesian it does exist as a European-derived word (primitif). Also in Indonesia, sometimes the word ‘terkebelakang’ (backward) is used to refer to the perceived cultural backwardness of the tribal people. Interestingly, during my research officials and other state and development representatives in both countries provided me with very similar descriptions of the tribal groups' pre-development way of life. These descriptions would mislead anyone unfamiliar with the anthropology of hunter-gatherers and of shifting cultivators into thinking that the Meniq of Yala and the Sakai of Riau come from a similar socio-economic and cultural background.
Both groups are viewed as originally being a wild people who did not wear clothes (Thai mai sai seua; Indonesian tak pakai baju),Footnote 8 living an unhygienic (dirty) (sokaprok; kotor) life deep in the forest (yu nai pa; tinggal di-dalam hutan) and shunning the rest of the world through fear (man klua; takut). In the Thai developmental and cultural perception of the Meniq, they are sensationally seen as living a fascinating life, coming and going (pai pai ma ma), forever wandering in the forests in search of food (doen nai pa ha ahan kin). In Indonesia, the Sakai are said to have been forest wanderers (jalan ke-mana-mana di-hutan) searching for food in the woods (cari makanan di-hutan). Both groups practise the hunting of animals (la sat; berburu binatang) in the forest. The fact that neither group plants their own rice places them in a category of yam-eaters (chorp kin huaman; suka makan ubi, literally ‘like to eat yam’).
These comments suggest that Indonesians seem to see Sakai cassava shifting cultivation in a similar light to the way Thais see Meniq attempts at swiddening. Members of both groups are said to be lazy (khee kiat; malas) and not liking to work (mai chorp thamngan; tidak suka kerjah). Both Meniq and Orang Sakai are said to practise sharing, which has hindered them from achieving the goals set for them by economic development. Officials refer to those individuals who have responded positively in economic terms to their developmental environment as being more ‘clever’ (chalat; pintar) than the rest. The fact that Thais and Indonesians feel that they are in a position to judge Meniq or Sakai intelligence suggests the latter's lower social status. Taken together, the descriptions in both countries are of a generic ‘primitive man’, and although not explicitly using the term ‘primitive’, the national developmental process in each country has this image of the tribal people as the target of economic and cultural transformation. These negative descriptions are not explicitly mentioned in the developmental discourses, but they rhetorically contextualise the national discourses of development in the tribal-minority context.
The formal and polite references implying backwardness in the developmental discourses are made in unmarked terms. These terms negate the positive adjective rather than employing a straight negative. Examples include terms such as ‘not progressed enough or less progressed’ (Indonesian kurang maju), ‘not prosperous’ (Thai yang mai mii khwaam jaroen, or mii khwaam jaroen noi, literally ‘do not yet (have) prosperity, have little prosperity’). These more polite unmarked expressions in this particular context suggest that the people they refer to might be backward and poor but are on a positive development path, the goal of which they have yet to achieve. The discourse of Thai and Indonesian development tacitly measures the cultural and economic development of tribal groups along a spectrum that is underlain by a polar distinction of backward versus advanced and rich versus poor.
As already mentioned, the national development discourses are slightly different in the two countries. In Thailand the term for development is ‘kaan phatthana’, which was coined in the twentieth century. Before this term was used, the English derived word ‘siwilai’ (civilised, civilisation) was common from the end of the nineteenth century. The earlier concept of siwilai as the Thai elite had developed it has framed the national Thai conception of cultural modernity. It defined a hierarchy of cultural achievement between the ways of life of the peoples within the Thai kingdom, and between the kingdom's elites and Europe. In this earlier Thai modernist conception, the place of siwilai was where the elites resided (the mueang), from where the siwilai culture was supposed to spread and influence people.Footnote 9
A second key word in the Thai developmental lexicon is ‘khwaam jaroen’, which originally meant ‘cultivating, building up, or expanding until complete’. In the nineteenth century its meaning was modified to mean secular and worldly development relating to material progress, technological advancement and prosperity.Footnote 10 However, it was recognised that the elites had to keep up with siwilai to be jaroen themselves; otherwise they would fall behind their European contemporaries.Footnote 11 By keeping up with the times, the Thai elite saw themselves as maintaining a cultural equality with European siwilai. The socially and geographically distant villagers in the kingdom were chao bannok (country folk/outside village folk) and were viewed as rustic peoples living a cultural existence not too dissimilar to the way the elite's ancestors had lived. They placed their village contemporaries who were on a socio-hierarchical scale below them, on a temporal scale behind them. The chao bannok would have to follow on the path of the siwilai elites.Footnote 12
Another important term associated with the term ‘mueang’ (town/city) as the disseminating centre of siwilai, is ‘watthanatham’, which Rigg translates as ‘human advancement’.Footnote 13 The term today also means Thai high culture (watthanatham Thai), and therefore refers to Thai human advancement in terms of its high culture, which spreads its knowledge through the channel of state-led development, kaan phatthana. It is through the enterprise of the Thai state-guided kaan phatthana that people can achieve a greater level of khwaam jaroen (prosperity) and watthanatham (Thai human advancement/culture). Beginning in 1961, under the premiership of Marshal Sarit Thanarat, Thailand has gone through consecutive five-year social and economic development plans to achieve this goal.
Siwilai, watthanatham Thai and khwaam jaroen are part of the political culture of the mueang (city/town). In the Thai geo-political understanding ‘mueang’ is contrasted to ‘pa’ (forest).Footnote 14Pa is the uncontrolled ‘wild’ (a second meaning of the word) forest, the place that mueang and its cultural pretensions find difficult to penetrate. The word for nature in Thai is ‘thammachat’, but it is nature tamed, unthreatening and culturally aesthetised — those parts of nature where the watthanatham of the mueang does exist and can appreciate its natural simplicity. The term mueang therefore means more than ‘city’; it is also used to refer to Thailand as a political-cultural entity (mueang Thai). Today, within this mueang is pa — not the pa of the peripheries, however, but the pa of mueang Thai.
