ofthe SAME TREE

There are other less numerous Suku Terasing groups in Sumatra, for
example the Bonai along the Rokan River, and the Orang Talang Kerumutan
and Orang Talang Napuh along the coasts. Off the coast of Sumatra is also
a group of islands that are valuable because they are a source of sago and
fresh water. The harvesters of the sago are the Suku Terasing inhabitants of
these islands and of the low marshy lands of the Sumatran coast, such as the
Akit and the Orang Utan. 58 These and other small Suku Terasing communities
often only appear in historical sources in relation to trade with the outside
world, but precisely which group is being discussed is often unclear.
Like the Orang Laut groups, smaller Suku Terasing tend to either merge or
be absorbed by a larger group. Numbers mean strength, and in disputes over
areas of exploitation, whether in the seas or in the rain forests, the numerically
dominant almost always emerge victorious. Among the Orang Laut and the
Suku Terasing, the groups that became the most influential were those that
had strong economic and social relationships with the Malayu polities downstream.
These were the Orang Batin and the Orang Rimba in Palembang and
Jambi, and the Petalangan in Siak, Indragiri, and Kampar. Despite the great
benefits accruing from their special relationship with the Malayu, these Suku
Terasing groups (with the known exception of the Orang Rimba) were also
the most vulnerable because of the constant temptation to become increasingly
Malayu at the expense of their own identity.
The forest peoples have been characterized as “opportunistic foragers,”
who follow a strategy of foraging widely and diffusely on a variety of plants
and animals rather than focusing only on a few species. 59 This strategy is ideal
in the rain forest with its numerous species of plants but only limited quantities
of each. The absence of larger animals as a source of protein is compensated
by a rich variety of insects and other smaller creatures. In moving
through the landscape, the forest dwellers snack frequently on berries, small
fruit, and small insects or creatures found on or near their paths. As a survival
strategy, they do not limit themselves to forest foraging but also exploit the
littoral and riverine environments. On the Malay Peninsula and on Sumatra,
sago palms grow in lowland forests and at the edges of mangrove swamps.
These palms are a source of starch for the Orang Asli/Suku Terasing and occasionally
a good hunting site for wild boar, which knock down the trees and
rip the trunks with their tusks to get at the edible soft fibrous core. The forest,
then, is not the “green desert” it is often depicted to be, but an integral part of
the forest dwellers’ larger food gathering and hunting economy that exploits
different ecozones in a strategy of survival. 60
A symbiotic relationship existed at the edge of the forests between the
Malayu and the interior communities. Forest clearance by the Malayu for
slash and burn agriculture brought an unintended benefit for the more
212 Chapter 7