February 11, 2019

Singapore’s bustling and metropolitan city today bears little resemblance to how it was more than a century ago. Fortunately, some of Singapore’s historical moments have been frozen in time as the British Film Institute has restored and digitised rare archival films of Singapore dating back to the early 1900s. Assistant Professor Hamzah Bin Muzaini (NUS Department of Southeast Asian Studies) was recently featured in Episode 1 of Singapore on Film – a series exploring some of the earliest footage of Singapore – where he offered insights into the Orang Laut community’s way of life.

Dr Muzaini was contextualising a 1900 film titled Coolie Boys Diving for Coins, which featured several Malay boys from the Orang Laut community jumping off their boats into the water to scavenge for coins. This was a common practice as some Orang Laut would often request ship passengers leaving Singapore to throw unwanted coins into the sea. Dr Muzaini goes on to explain the meaning of Orang Laut, which literally translates to ‘sea people’; however, they are more commonly referred to as ‘sea nomads’ since they have no fixed habitation. These people live their lives on the sea and were one of the first communities which settled along the coastlines of pre-colonial Singapore. Despite this, the Orang Laut relocated to Malaysia after Singapore began to modernise.

The intimate relationship between the Orang Laut community and the sea still remains today, as Dr Muzaini notes as he sits in a village in the coastal area of Johor, where he observes the seafarers’ current way of life. He remarks on their maintenance of old traditional practices such as diving, fishing, and mussel harvesting in the Straits of Johor. While many of them no longer live on boats like their forefathers had, they still take pride in staying near the water and preserving the traditional activities of their community.

Watch Episode 1 of Singapore on Film here.