The people who dwell in the forest such as the Meniq are generally called khon pa (forest people) or chao pa (forest folk) and are perceived as the mirror image of the civilised, prosperous elite. However, today they are also politically encompassed by the mueang as nation-state, which through the channel of kaan phatthana, has been trying to ‘domesticate’ them. As mobile forest people, they are not conceived of as ‘khon thammachat’ (natural people), but as ‘khon pa’ (forest people). Thais do not usually refer to them as having a real culture, but rather as having a life in the forest (chiwit yu nai pa) and exemplifying extreme poverty (khon jon). Outside of the developmental discourse local villagers sometimes refer to Meniq as man (it) rather than using a more polite pronoun.
The aim of development in relation to the Meniq of Southern Thailand has been to persuade them to come out of the forest (ork jaak pa) and settle in a Thai-sponsored village (khao yu nai muban). The key words in the phrases are ‘ork’ (come out) and ‘khao’ (enter). These words characterise the Thai developmental process of forest peoples. Since Thai villages are part of mueang Thai, resettlement within the villages amounts to bringing the forest people out of the forest and into the mueang (khao yu nai mueang). When the forest people enter the muban (village), the political culture of the mueang is seen as gradually domesticating them. They become Thai-ified through the Thai civilising process, which reaches the tribal group via the channel of state development (kaan phatthana). Unlike some Meniq groups (such as those in the province of Trang) who are still forest folk (chao pa), the Meniq of Muban Sakai have undergone the process of sedentarisation and are therefore no longer called ‘chao pa’; rather, they constitute a special though marginal group of chao baan (village folk). Seeing them as poor village folk (khon jon), Thais express ‘sympathy’ or ‘pity’ (songsaan) for their poverty. Meniq of Muban Sakai are considered as lacking material advancement (mai mii khwaam jaroen), and the aim of development is to improve their standard of living (tham chiwit hai kheun). In Yala, the development process is referred to in terms of ‘gifts’ (hai khong phatthana) and ‘aid’ (chuay). Development aid is the Thai state's gift to these sensationally marginal minority groups who happen to live within the borders of the modern kingdom of Thailand.
Generally speaking, Thai state development is conceived as being directed to people who are living in the kingdom of Thailand, and Thai-ness is not considered to be problematic. In Thai development, Thai-ness and modernity are implied in terms such as ‘siwilai’ and ‘meuang’ but are not explicitly articulated within the national discourse of development. To be subject to development does not imply that one becomes Thai, as the general project is designed for the people of Thailand who are ideologically conceived as already being part of a monolithic Thai nation. If the members of the target group are ethnically not Thai, the state officially treats them as hyphenated Thais; Malays, for example, are ‘Thai-Muslims’. (This has its own developmental problems that are not the concern of this paper.) Meniq, however, are not hyphenated Thais; development in their case is not merely a gift from the state, but a gift from the Thai people. Within this conceptualisation, Meniq are a special case of non-Thais who are the responsibility of the Thai government because they were born in Thailand.
Conceptually, Meniq also have a special relationship with Thai royalty, members of which have been personally involved in the sponsorship of their development. In turn, Thai villagers who encounter Meniq in their daily life also view their own personal gifts as a small part of the greater Thai people's aid to the poor Meniq (khon Thai chuay/Thai people help them). In this context, gift-giving also becomes an ethno-moral act. The Thai giver can compliment him- or herself as a kind person who ethnically represents the ‘kindness of Thais’ (khon Thai jaidii) in general. The Meniq receivers are compelled to conform to what the Thai giver expects from them for the duration of the exchange.
In Indonesia, development and its relation to the Orang Sakai are very different. The word for development is ‘pembangunan’, and within the general developmental language this is the Indonesian equivalent of ‘kaan phatthana’. However, the semantics of the word resonates with different and somewhat deeper cultural meanings, which is very important for our understanding of the Orang Sakai view of development. ‘Pembangunan’ has its origin in the verb ‘bangun’, which means ‘to build’, ‘to construct’, ‘to arise from a state of unawareness or slumber’; the word suggests that the subject is engaged in all of these activities.Footnote 15 The subject, which is the Indonesian state followed by its people, is constructing the space of development in order to build industry, houses, schools and roads; modernise villages; and generally wake the nation from a pre-modern state of cultural slumber. The second key word in the Indonesian development lexicon is ‘kemajuan’. This term is from the verb ‘maju’ (to move forward), and means progress. It implies a forward motion towards something, suggesting that the subject is progressively moving on a path. Taken together the two terms suggest that pembangunan (development) is progressively building towards something (maju) and that that something is a modern Indonesian life (hidup moderen).
As in Thailand, the state has been implementing development through ongoing five-year plans (REPELITA), which in Indonesia started in 1968/69. It was in the first five years (REPELITA I) that the state took as its task to also develop the myriad tribal forest-dwelling communities living within its national borders.Footnote 16 The Indonesian state initially classified all the tribal peoples as ‘suku-suku terasing’ (outsider, alien groups); later this designation was officially changed to ‘masyarakat terasing’ (outsider society).Footnote 17
The term ‘masyarakat terasing’ implied that these particular communities had historically followed a different path of cultural development from the direction which the greater Indonesian national culture had taken. Their cultural existence was regarded as being on a different level from the rest of Indonesian rural society. Unlike ordinary Indonesian rural folk, whatever their ethnic background, who were poor and also needed economic development, people from these communities were not merely poor but ‘backward’ (orang terkebelakang) as well. The state considered their villages, if they lived in villages at all, to be in a pre-village condition and classified them as such (desa tertinggal). The term masyarakat terasing defined these myriad communities in terms of a devalued generic image of primitivity and not as cultural populations in their own right.Footnote 18 It was the aim of the state through its five-year policy plans to bring these communities in line with the rural Indonesian cultural mainstream. Through development (pembangunan) they were, and still are, expected to progress (maju) into becoming rural Indonesians, after which their development fate will be tied to the rest of the nation.
