Senoi + Preservatives

Preserving the culture of an ethnic is one important thing that many of us forget to accomplish on a daily basis due to living with a busy life.

One step the Senoi people of Peninsular Malaysia could preserve and conserve their culture is to Learn about religious traditions and festivals. Studying it can help you understand their culture. Religion and festivals connects to language, history, and personal behaviour. Becoming more familiar with the religion can help them understand all these other aspects.

Share the culture's art and technology. Each culture has its own clothing, music, visual art, storytelling traditions, an many more unique characteristics. Other members of the culture will be overjoyed to teach or talk about their hobbies, their jobs, their crafts, and what they do for fun. This includes traditional artwork you would find in a museum, but material culture goes far beyond that. Even a kitchen spoon or a piece of software is a cultural artifact.

• People with less sophisticated technology are often considered ignorant or less intelligent. This is completely wrong. Culture passes on tools adapted to a particular environment, and every tool has generations of thinking behind it

Conduct interviews. Interview the people whose histories you're telling, or experts in the subject you're writing about. Come prepared with a list of questions, but let the interviewee to wander to other topics and stories. You may learn something you would never think to ask about.

• Keep each interview within one or two hours. If the interviewee is willing, return to conduct additional interviews. This lets you prepare more questions, and lets the interviewee search for documents or objects she wants to share.
• Use a video or audio recorder if the interviewee agrees to it. These are much more accurate than trying to write everything down or hold it in your head.

Overall, the most important aspect in preserving and conserving the Senoi culture is by Accepting change. The dialogue around passing on culture often sounds defeatist. Cultures are "endangered" or need "preserving" before they die out. Real challenges and threats do exist, but don't assume that all change is bad. Culture helps people adapt to the world around them. The world has always been changing, cultures have always been adapting, and it's up to you to choose a direction you can be proud of.