Indigenous Negrito day labourers take shelter beneath Seri Gemilang Bridge from passing rain shower. For the past three decades, the Malaysian government has actively sought to bring the nomadic, hunter-gatherer Negrito peoples, who have been viewed as primitive, into the settled mainstream Malaysia society. Logging of their native mountain rainforests has made it necessary to take on unskilled labour jobs to feed their families. The short statured, coco-skinned, wooly-haired Negrito...
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Indigenous Negrito day labourers take shelter beneath Seri Gemilang Bridge from passing rain shower. For the past three decades, the Malaysian government has actively sought to bring the nomadic, hunter-gatherer Negrito peoples, who have been viewed as primitive, into the settled mainstream Malaysia society. Logging of their native mountain rainforests has made it necessary to take on unskilled labour jobs to feed their families. The short statured, coco-skinned, wooly-haired Negrito people, erroneously believed to be related to the Pygmies of the African Congo, possess unparalleled knowledge of the medicinal and edible plants which grow in the oldest rainforest in the world (130 million years old). Outside the forest, Negritos are reduced to impoverished manual labourers, Putrajaya, Malaysia.
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