After the fall of Suharto in 1998, the term ‘masyarakat terasing’ was changed again to a seemingly less alienating term, ‘komunitas adat terpencil’ (customary law communities in remoter places). Some authors have pointed out that this new term still carries the connotation of otherness but ‘shifts the focus to geographical isolation, removing the stigma of having been left behind developmentally and shifting the blame to geographical barriers that hindered previous efforts’.Footnote 19
In Indonesia (if we discount the issue of Javanisation during the later Suharto period), development is a nationalist cultural movement; the citizen is expected to receive development as an Indonesian. Hence development is not merely a national economic project to materially improve people's living standards, it is a major cultural enterprise to nationalise people into being Indonesian. It implies a duty to the nation and was expressed as such by Suharto himself in his annual New Year speeches.Footnote 20
Comparatively speaking then, if in Thailand Meniq are thought of as non-Thai and their development as a beneficial gift from the Thai state and people, Sakai and other Indonesian tribal groups are regarded as beneficiaries of development because they are Indonesians and must willingly embrace it as such. The wish to progress (ingin maju) becomes an expression of the national will and part of the building (bangun) of the Indonesian nation. Under Suharto, failure to develop was seen as un-Indonesian and as an expression of resistance to the Indonesian state which placed one in a nationally defined social category alien to the general will of the nation-state. Many authors have pointed out that failure to participate and accept development during the Suharto period could have raised the accusation of being communist, anti-government and subversive.Footnote 21 The experience of communism and the massacres of 1965 created a social scapegoat category for any activity that could be termed as un-Indonesian and thus a threat to the New Order state that had emerged from that period under Suharto.
The ridiculous association that the New Order regime made between communism and the failed developmental participation of tribal groups – who were already defined as constituting an outsider society – was the expression of an official shunning of people who had supposedly failed to accept what the state had in store for them and their area. Hence when Sakai constantly tell non-Sakai that they ingin maju (wish to progress) and reiterate the appropriate developmental discourse, they are saying that they are Indonesians and willing participants in the development of the Indonesian nation, and that they should be treated as such. By contrast, the Meniq of Yala would use the threat of migration to Malaysia as a bargaining chip with the Thai authorities who are pressing on them to improve their condition.
Comparatively, then, Thai kaan phatthana does not seem to be expressed in such a culturally dynamic manner as the Indonesian pembangunan. This I believe is because the Thai term is associated with development thought of as a state bureaucratic enterprise that aims to raise the material level of the nation. In Indonesia, pembangunan is more than a bureaucratic enterprise: it is part of the national-cultural ideology. During the Suharto period pembangunan was about being and becoming modern Indonesians. These approaches to development have led to different locally internalised expressions of development.
The Meniq of Yala and the Sakai of Riau in the pre-development period
Meniq
The original pre-development hunting-gathering population of Banrea was from a particular group of Meniq called Kensiw. They traversed the forested boundary zone lying between the present-day Kingdom of Thailand and peninsular Malaysia, to meet their family and friends from the Kensiw bands of Baling, Kedah. Although the Kensiw were still practising hunting and gathering as late as 1970, already by the turn of the twentieth century they had economic relations with Malay villagers, and were accessible through the structures of the area's local authorities.Footnote 22
The hunter-gatherers organised into bands consisting of a small number of separate economic household units. Each household unit consisted of a conjugal family which inhabited a thatched lean-to, a shelter made of leaves supported by two upright posts. Children who had reached puberty constructed their own lean-tos, forming a separate economic unit, even though theirs were pitched close to their parents. Together, a group of lean-tos formed a camp. Such camps sometimes comprised four generations of people based on the principle of consanguineal kinship. These bands did not own land but were associated with specific forested areas through which families moved, set up temporary camps and pursued their hunting and gathering activities. Individual families could stay temporarily in one place for a period ranging from two or three days to a few weeks, before moving on. The reasons for movement varied: sudden dissatisfaction with the location, local resource depletion, unbearable build-up of refuse, a threat from surrounding villagers or death in the camp. For the hunting and gathering forbears of the Kensiw Meniq, movement in the forest was crucial for economic survival, maintenance of social relationships, political negotiation and autonomy, and cultural notions of hygiene.
Sakai of Riau
The people of the upstream Mandau area inhabited areas that the Malay kingdom of Siak administered through territories called pebatin. Most of the pebatin territories gained their names from the Mandau tributaries they flanked, and the same names were applied to the non-Muslim forest people living there. Each pebatin was headed by a man titled batin (headman), whose position was ratified by the Sultan of Siak. In the late nineteenth century there were 13 pebatinan comprising people whom Malays called Orang Sakai, which in this context roughly translates as non-Muslim woodland people. The 13 pebatinan were divided into two groups, batin selapan (the group of eight batin) and batin limo (the group of five batin). The group of eight batin was originally under the political jurisdiction of the Raja of Rokan while the group of five batin was under the political jurisdiction of the Raja of Siak Sri Indrapura. Local history has it that at a certain moment in their past, the group of eight batin shifted their allegiance from the Rokan ruler to his Siak rival after being overly exploited by the former kingdom.
A pebatin of the upstream Mandau area was an administrative territorial jurisdiction inhabited by groups of extended families affiliated to its representative batin headman. These families built their houses as rectangular thatched rooms constructed out of rattan and bark. These houses were on pillars sometimes measuring 2 metres in height. Their hamlets usually consisted of a few scattered houses in the forest clearing or along inaccessible riverbanks; a married couple and their unmarried children inhabited each house. A settlement was flexible and could consist of four generations of people or of two sibling-related families.
The houses were surrounded by cassava swiddens and cultivated fruit trees. Forest animals were hunted or trapped for their meat, and vegetables were gathered from the nearby woods, while access to the rivers gave them an abundance of fish. An important aspect of the upstream Mandau economy was trade with Malay and Chinese merchants who travelled upriver in search of valuable forest products. In return, the forest people received consumables such as rice, oil, coffee, raw metal and metal goods, crockery, cloth and so on. Like the Meniq, the people of the upstream Mandau area were mobile, but their movements had a different pattern. If the Meniq of Yala were mobile mainly because of hunting and gathering, the people of the upstream Mandau area were mobile because of their land-tenure and farming system. Each family reclaimed land for a cassava field by slashing the foliage and then burning the felled trees. Subsequently, they planted their cassava stalks in the earth interspersed with other fruits and vegetables. The family used the land for a few years before moving on to another location, leaving the land to fallow.
