ABSTRACT
The Riau Archipelago, which lies to the south of Singapore and is now part of modern-day Indonesia, was at one time a Malay sultanate. It is still home to a scattered population of roving fishing communities known locally, in Malay-Indonesian phraseology, as ‘Orang Suku Laut’ or ‘Orang Laut’, which is literally translated as ‘people of the sea’. The people have been called ‘Sea Nomads’ in English-language writings on account of their full-blown nomadic way of life. The Orang Laut consider themselves to be the ‘orang asli’ (indigenous people) and ‘asli Melayu’ (indigenous Malays) of a vast maritime world known as the ‘Alam Melayu’ (Malay World) which includes Riau. For centuries, the sea and coastal areas have been their life and living spaces. Nonetheless, the Indonesian and Singaporean authorities, like other governments attempting to administer nomadic and migratory people – be they of the desert, jungle or sea or the urban homeless – persist in seeing the Orang Laut as lacking a fixed attachment to housing in permanent villages – that is, not ‘sedentarized’. The developmental pressure thus generated is one of the issues discussed in this book, along with those of social assimilation as citizens, territorial rights, religious conversion and cultural identity.
