Orang Asli is a Malay term meaning ‘original people’, and is used in Malaysia to refer to the indigenous tribes or aborigines, some of whom have been inhabiting the peninsula for almost 50,000 years! Traditionally, the orang asli identified themselves as inhabitants of particular locations – and did you know that Singapore was the native grounds to one such orang asli group? Well, not exactly grounds, but water.

Where would you learn about the Orang Asli in Singapore? yg discovers that a place in Singapore lent its name to this particular group of people:

today, i walked at the re-developed lower seletar reservoir park. not only was i pleased to find new additions at the park, like the heritage bridge and the family bay, but i was also being enriched to learn of the existence of a certain group of people who once lived in that area. i had not known or heard of the kon seletar who had settled in singapore long before sir stamford raffles landed on our shore.

kon seletar or orang seletar is now classified as an orang asli tribe in malaysia. they were named after the seletar area in singapore (or it could be the other way around), where about 800 of them once lived. these people could be considered sea gypsies or orang laut. however, they did not belong to the same group that raffles met when he stepped shore. the orang seletar were descendants of the orang laut from the spice islands of indonesia.

It appears that most of the sea gypsies/orang laut, including the orang seletar have given up their nomadic patterns and settled on land for better or worse. Find out a little more about them in yg’s post here.

** Are you an Orang Seletar, or descendant of one? I would very much like to hear your story. Leave a comment here!