Sedentarisation and life under development projects
The first development policy that a nation-state takes in relation to tribal communities is to concentrate the people in specific areas and sedentarise them. Concentration of scattered mobile tribal groups into larger permanent villages sweeps people out of the way of the development projects destined for their home area. This policy also makes it easier for the development projects to reach their target population. Without this first developmental step of sedentarisation, government and development agencies cannot proceed with their policies.Footnote 23 Once the tribal group has been sedentarised, representatives of the state can have easy access to them. Sedentarisation is a historical moment in people's lives as much as it is an interactive process between a state and tribal people. Different tribal groups have different reasons for giving up a mobile lifestyle, and these can be explored comparatively as historical moments in their own right.
In most cases, the reasons why a mobile tribal group is willing to settle down in state-sponsored villages are the causes of the impoverishment that the representatives of the state and development see when encountering them. These causes are usually related to state activities in or near the tribal group's area that have major repercussions on the local environment and the indigenous way of life dependent on it. In Southern Thailand, the Meniq were caught up in a critical moment of Southeast Asian state history, namely the insurgency of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), which forced them out of the forest. In Riau, the Sakai were living in an area that proved to be a major oil-producing site. The development of an infrastructure to facilitate the extraction of oil not only restricted Sakai movements in the area but brought them face to face with development before it was even targeting them. In this section I will describe the situation of the two groups under development.
Meniq
During the 1960s, the Kensiw presence in the forest became a political issue in the Thai state's fight against forest-based communists. The Kensiw knew where the insurgent camps were, and at times aided them. The military also practised jungle-bashing of the forests, which were mined as well. The Thai authorities first tried settling the Kensiw Meniq in the early 1960s; an area was officially designated which later became Muban Sakai (Sakai village), and approximately 80 Kensiw Meniq were regrouped there. However, the Kensiw feared that the insurgents would attack them as they knew the location of the camps. The hunter-gatherers fled to the woods, making this first attempt at sedentarisation unsuccessful. The Thai authorities built a school in the designated location in 1971 and again concentrated the Kensiw Meniq, who fled back into the woods after insurgents burnt the school down shortly after its construction. A third attempt at concentrating the Kensiw Meniq after the school was rebuilt a year later had more success.
In the early stage of their sedentary life, Meniq built small thatched bamboo huts in the designated location of Muban Sakai. Here they received many official visitors who wanted to see this ‘forest tribe’ and who gave them the first ‘gifts of development’ such as rice, canned food and other consumables and clothes. Later the authorities built them small timber and concrete houses. Although Meniq do not officially have headmen, Thais referred to the senior man as ‘hua na’ (headman). Through this man, formal relations between the Thai authorities and the shy Meniq were carried out in order to bring ‘development’ to them and raise their level of economic prosperity (tham khwaam jaroen hai kheun). The authorities also persuaded Meniq parents to send their children to the newly built school in Muban Sakai. Since then, young Meniq have received a basic primary-level education, and all individuals under the age of 35 can read and write. They can also speak southern Thai dialect and standard Malay as well as speak Jawi (the local Malay dialect of the southern Thai provinces). Although Kensiw Meniq are still shy, they are not as fearful of outsiders as their forebears were.
After the Kensiw were settled in Muban Sakai, the Thai authorities sent a few individuals to other unrelated Meniq areas, inviting them to join the new settlement. Most ignored the invitation, but some (mainly sedentary Jahai from Narathiwat province) followed them back to make their new homes in the village. Sakai village is an aggregation of different Meniq residing in one village settlement where the Thai authorities believe they can live together as one group based on the principle that they are all Negrito (Sakai). Here, it is assumed, they can undergo development and receive its benefits without consideration of particular tribal differences between the groups that serve for identity maintenance among Meniq themselves.
In their settled life, Meniq of Muban Sakai do not practise hunting any more and do very little gathering of food, as the immediate forest is depleted of food sources. Their staple food is rice, which they do not grow themselves but buy from the shop. Since development has taken its course, Meniq are now totally dependent on money for obtaining food. The Thai authorities have been promoting a variety of economic and cultural policies to develop the economy of the Meniq of this village. These policies have ranged from planting rubber and coconut trees, teaching them horticulture and how to raise chickens and ducks, and helping them sell items of material culture to tourists.
Meniq also labour in various odd jobs, including clearing fields, carrying wood and doing any other manual labour that villagers may offer to them. They also tend to migrate to Malaysia annually to cash in on the job opportunities there. During the 1990s, Meniq of Yala were dissatisfied with the available labour situation in their home area in Thailand. Some migrated to Malaysia with the intention of never returning, although later the Thai authorities managed to draw them back with the promise of new work opportunities.
The Kensiw Meniq of Yala do not form a band, nor do they engage village economies external to their own as their hunterer-gatherer forebears did. Through sedentarisation and development they have become a village minority group who make their living within the rural economy of their area, on which they depend for their daily sustenance. They are also dependent on such aid. The Thai authorities consider that without development aid, the Meniq would find it very difficult to survive because of what is perceived to be their inherent laziness and indifference. However, the incorporation of Meniq into the rural economy without the ability to hunt and gather has simply caged their economic strategies within their foreebears' original economic ‘village niche’. Working for and trading with villagers was for their ancesters only one economic niche that existed among many others that they pursued when they dwelt in the forest. Interestingly, although the Thai authorities have settled the hunter-gatherers, Yala Meniq have retained their cultural propensity for mobility and readapted it within their sedentary context by migrating to Malaysia every year in search of work. Thai authorities do accept that they live between two countries. Although the authorities are not too optimistic about the success of their policies and the blame is usually placed on Meniq failure to respond properly, they nevertheless feel an obligation to help them with development and economic improvement in their country.
