Of Course Orang Asli Do Not Know Orang Penan

In her column in Oriental Daily(東方日報), Young Ai Ling(楊艾琳) wrote about her belated realisation that the Malaysians from Peninsula have next to zero knowledge about people in Sarawak. She was accompany a group of Sarawak natives, in a tour around Peninsular Malaysia, telling that facts that the Sarawak natives are suffering, while news reports had demonised them as hindrances to progress.

In her imagination, she actually thought that all the natives, all from Sarawak, Sabah, and Peninsula, actually know each others, and are old acquaintances, so the locals were supposed to meet the touring party with great enthusiasm, and chat like so.

As it turned out, in one of the stop of the tour that she is part of the team, the host of the stop actually got the names of the tribes from Sarawak mixed up, the host actually had no idea that the group is made up of Orang Penan. And that is when the reality hit her:

People who live in Peninsula actually have next to zero knowledge about people who live in Borneo Island. So Orang Asli in Peninsula actually have no idea who are the visitors from Sarawak, it was like Just-because they-are-Sarawak-natives-so-we-should-know-them? kind of situation.

This is not news to me, because Sarawak and Sabah are hardly mentioned in the national news. And the newspapers in Peninsula only report news in Peninsula, so to know anything about Sarawak and Sabah, one have to actually go to Sarawak and Sabah to read the local newspapers and talk to the locals. So it is only natural for the Peninsular Malaysians to actually have next to zero knowledge about East Malaysia, but always think they know everything. Now I know she really is a bona fide Peninsular Malaysian, as she is just like the Peninsular Malaysians I have met in Malaysia.

At least she really was trying to help the natives.

當然半島的原住民不知道本南人是從哪來的。砂朥越人看就知道了。半島人去到砂朥越，以爲是這樣那樣的，結果砂朥越人要有如教小孩似的，從頭教起。砂朥越人早就當這是笑話了。楊艾琳是真的半島人。但她該是真心的想幫本南人。