Loss of Food Plants Knowledge and Identity among Indigenous Peoples in Malaysia

Abstract

Culture and Identity are inextricably linked, and Food knowledge, especially traditional food knowledge, is one important part of culture and identity among Indigenous peoples. While much of this knowledge has been disappearing over the last centuries among North American and other Indigenous peoples, it has been disappearing dramatically fast in newly industrializing countries in South America and Southeast Asia within just the last one or two generations due to the rapid spread of large-scale plantation cultures and the globalizing of trade. Building on these facts, the present study among Indigenous communities in Malaysia reports on efforts to document and preserve this traditional knowledge and identifying barriers and facilitators (e.g. role of knowledge keepers) toward preserving and transferring traditional food and dietary habits across generations. As methods were used a critical literature review as well as ethnographic-style open-ended semi-structured interviews with Indigenous scholars and members of Indigenous communities. The difficulties of Malaysia’s Indigenous peoples presented here are instructive with regard to the global struggle of Indigenous peoples for food sovereignty. This paper reports on a building study, discussing aspects of Indigenous identity and plant knowledge within global food security, some specifics of changing Indigenous cultural knowledge and practices regarding food plants, the situation in some Peninsula and East Malaysian Indigenous communities, as well as some methodological and procedural details of our study.