Sakai of Riau
In the late nineteenth century, there is evidence that the people of the upstream Mandau area were targets of Siak's development policies intended to Malayise them. Major changes later occurred during the 1940s which affected the people's forest life. First, the Japanese who took control of Riau in 1942 started to build the first modern infrastructure in the area.Footnote 24 The indigenous people feared them and many families moved deeper into the forest, so that by the 1960s, when the state of Indonesia began to administer them, some groups shyly came out of the forest dressed in bark cloth. Older Sakai say that it was because of the Japanese occupation that they stopped responding to development initiatives in the area that had started at the end of the nineteenth century.
In 1936, just before the Japanese took control of the area, the Caltex Company conducted its first exploration for oil in Sumatra. In 1952, the first oil rig started to function in the most southerly pebatin of Minas; later, other fields began operation in other pebatin areas. The upstream Mandau area became a major Indonesian oil-producing site. To facilitate access to the oil fields, the government built a road connecting the provincial capital of Pekanbaru to the small market town of Duri, cutting the forested area in half. Other dirt roads were built branching off the main road. The first policy was to force Sakai families out of the interior forests and have them settle alongside the main road. In 1963–64, the first development settlement was set up in Muara Basung, consisting of about 70 houses grouping many families together. Other development settlements were built later during the 1970s and 1980s, also housing a large number of families.
Usually the authorities have provided handouts of food for a period of time, in order to entice the Sakai families to stay in the settlement. Most of these settlements have schools, and increasingly more Sakai children are receiving a modicum of state education. However, like the Meniq of Yala, who although sedentarised are still semi-mobile by virtue of travel between countries, poor Sakai families still shift their residence to different settlements within the area's official village jurisdictions. As with the situation in Yala, their movements force them to pull their children out of school, which interrupts their education. Thus among Sakai social differentiation has occurred between people who are literate and those who are not. The former take charge of official matters within a settlement; within the development ideology they are considered to be ‘more or already progressed’ (lebih maju, olah maju).
Since the 1970s many migrants from other parts of Sumatra have come to the area in search of land. During the 1980s the state also granted share-holding companies the right to use large tracts of lands for rubber and palm oil plantations. Logging concessions were also given to various companies, which has reduced the forest considerably. During the 1990s, the people of the upstream Mandau area, now officially called Orang Sakai, became a minority people living in clusters of houses scattered between Minas and Duri and the areas to the east and west of the road. Through national development this area, which was once dense forest and which provided the indigenous population with sufficient land to reclaim for their type of farming, has been parcelled out among other Indonesians.
Today, the pebatin system does not exist; instead, Sakai settlements are part of officially recognised Indonesian villages (desa). Many of these settlements are on or near the edge of the road; some are at the end of dirt roads. Some families live in ethnically mixed villages, while others live in large government-sponsored settlements of tin-roofed houses where many families are concentrated. Other settlements are breakaway settlements consisting of a few raised thatch bark-houses standing on the edge of the road or river. One reason Sakai families break off from development settlements is because they are not used to living together in such large numbers; individuals and families tend to quarrel.
Poorer families still practise most of the economic activities described above, even though some forest-related activities have become extremely difficult to pursue. If under development the Meniq economy has been confined to the category of the original ‘village economic niche’, the Sakai forest economy has been repositioned from a forest/upstream/downstream continuum to the edge of the Pekanbaru/Duri road. Like the Meniq of Yala, Sakai also see themselves as coming from the forest (dari hutan) not in order to live in a village or something equivalent to the concept of mueang. They simply see themselves as leaving their interior areas (dalam) to live on the edge of the road (tinggal di pinggir jalan), which during the 1960s was still surrounded by woodlands (masih hutan). They also see themselves as becoming Indonesian, whereas the Meniq see themselves simply as Meniq.
The Sakai economy, like that of the Meniq, is fully incorporated into the national monetary economy. Sakai use money to purchase consumables from local shops such as cigarettes, cooking oil, vegetables, clothes and so on. Sakai families and individuals obtain money by selling forest products. They still collect wood and rattan from the forest and sell it to middlemen who meet them on the edge of the road. They also sometimes work in logging and receive larger amounts of money, enabling them to buy more expensive goods, such as televisions, stereos, cassettes and gold jewellery.
One money-producing commodity for which there is a major demand is land. Land that in the past would have lain fallow only to be reclaimed by a descendant's household can today become a major source of income for those Sakai families who want to move elsewhere. The money increases the family's purchasing power; they can buy motorbikes, chainsaws and sofas and may even build their own timber or concrete house — all goods that they consider to be more progressive. Within this uncontrolled development and consumer environment, Sakai have innocently treated their valuable land as though it were collectable rattan or some other forest products. This trend of selling their most important resource has left the Sakai bereft of much of their remaining land reserve. As long as Sakai families have land to farm and reclaim, they could still survive without a monetary income on cassava, fish and home-grown vegetables. In the present climate of the culture of development, however, such an existence is referred to as being fit for ‘paupers’ (hidup orang miskin) and ‘is not progressive enough’ (kurang maju).
The expression of development's negated identities in Muban Sakai and among the Orang Sakai of Riau
Prior to development the Meniq and the Orang Sakai had particular identities based on their forest way of life and economic pursuits. During the critical period starting from the 1960s, development did not attempt to transform the economies of forest hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators into forest-based sustainable economies. Rather, it devalued and even negated their original ways of life by representing them as something undesirable for the nation and therefore as targets that had to be changed. In this section, I will focus on how this negated identity has become part of the indigenous discourse of the ethnic self.
