SERAAQ · Conserving Forests through Indigenous Heritage: The UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Landscape, Alternative Sovereignty and Semai Life Projects in Peninsular Malaysia’s Last Surviving Rainforests

Seraaq, the project acronym, means ‘forest’ in the Indigenous Semai language, connoting the sentience and sacredness of forests, and the moral calling to forest stewardship. The project highlights the importance of Semai (agri)cultural heritage in forest conservation, and the need for a blueprint to achieve, at minimum, alternative sovereignty: could the UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Landscape serve as a tool of empowerment for the minority Semai people of Peninsular Malaysia? SERAAQ’s originality lies in linking cultural heritage protection to securing Indigenous rights to forests and resources, and by identifying ways to support Indigenous forest livelihoods as a purposeful community development option within and in spite of prohibitory state structures. SERAAQ also demonstrates that Indigenous heritage resources are real, functioning parts of Indigenous social-ecological systems rather than free-standing, unidimensional cultural heritage elements. I will assess the potentialities of the WHCL mechanism, and gather documentation of contemporary Semai forest reliance and ‘living’ heritage, by using political economy analyses and field-based survey, PhotoVoice and scenarios planning approaches. This will produce quantifiable, evidence-based data, to persuade and effect change at the decision-making/governance levels. This evidence will take into account Semai articulations of their own self-determined ‘life projects’ or forest-based futures, ideas of forest protection and community empowerment outcomes, e.g, inclusion in forest governance processes; public recognition of the Semai homeland; and legal rights to their customary forestland. An MSCA fellowship will help me innovate my oral tradition research background, to work expertly on political/socioeconomic topics in the heritage and forest conservation fields, especially in regard to the exigencies of Indigenous poverty and disadvantage.