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The population of the tribe in the 21st century is estimated to be 420,000 people.
Etymology
The Malay term orang laut literally means 'sea peoples'. The Orang Laut live and travel in their boats on the sea.[1] They made their living from fishing and collecting sea products.[2] Another Malay term for them, Orang Selat (literally 'Straits people'), was brought into European languages as Celates.
Distribution
Regions inhabited by peoples usually known as "Sea Nomads".[3]
Broadly speaking, the term encompasses the numerous tribes and groups inhabiting the islands and estuaries in the Ria Archipelago, the Pulau Tujuh Islands, the Batam Archipelago, and the coasts and offshore islands of eastern Sumatra, the southern Malay Peninsula and Singapore.[4]
Historically, the Orang Laut played major roles in Srivijaya, the Sultanate of Malacca, and the Sultanate of Johor. They patrolled the adjacent sea areas, repelling pirates, directing traders to their employers' ports and maintaining those ports' dominance in the area[2][5] In return, the ruler gave the Orang Laut leaders prestigious titles and gifts.[2] The earliest description of the Orang Laut may have been by the 14th century Chinese traveler Wang Dayuan who described the inhabitants of Temasek (present day Singapore) in his work Daoyi Zhilüe.[6]
In the story The Disturber of Traffic by Rudyard Kipling, a character called Fenwick misrenders the Orang Laut as "Orange-Lord" and the narrator character corrects him that they are the "Orang-Laut".
^Adriaan J. Barnouw (February 1946). "Cross Currents of Culture in Indonesia". The Far Eastern Quarterly. 5 (2). The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2: 143–151. doi:10.2307/2049739. JSTOR2049739.
^David E. Sopher (1965). "The Sea Nomads: A Study Based on the Literature of the Maritime Boat People of Southeast Asia". Memoirs of the National Museum. 5: 389–403. doi:10.2307/2051635. JSTOR2051635.
1400s - The Orang Laut Warriors - a short documentary about the Orang Laut in the 15th - 17th century, produced for the Singapore Bicentennial in 2019.