In the pre-development period, and still to a certain degree today, the Meniq of Muban Sakai divided their social world into two general groups of human beings — Meniq, who are like them in appearance, and Hamiq, who are the Malays, Thais and all other humans. Both words mean ‘people’ of a particular kind. They associated Meniq with a forest life and with a cultural inventory of objects made from forest material, while the Hamiq world was outside of the forest and started at its edge. There was a clear conceptual demarcation between the two categories of humans, with their respective worlds and goods. Although Meniq would visit villages for economic reasons, the forest shielded them from the Hamiq world, helping them maintain a social and cultural boundary between them and the village influences. If the Thai authorities brought Ngo Pa/Sakai out of the forest to settle them in the mueang, for Meniq this constituted a permanent entry into the Hamiq world.
Under the experience of Thai development, the word ‘Meniq’ has acquired new added meanings. Meniq do not use the term ethnically for themselves, and therefore it has retained its original meaning of ‘people’. They use the term for all the indigenous forest peoples of the peninsula, including the shifting cultivators who physically resemble Malay people (such as the Semai and Temiar). In this sense, the word has become synonymous with the term ‘Orang Asli’ used in Malaysia. Through the experience of being visited by people from the national society, Meniq have added a definition to the term ‘Meniq’ as being those people whom metropolitans visit and who ask questions about their way of life and culture — a culture that they do not practise any more. Meniq are peoples whom metropolitans perceive as having something that makes them different from the rest of society and therefore they pay them visits to gain information about it.
The experience of being asked questions about a way of life that has gradually ceased to exist has led Meniq to conceive of the first generation that came out of the forest and those before them who lived a mobile hunter-gatherer way of life, as ‘the people of old’ (khon samai boran in Thai). The khon samai boran are not just their pre-development forebears, but all the people who lived by hunting and gathering in the past. The Meniq of Yala imagine that Meniq still practising hunting and gathering (for example, in the province of Trang) are following the way of life of the khon samai boran. Hunter-gatherer Meniq and their way of life are still appreciated, but are separated from the settled Meniq of Yala through temporal distancing. Here people consider Meniq who still practise hunting and gathering to be living the way the ancestors of Muban Sakai lived up until 30 years ago. Moreover, they consider the forest-dwelling groups' present socio-economic symbiosis with Thai villages to be the first step to a sedentarised village way of life — a life similar to their own. This temporal distancing is a processual developmental one, not an articulated evolutionary one. The Meniq of Yala imagine Meniq elsewhere who still practise hunting and gathering to be at an earlier stage of the Meniq developmental process.
When speaking Thai, Yala Meniq describe their own process of settling down in various ways that when put together provide a composite picture of their development process. According to this narrative, Meniq first come out of the forest because they find it difficult to find food, specifically yams. In the Hamiq village they start to eat rice. Although they are at first scared of the villagers, the Hamiq help them in obtaining food by giving them what they need. Hamiq then ask them to settle in one place; at first they comply, but only just. They still retain a nomadic life for parts of the year, which also allows them to retain some distance from Hamiq. When the authorities want to see them, they round them up for the event. People come to see them, but they sit quietly and shyly in their lean-tos. The visitors first meet the appointed headman and later wander around the camp, asking people questions. Meniq answer what they think Hamiq want to hear and expect to be given gifts of food. Once the event is over, they take their gifts and go back to the forest. Hamiq also try to persuade Meniq parents to send their children to school. At first the parents decline the offer, but over time as Meniq become more permanently settled they agree and their children learn to read and write. In the first stages of sedentarisation, Hamiq technology amazes Meniq.
Through ongoing relations with Hamiq, Meniq visit Hamiq villages more frequently. They work for Hamiq villagers who give them rice. Sometimes a Hamiq villager (here the reference is usually to Malays) may even beat them if they do not do the job properly. Other times, Hamiq [here referring to Thais] befriend them, clothe them and teach them Hamiq ways. They also invite them to drink alcohol. Meniq get drunk but enjoy the sociality of drinking. They get addicted and cannot stop and become alcoholics. Hamiq also round them up for cultural presentations in schools and other venues. They pick them up, take them out of the forest environment for a short spell, after which they are returned to the forest in the evenings. People are invited to ‘come and see them’.
Once Meniq are more permanently sedentary, they start spending more time in their bamboo huts rather than lean-tos. At first, they are the only people in the immediate vicinity, and there is still forest surrounding them. Instead of coming to the village from the forest, they go to the forest from the village. To meet Hamiq, they have to walk a distance down the mountain slope. Hamiq (meaning government representatives) plant rubber and some fruit trees for them so that Meniq can make some money. They also build tin-roofed timber houses for Meniq. Over the years, though, the forest is cut down, and more Hamiq move in, so that Meniq become a small minority in the area. New friendships are developed with Hamiq, and Meniq start losing their fear of them. They also learn that there are different kinds of Hamiq, and that in relationship to them, they are a poor and backward people because their origin is from the forest. To survive, Hamiq must carry on helping Meniq by giving them gifts.
In this composite narrative of the Meniq development process, the word ‘Hamiq’ has been given a new meaning. Probably because of their congenial interactions with Thais, including marriage, Meniq of Muban Sakai seem to downplay the word Hamiq. Nevertheless, the bipolar meaning of ‘Hamiq’ today resonates with an added developmental ring to it that economically and culturally contrasts negatively with ‘Meniq’. Meniq of Yala distinguish among different Hamiq peoples: Jawi (Malay), Ciam (Thai), Cino (Chinese), Kaling (Indian) and Farang (Westerner). These Hamiq are wealthier people (jaroen). The implication is that from the point of view of development, they are more developed and cleverer (chalat) than the Meniq. In this new image, Hamiq are people who have the knowledge to build cars and planes and can afford to buy them. By contrast, all that the Meniq could produce are objects made of bamboo and leaves. Meniq in Yala have come to embody the view of their identity in relation to the Hamiq as materially (culturally) poor. Poverty is therefore a matter not just of economics, but of their poor technological inventory.
The ex-hunter-gatherers have inverted the contrasting Meniq/Hamiq–forest/village identification held by their forest-dwelling forebears and mirrored the Thai mueang/pa dichotomy. Meniq of Yala have stopped identifying themselves as forest people. Their modern development identity has given them a definition of themselves as being a people originally from the forest (jaak pa), who now live in the village (yu muban) and who are poor (khon jon), lacking wealth and knowledge (mai mii khwaam jaroen) and therefore are dependent on the Thai gifts of development (khong phatthana) and aid (chuay).
