Cultural Activism, Environmental (In)Justice, and Indigenous (Dis)Possession: Contesting Mobilisations of Heritage on a Resource Frontier in Peninsular Malaysia

<p dir="ltr">The Indigenous Orang Seletar community of Kampung Sungai Temon in Johor</p><p dir="ltr">Bahru, Peninsular Malaysia, has been grappling with the harsh realities of climate</p><p dir="ltr">change. Since the 2000s, neoliberal processes of resource extraction and</p><p dir="ltr">economic growth have transformed Orang Seletar lands, territories and waters</p><p dir="ltr">into a resource frontier. Large-scale reclamation of Johor Strait's coastlines for</p><p dir="ltr">the Danga Bay waterfront development has encroached on their customary</p><p dir="ltr">territories, leading to severe environmental pollution and the loss of rich fishing</p><p dir="ltr">grounds, and threatening their traditional livelihoods as fishers. The Orang</p><p dir="ltr">Seletar community responded to their existential crisis by drawing on their</p><p dir="ltr">cultural heritage and tacit knowledge of the natural and cultural environment to</p><p dir="ltr">resist their encroachment and assimilation into the mainstream Malay-Muslim</p><p dir="ltr">society of Malaysia. Drawing on settler colonialism as an analytical framework</p><p dir="ltr">and long-term ethnographic fieldwork with the Orang Seletar community, I</p><p dir="ltr">examine the contesting mobilisation of cultural heritage in the environmental and</p><p dir="ltr">cultural battles over rights and access to Indigenous territories. While climate</p><p dir="ltr">change accelerates the environmental dispossession, native elimination and</p><p dir="ltr">heritage erasure of the Orang Seletar community through settler colonisation</p><p dir="ltr">processes, it also offers a route for the mobilisation of cultural heritage to resist</p><p dir="ltr">environmental and social injustices. I explore the different framings and</p><p dir="ltr">configurations of cultural heritage in the contest over Indigenous territories to</p><p dir="ltr">shed light on the ambiguous relationship between cultural heritage and</p><p dir="ltr">environmental justice.</p>