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Paper short abstract

My paper is an ethnographic account of my experience listening to a Kensiu cultural storyteller narrate our misadventures while lost in the ruinous forest landscape. His culturally woven account was regenerative in its ability to make sense of the logging-related ruins in his ancestral forest.

Paper long abstract

The resettlement village of Kampung Orang Asli Lubuk Legong has been home to a group of Malaysian Indigenous people (Orang Asli) of the Kensiu ethnicity since the 1970s. It sits on the fringes of the Ulu Muda Forest Complex, which was traditionally home to the Kensiu people before "development" intervened. Today, the Ulu Muda forest they once knew has been fragmented by logging activity. In light of this reality, cultural storytellers (bejorbang) now tell different tales to the young—tales inspired by, and deeply shaped by, the “disturbed” landscapes that surround them.

In the past, a bejorbang would share mystical narratives of the community, to appease cosmic spirits and to educate the young on community values. These stories often drew on the surrounding landscapes as starting points for recounting mytho-historical tales. Today, as these landscapes are rapidly destroyed, the validity of these myths is challenged by the absence of tangible, evidence-bearing placeholders. Community stories are still shared occasionally, but they now serve to deflect potential misfortunes arising from environmental destruction.

My paper recounts my ethnographic experience listening to a bejorbang who narrated our misadventures while lost in the ruinous forest. I argue that the bejobang regenerates a challenged community storytelling tradition by associating the aesthetics of ruins as evidence of their lightning-god's (Kaei's) disavowal of environmental destruction (i.e. "tempet cemam"). Inaction may lead one to be infected by an incurable disease known as "cemam". Bejobang stories, then, are essential to redress environmental degradation that would otherwise be beyond villagers' control.