Underlying the Yala Meniq identity is a negated developmental identity couched in terms of what they are not and what they have to become but find it difficult to achieve. In order to do so, they have to leave behind their original identity and way of life in a very short period. Nevertheless, their ‘culture’ has been essentialised and displayed before visiting audiences who pay to see it. Moreover, as already mentioned elsewhere, Thais are relatively sensationalist about the Meniq original way of life. Because people perceive this traditional way of life within a developmental frame it politically remains a ‘culture of poverty’ that hinders their economic progress. It is a culture and way of life that development negated at the moment of the Meniq entry into the modern Thai mueang.
Sakai of Riau
If the Meniq have internalised the Thai discourse of development through inversion, the same can be said for the Sakai. The key words in their area are ‘pembangunan’ (development) and ‘kemajuan’ (progress). If within the national discourse of development, pembangunan as a noun implies development activities in which the nation is building the space of development and so on, Sakai generally use the verb ‘bangun’ in a way which suggests that they are participating in development by being the target of the Indonesian state's developmental activities. Hence for Sakai, to bangun means to have the government or Caltex build houses, schools, mosques and roads for them. To bangun rumah for example, means that the government provides them with corrugated tin-roofed timber houses. They contrast these structures with their original thatched bark-houses, which they can easily build themselves, but usually use the term ‘bikin’ (to make) rather than ‘bangun’ (to build).
Again, Sakai speak of ‘kemajuan’ (progress) by using the root-word ‘maju’ in an interrelated sense for a way of life that involves using manufactured goods and having ‘progressive knowledge’ that pertains to their use. It is also used negatively as self-identification that they (Sakai) are ‘kurang maju’, not fully maju (progressed) and modern people. Sakai use the European-derived term ‘tradisi’ to describe hand-made rattan, palm-leaf and bark artefacts. They consider those who still use ‘traditional’ objects (tradisi) to be ‘kurang maju’ because they cannot afford to buy the modern equivalents. Perforce, they use the objects from the ‘traditional’ state of kemiskinan (poverty). People who possess and use objects that they see as maju have purchasing power and therefore are kaya (rich). These Sakai are ‘sudah maju’ (already progressed); they are ‘Sakai maju’ (progressive Sakai). Sakai also use manufactured goods that are produced primarily for rural Indonesians; they contrast these goods with tradisi artefacts. They regard the goods that they can buy at local shops and markets as ‘more progressive’ (lebih maju) than the equivalent that they can make themselves. If Meniq of Yala seem to see their original material culture as an impoverished cultural inventory, many Sakai still use much of their original inventory but see it as traditional, un-progressive and an indication of their poverty.
‘Maju’ is contrasted to ‘kurang maju’ (less developed), which is a euphemism for the more pejorative ‘terkebelakang’ (backward). Sakai do not say that they are ‘terkebelakang’ or that they are a ‘suku terasing’, and many consider these terms to be an insult; such terms imply a negative relationship to the Indonesian state. Sakai do say that they are ‘kurang maju’ (not progressed enough). The implication is that rather than being backwards, they are willingly on the path of progress. This negated definition of themselves as lacking something in relation to modernity defines their every day discourse with non-Sakai.
Individual Sakai sometimes characterise themselves as ‘orang bodoh’ (stupid people) for failing to produce the kind of knowledge expected from modern maju people, such as knowing one's own age, or when losing a football match against another ethnic group. Through the development discourse, they define their present identity as not being culturally equal to others. Another self-applied term is ‘orang miskin’ (poor people) as opposed to ‘orang kaya’ (rich, wealthy people). In the former Siak kingdom, the orang kaya were the trading nobility.Footnote 25 Within their present-day development environment, orang kaya are orang maju (progressed people) and orang moderen (modern people). Poor Sakai are kurang maju (not progressed enough) and therefore they are orang miskin (poor people). These development terms provide Sakai with a more acceptable economic explanation for their cultural practices and way of life than such terms as ‘primitif’ and ‘terkebelakang’ (backwardness).
The semantics of the term ‘maju’ influences not only the Sakai practice of selling land in order to increase their purchasing power, as mentioned above, but also their recent practice of marriage with non-Sakai. In the past it was generally the case that Sakai women would cohabit with migrant merchants who would come to the area for trade. Many were Chinese, and hence there is a large wealthier section of the indigenous population called Sakai Cino (Sino-Sakai). In recent years, many Sakai men have been marrying migrant women representing two different groups. The first group are women who have settled in the area with the family, many of whom are Batak and Javanese. The second group of migrants are prostitutes, many of whom come from Java.
When a Sakai man marries a migrant villager, he follows the bride's marriage customs; this is referred to as ‘following the customary practices of others’ (ikut adat orang lain). If both the Sakai man and the migrant woman are Muslim, they will also marry according to the rules of Islam. This type of marriage, which they refer to as ‘nikah’, is considered to be the most ‘progressive’ type of marriage. When a Sakai man marries a woman from the prostitute group of migrants, he gives a sum of money to the brothel which employs the woman and then marries her according to what is called adat kampung or adat batin. This type of marriage called kawin entails the headman recognising that the two are a couple. The problem with kawin is that it customarily secures the marriage for only three days, and many of the women who cannot take to the poorer Sakai life leave their spouses by simply walking out. Within the region's ethnic mosaic of possible marriage partners, Sakai tend to prefer the Javanese, who during the Suharto period they came to consider as being the most maju (developed) people in the country. Sakai do not make a moral distinction between migrant women who come to the area as village settlers and those who are prostitutes. A Sakai person who ‘matches’ with a Javanese (villager or sex worker) is said to be ‘sudah maju’ (already progressed).
