SINGERS OF THE LANDSCAPE - SONG, HISTORY, AND PROPERTY-RIGHTS IN THE MALAYSIAN RAIN-FOREST

In the 1930s, British field ethnographer and museum curator H. D. Noon e published a map of the Perak/Kelantan watershed, homeland to a numbe r of Orang Asli peoples, including Temiars. With this map their last r efuge entered the colonial record. But long before this, the region ha d been mapped in song by Temiar hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists . The Temiar inscribe crucial forms of knowledge in song: medical, per sonal, 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.