Senoi - Sociopolitical Organization

After the traditional social structure was destroyed by slave raiding, Senoi government was consensual. Persuasive people, usually men, were "elders." Taboos against interfering in individual autonomy, expressed as taboos against violence, left no sanctions available to elders who were not persuasive enough to keep people from ignoring them or from moving away. Thus verbal facility, not wealth or generosity, was the prime prerequisite for leadership. Spiritual wisdom generated through contact with familiar spirits and manifested in dreams was also important, so that rivals might criticize a man for representing his wife's dreams as his own. The end of slaving in the 1930s increased contact with outsiders who wanted to deal with "spokesmen," thus creating Senoi "headmen," who almost always were men modeled on the outsider's own pattern. A Communist insurrection in the 1950s speeded the infiltration of state sovereignty into the interior, as the British made headmanship official by giving a letter of investiture as headman to one man in each band, following the model established by the Malay sultans for the dependent Senoi. The emphasis on individual autonomy still limits a headman's authority, and other elders (west Semai "field heads," for example) retain some power. Ultimate authority rests with the Malay-run Jabatan Orang Asli (Indigenes' Department).