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.
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