Ancestral cemetery of the Orang Laut community in Kampung Masiran, Kawal, Bintan. March 2026. Courtesy NTU CCA Singapore.
For the Orang Laut community in Kawal, Bintan, planting mangroves is a long-standing practice since the time of their great-grandparents. Since young, Johannes Jamil, a third-generation descendent and leader of this community, was told that the propagules were not toys to be played with; they are life that must be treated with care.
He also shared with us how he was taught to pick and plant propagules: “We pick fruits that are about three or four days away from falling, as they are fully ripe. We do not pick young ones, as they won't survive.” He was taught to plant not more than three propagules in the same hole, and to leave one or two steps between each planted cluster. According to him, this gives more space for the trees to grow well, so that they do not have to compete for nutrients with each other.
For them, mangrove forests are providers of sustenance. It is where they catch food such as small fish and crabs, gather medicine, and also wood for building. Some of the trees, such as the Nipah (Nypa fruticens) palm, are also important plants used in rituals and rites. This explains one of the reasons why their ancestors are buried usually less than a kilometer away from the mangroves.
In the video below, Johanes shares about the community's spiritual connection to these coastal forests, their knowledge of the various plants and animals that live alongside them, and the importance of sustaining these traditional knowledge and practices.
Most of the community members live in wooden stilt houses that lie in a zone between two edges: one facing the open sea where they would go out to fish, the other a thick mangrove forest where they would set bubu for crabs. To get to the village, one would have to take a boat in during high tide. When it is low tide, as we experienced on the day of our visit, one could walk along the sandy flats to their houses. Just before we descended the steps of the dock onto the flats, we were asked to take off our shoes and make the rest of the walk barefoot.
Similar to Pengudang Village, most of the propagules planted along the coastline where the village is located are the Rhizophora. Previous attempts to plant other species, such as the perepat (Sonneratia alba), were not successful. We observed that some of the Rhizophora trees along the coastline were of larger size than others, and asked him how that came to be. Johanes thinks that the more mature patches were probably planted from his great-grandparents' generation.
This relationship that has been passed down through generations, however, is under strain due to increasing degradation of mangrove forests in Bintan due to coastal development and mining activities. Hear from Johanes on his perspectives on threats to mangrove forests in his environment.
