The Orang Suku Laut or “Sea Tribe People” of the Riau Archipelago, located at the northwestern border of the Republic of Indonesia, are one of several ethnic groups found scattered throughout Southeast Asia, popularly known as “sea nomads” or “sea gypsies”. They make their living by exploiting the resources of the sea and adjacent coasts, mainly for subsistence needs. Many of them still dwell in small houseboats, travelling around in groups of kinsmen, and following animistic beliefs. Although some of them have abandoned their nomadic habit to live in settlements ashore, until recently their way of life had not changed much. The Orang Suku Laut live in a region that has been undergoing rapid economic modernization during recent decades. Today they have to deal with the different norms and values shared by the regional majority, which regards them as a primitive and backward people. Despite strong pressures on the part of the wider society for them to adjust to a sedentary, maju (“modern”) way of life, the Orang Suku Laut still define themselves as a distinctive ethnic group and are regarded as such.

This chapter is based on selected findings from my own ethnographic field research among the Orang Suku Laut. These findings are related to ethnic identity as the subjective dimension of ethnicity. Ethnic identity is understood as the basic quality or condition for group-belonging as consciously expressed and emotionally felt by the members of an ethnic group.

The purpose of this chapter is to show that ethnic identity is a variable phenomenon. Its inherent variability becomes obvious if ethnic identity is investigated not only in an intraethnic context but also in regard to interethnic contact. In situations of contact between members of different ethnic groups various definitions of ethnic identity may clash, and conflicts over identity may arise. In these situations one can observe that despite its primordial content, ethnic identity can be and is used strategically by the actors: they manipulate their ethnic affiliation, depending on their definitions of situations, their interests and interpretations.