A lifelong dream fulfilled
Orang Asli visit to U.S. includes stop at KSC

Evelyn Redmond
Sentinel Staff
June 15, 2005

It took more than a year, tapping rubber trees and delivering auto parts, for Romani Mohamad, Hoken Sujin and Eng Tek to save up enough money to come to the United States.

As Mohamad walked through New Jersey’s Newark International Airport, “I was thinking, ‘This is like a dream,’” he said, unable to believe he had finally made it to America.

The three aboriginal Malaysians, or Orang Asli, members of the Semelai tribe, came to Keene last week to visit the Keene State College Orang Asli Archive, making them the first Orang Asli to visit the collection since it was established in 2000. The archive is a repository containing largely unpublished materials about the indigenous people of peninsular Malaysia.

During their nine-day visit to the United States, the two men, Mohamad and Sujin, and one woman, Tek, were hosted by Rosemary Gianno, a Keene State anthropology professor who’s known the trio for about two decades.

She first met Mohamad, Sujin and Tek in the 1980s, when they helped with her research on the extraction and trade of tree resins from rainforest trees in Malaysia.

At that time, the Semelais’ existence was fairly primitive, and their economy based mainly on trade. Since then, most of the rainforest where they live has been replaced by oil palm plantations and the Semelai people have had to rapidly adjust to a cash-based economy.

While Sujin and Tek still live in a small village in Pahang, Mohamad found he needed to move to the city of Kuala Lumpur in order to find work; he now ships and delivers auto parts.

Mohamad, Sujin and Tek were eager to come, they said, and visit the American cities they had seen in newspapers, movies and on television.

“If I had the money, I would have come here 20 years ago,” Tek said through her interpreter and friend Gianno.

Among their excursions in New England: the White Mountains and Foxwoods casino in Ledyard, Conn., where, in addition to taking in the culture of the gambling halls, they planned on seeing the Mashantucket Pequot Museum located there.

“I wanted to see the social life in (New York City),” Tek said. “It was so big.”

The trio spent the first few days of their trip in New York, where they visited the Museum of the American Indian at Battery Park. There, they met some of the museum staff, who were American Indian, and discussed the similarity between their cultures.

“The Semelai are very peaceful and non-violent — they are a very gender-equal people. They have had an experience very much like that of (American Indians),” Gianno said. “Their culture is changing so rapidly, the rainforest is disappearing. It’s very important to have repositories” to collect and preserve Malaysia’s indigenous culture while the country continues to industrialize its economy.

Keene State’s archive “is unique to the world — it is the only one focusing on unpublished resources, such as field notes and field documentation,” said Irene Herold, the college’s library director. “It fits in very well with the college’s mission concerning diversity.”

Through the years, the Semelais have made a significant contribution to the Orang Asli repository.

Mohamad is planning to continue working in Kuala Lumpur to transcribe and donate more materials, such as audio tapes and pictures.

“I hope it will grow,” he said of the archive, “and document more items.”