ABSTRACT
The ethnographic outline presented here looks at the Menraq as they were before the full effects of changes due to their resettlement and their involvement in development projects made themselves felt. This description is in part derived from my field research, but a considerable part of it is gleaned from several detailed ethnographic studies on the traditional life of the people. What constitutes traditional culture is a tricky question since many elements or traits anthropologists consider as traditional are arguably borrowed from other cultures. This question is particularly poignant in the case of the Menraq. Through their longstanding interaction with a plethora of other peoples, but mainly with other Orang Asli and Malays, Menraq have adopted traits that anthropologists have deemed as traditional to Menraq culture. Debating what is traditional serves little purpose here. Instead, in this chapter I focus on the question of how the Menraq lived, subsisted, organized themselves into groups, and thought about the world and the afterlife before they were resettled, modernized, and converted to Islam. First, however, because the Menraq are one of several tribal peoples inhabiting Peninsular Malaysia, and because they are all in some measure subject to the same pressures of modernity, it is useful to give a profile of the Orang Asli presence as we know it in the Malay Peninsula.