Conclusion
The ‘development gaze’Footnote 26 defines the mobile tribal way of life in unmarked negative terms. Because tribal people retain a measure of autonomy from the state, they are in fact beyond poverty, although this should not be taken to imply that tribal economies are always successful at any given period. It is usually the policies which create an infrastructure in an area that exposes the tribal group to modern external forces, fundamentally impoverishing them of their natural resources. Representatives of development present their policies and activities as part of a benign ‘cure’ for tribal backwardness. In relation to tribal peoples, however, development projects in effect try to ameliorate the failures or negative side-effects of previous infrastructural development projects in the area promulgated by the state in the name of the nation and which subsequently affected the indigenous economies. It is only at this stage of ruptured social and economic transformation, when the tribal group has lost too much of the territory which allowed them to sustain themselves while giving them political distance from the state, that the culture of development is imposed on them. Thus, through development the nation-state brings the tribal group into its political and cultural orbit; it controls and tries to re-fashion them through its particular policies.Footnote 27
The late twentieth-century modern nation-state has interacted with tribal peoples through development, claiming to have as its main goal their economic improvement. However, in relation to such tribal peoples such as the Meniq of Southern Thailand and the Orang Sakai of Riau, for whom economic occupations are part and parcel of their total socio-cultural life-way, the outcome of development has been the total transformation of their ways of life. Members of the tribal group first encounter the culture of development through the language that state representatives use when meeting them. Exposure to this language continues with each face-to-face encounter; it is the main language that the state and its representatives use to communicate with them. On many occasions when I have seen similar meetings between Thai and Indonesian officials and Meniq or Sakai, the visitor is transformed into a charismatic representative of modernity. He sits or stands before members of the target group, who gaze at him as he confidently ‘performs’ his certainties of development knowledge. On meeting people of the target group, the representative seems to see his modernity mirrored back to him in their faces.
Implicit in these interactive dialogues are a series of dichotomies, definitions and expectations. The concept of culture is also conveyed to the target group as representatives ask them about the way of life they want to improve and transform. An inverted interactive mirror conveys the development discourse that tacitly devalues their tribal forest way of life as one of poverty and backwardness. Although developers do not use the word ‘primitive’ when meeting members of the target group, the context of interaction and the application of the word ‘poor’ to them suggests it. They are poor because they are backward and primitive. It is easy to overlook the fact that development and state involvement in the area may have impoverished them.
In order to speak back, the indigenous group can only internalise this language and use it themselves. Development thus starts to take on a cultural life of its own, but it is a localised version of the national vernacular of the universal ideal of development. Inherent in this language is an unmarked negative definition of their way of life, which they have to change. However, the vernacular discourse of development itself has an influence on the way people perceive themselves in relationship to it.
We have seen that the Meniq of Muban Sakai and the Orang Sakai of Riau have developed somewhat different discourses of development due to the different languages of development in their respective nation-states. Hence unlike the Thai language, which sees the goal of development as khwaam jaroen (prosperity), in the Indonesian Sakai context the development discourse is clearly about becoming culturally modern rural Indonesians (moderen) and the achievement of material prosperity is only implied in the discourse. Hence, as the settled Meniq have the word ‘jaroen’ to refer to prosperity and wealth, the Sakai of Riau had to make the semantic link between having progressed (maju) and being modern (moderen) and being rich (orang kaya), to reach the concept of material advancement and prosperity that is implied in the Thai khwaam jaroen.
Within the respective cultural discourses then, in the Thai case the Meniq are poor (khon jon) and therefore have little prosperity (mii khwaam jaroen noi); the Sakai on the other hand are poor (orang miskin) because they have not progressed enough (kurang maju). The Meniq do not necessarily think that they will become wealthy and prosperous if they develop; they simply expect Thais to help them survive by giving them gifts. Sakai of Riau have bought into the development discourse because it is a culturally national one that embraces them as equal Indonesians if they accept it and stigmatises them if they do not. They do think that if they follow on the path of development then ‘in the future’ (masa depan) they will ‘become developed’ (menjadi orang maju) and modern, and therefore ‘become rich’ (menjadi orang kaya). Their evidence for this is that some Sakai individuals have already achieved this status.
What is missing in this Sakai equation is that those individuals and families who have ‘already progressed’ are people who came from already socially differentiated backgrounds, such as the children of headmen or those of part-Chinese descent, and the beneficiaries of earlier educational development policies. These particular state-educated individuals were able to mediate in the purchase and sale of Sakai land and reap the rewards of commissions, when indigenous-owned land was still available. They also have a better sense of the rural and market economy, the value of land, and they are tied into profitable economic networks with non-Sakai. In developmental terms, they had ‘already progressed’ at the critical moment when money was there to be made.
We see then that Meniq have a temporal view of sedentarisation, which defines who they are in relation to more nomadic Meniq still practising hunting and gathering. Sakai, on the other hand, have a clear development-defined process of who different Sakai are according to their wealth and knowledge, which is measured along the spectrum of progress: kurang maju/maju/lebih maju/sudah maju (less progressed/progressed/more progressed/already progressed).
Both tribal groups have accepted the unmarked developmental references to themselves; these negating development terms define them not positively as who they are, but negatively as what they are not and what they lack. These terms define them as being culturally (and economically) deficient. Members of the group come to define themselves within the same language, and later attempts at developing a modern ethnic cultural consciousness are grounded in this definition of deficiency. All too often I have encountered among the Sakai a situation in which a state-educated person from the indigenous background would proudly show me museum artefacts of ‘his people’. However, when confronted with the same items in the so-called ‘less progressed’ lived social context, the same person would make stigmatising comments out of embarrassment. Even though such individuals are concerned with creating a modern indigenous ethnic identity, their identity work is based on the unmarked negating development labels. The development discourse that negates their identity through unmarked terms and definitions mars the tribal group's ability to develop a modern identity directly based on a positive image of their pre-development way of life.
The culture of development through which the nation-state interacts with tribal peoples gradually becomes part of the culture of its target group. It also forms the basis for the construction of their ethnic identity through unmarked negated terms; ‘they are not progressed enough’. This begs the question: when will they be sufficiently progressed — when these groups cease to exist?
