Wild Asia nominates Tijah Yok Chopil, an indigenous woman of the Semai tribe as our fourth Wild Asia Hero. Tijah has devoted her life to empowering and uniting the once-scattered Orang Asli's of Peninsular Malaysia. Her dedication led to the historic 3,000-strong protest at Putrajaya in March this year. Jules Ong is honoured to meet this formidable woman at her village in Bidor, Perak.

Written by Jules Ong on 6 Sep 2010 with 0 comments. Be the first!

Tijah Yok Chopil still remembers her first day of school in 1976. The traumatic events that enfolded that day are forever etched in her memory. Her reflections of those events and subsequent experiences with the outside world changed her to who she was to become today.

That day, when Tijah was eight, the Orang Asli children of Kampung Chang, Perak were bussed out of their settlement to be schooled in a national school in Bidor town, some 30 minutes away.

"When we got down from the bus all the other kids looked at us like we were aliens. They were afraid of us and we were afraid of them. Then they jeered and teased us. We felt so ashamed," recalls Tijah who is now in her early 40s.

Subsequent negative experiences with people outside of her community made her ask why her people are so alienated in the country that recognised them as the Original People.

"I realised the answer is not to run and hide away... but to stand our ground, to unite to empower ourselves and to explain to the outside world who we are."

With 18 diverse ethnic groups numbering 150,000, Tijah has the challenge of empowering and uniting the Orang Asli to speak in one voice. She started with the people closest to her - her family and community. At 17, she started teaching her siblings and neighbours' kids in her house to read and write. Due to the many negative experiences in school, and having no money to buy food or books, many Orang Asli children dropped out of school. But through sheer effort and determination, Tijah managed to continue schooling despite having to help her mother farm and tap rubber to support her nine siblings when her father died when she was only 12.

As a result of her classes, which eventually included adults, there is almost no one in her village who is illiterate today. Tijah also began to engage in discussions with the Orang Asli leaders on the problems besetting the community. But she realised soon enough that the menfolk could not accept a young, vocal woman who speaks her mind.

"I found the men who claimed to be our leaders were not really engaging with the community or finding creative ways to solve our problems. So instead of waiting for them, I decided to start my own group. I decided to engage with the womenfolk and we called ourselves Kumpulan Ibu-Ibu Kampung Chang (Kampung Chang's Women's Group).

"After many years, the young people who had been my students and the womenfolk became my strong allies. They helped me organise the community when there are land incursions or when we need to voice our demands to the government."

The men eventually joined the women in the village and together they changed the name of the group to Sinui Pai Nanek Sengik (SPNS), which means New Life, One Heart in 1995. Through this organisation, they ran classes and workshops for the community on activities ranging from weaving baskets to paralegal training on land rights.

From those humble beginnings, the SPNS model spread to other villages. Over the years it became a network linking five states in Peninsular Malaysia and SPNS evolved to what is now known as the Village Network of Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli. (Jaringan Kampung Orang Asli Semenanjung Malaysia).

The Village Network has over the years become a powerful force in voicing for Orang Asli rights on their cultural identity, which is intrinsically tied to the land. Through their collective efforts, they managed to stave off several threats of land incursions into their native customary territories.

Their latest struggle is to protest against the new land policy that was approved without consultation with the Orang Asli grassroots by the National Land Council last December.

The title of the policy - "Policy of Awarding Land Titles" is in itself misleading and offensive to the Orang Asli, says Tijah.

"It assumes that the Orang Asli have no land... but we have been here from the beginning. All we need is the government to recognise our customary land territories. We don't need the government to sympathise with us or to give us what we already have."

Most of the Orang Asli were not even aware of the Policy and Tijah took it upon herself to inform the community throughout Peninsular Malaysia. Together with the members of the Village Network, they went on a roadtrip to inform and gather the opinions of the grassroots.

"We found that all of us are very angry about the Policy, and we wanted to express our feelings to the government. So that's where the protest came about. We managed to organize 3,000 people from all over the country to demonstrate at Putrajaya. This is the first time in Malaysian history that so many Orang Asli have come together in a show of strength to protest a government policy."

Tijah says such a policy came about because of the misconception over Orang Asli as uneducated, lazy, naïve and an underdeveloped people because of their way of life.

"The Orang Asli problem is not because of our culture or way of life. Our culture believes that without the natural world, humans can't exist. If we respect and honour God, we have to respect the natural environment. We believe in the values of moderation and not to be greedy. The problem is not our culture, but the national policies that are imposed on us," she says.

Presently, the Village Network under a growing group of capable Orang Asli leaders who was once nurtured under the SPNS, faces its biggest challenge yet. At no point in the history of Malaysia, has the penetration into land regarded as sacred to the beliefs, lifelihoods and the cultural identity of a people so aggressive. The struggle to protect their land is no less then a struggle for survival.

It is at this pivotal point in the fight to protect the Orang Asli race and identity that Wild Asia is nominating Tijah Chopil, a woman who has overcome all odds to be one of the most important voices of her people.

Watch this space for a short film on Tijah.