Report of the National Inquiry into the Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples 31 • Teiq nemdep – areas in the forest where the hunting rights belong to specific families, with no overlapping claims. Others may enter the area but they cannot hunt or set traps there without permission from the owners of the hunting grounds. 3.57 The Semelai of Tasik Bera, Pahang not only have a concept of land ownership over their customary lands but also over the water and plant habitat therein. The main channel and one large tributary of the lake are divided by the Semelai into segments called lubuk which means “open pool of water.” The Semelai know exactly where the lubuk are and each have their own name. Most lubuk are said to have one or more tuhan (lord or owner). The tuhan lubuk (“Owner of the open water”) would be the oldest living descendant(s) of the first Semelai settler at that segment of the swamp channel. Other tributaries or bodies of water are called jrolor (large arm of lake), solok (small arm), padar (field of swamp rushes) and ranoq (swamp forest). These can also have tuhan. 3.58 The tuhan lubuk controls access to water and land resources. Their permission is required, foremost, if people want to poison fish in that lubuk, for any kind of fishing (trap or line) in that lubuk, placing a swidden on the land adjacent to that lubuk, or hunting on the land near that lubuk. 3.59 Ownership of the lubuk devolves to the children. A sibling cohort would all become tuhan lubuk but gender and physical distance matter. While people identified as tuhan lubuk tend to be male, inheritance can be bilateral through either the mother or father.48 3.60 Similarly, the Orang Seletar (also known as Orang Laut, or Sea People) of Johor, assume custodianship of sea and coastal fringes as their traditional lands and territories.49 While the practice of living on house-boats has almost completely died, partly in response to the Government’s efforts to sedentize the people, the Orang Seletar still regard their sea as their traditional (resource) territory, apart from the coastal spaces they now occupy. 3.61 Among the Negrito groups of Orang Asli, the Batek of Kelantan and Pahang still lead a seminomadic way of life. Even so, every Batek has a sentimental attachment to the river valley in which he or she grew up. This area is pesaka’. The concept of pesaka’ can refer to a person’s actual place of birth, a whole river valley, or a generally-defined region, depending upon the context of discussion. Batek do not have any special individual proprietary rights in their pesaka’ but it is a place they are especially familiar with and where they feel ‘at home.’50 3.62 The Batek traditional territory is marked out by landscape features such as pathways, rivers, campsites and geo-ecological zones or spaces which form the spatial framework around which the Batek organise their society. Apart from various classes of forest cover, often defined by the level of ease of travel through these areas – eg teiq langyen (mountain or high ridge forest), teiq lanyeh (hardest terrain to travel in) – there are also other important geo-cultural markers that identify the Batek’s customary land. These include raey (lightning scar in forest patch), batu’ cénel (mythicized rocks), padang (single specie grove), and 48 Rosemary Gianno (1989), Presented at the 88th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 15 -19, 1989 49 Cynthia Chou (1997), Contesting the tenure of territoriality; The orang Suku Laut, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 153 (1997), no: 4, Leiden, 605-629. 50 Kirk Endicott & Karen Lampell Endicott (1988), The question of hunter-gatherer territoriality: the case of the Batek of Malaysia. In: Megan Biesel et al (1988) (Eds.), The Past and Future of Kung Ethnography, pp 139-162. chapter 3_a4.indd 31 7/5/13 6:43 PM