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Singers of the landscape: Song, History, and Property Rights in the Malaysian Rain Forest
Author(s) -
Roseman Marina
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1998.100.1.106
Subject(s) - homeland , ethnography , geography , history , colonialism , field (mathematics) , archaeology , anthropology , ethnology , sociology , politics , political science , law , mathematics , pure mathematics
In the 1930s, British field ethnographer and museum curator H. D. Noone published a map of the Perak/Kelantan watershed, homeland to a number of Orang Asli peoples, including Temiars. With this map their last refuge entered the colonial record. But long before this, the region had been mapped in song by Temiar hunter‐gatherers and horticulturalists. The Temiar inscribe crucial forms of knowledge in song: medical, personal, social, historical, geographic. But their carefully cultivated knowledge has been dismissed. This article recuperates the song map as an ethnohistorical document comprising a new way of making claims to land.