The nomadic sea-faring group that inspired director James Cameron's Avatar sequel are facing an existential threat as the Malaysian government forcibly evicts them and destroys their homes.
June this year marked a tragedy for about 500 Bajau Laut people living along the coast of Malaysia's Sabah state in northern Borneo.
Their floating homes were either demolished or set on fire by the authorities, as part of what experts and human rights defenders in the country described as a crackdown against a vulnerable stateless people.
Malaysian authorities, however, defended the eviction of the Bajau Laut people, claiming the evictions were about improving security and preventing cross-border crime.
Sabah's Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Christina Liew said the government was responding to "illegal activities" such as fishing, building structures and farming without permission around the Tun Sakaran Marine Park, a well-known location for diving among tourists.
But activists argue the government unfairly targeted the Bajau Laut people, who have been living in the region since before Malaysia even became a country in 1963.
The inspiration for Avatar
The Bajau Laut are a subgroup of ethnic Sama-Bajau people, who are indigenous to maritime South-East Asia.
They reside in the Sulu Sea on the borders of the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.
They typically live on house boats or coastal huts and travel by traditional raft – a way of life that James Cameron took as inspiration for the Metkayina clan in his Hollywood blockbuster Avatar: The Way of Water.
"It was like, how do we take indigenous culture here on our planet and put it through the lens of Pandora?" Cameron said in an interview with National Geographic.
Borneo Komrad provides education to Bajau Laut and other stateless children in Sabah.
The organisation's founder, Mukmin Nantang, told the ABC that the community mostly relied on fishing and water resources for survival.
"They are self-sustained by catching fish and trading some of them," Mr Nantang said.
Bajau Laut cultural practices have been carried for generations, as they have lived along the coast of Sabah since before Malaysia gained independence from the British Empire, he said.
"The Bajau Laut do not have a concept of country as a sovereignty, because the water is their territory. The sea becomes their land, and they want to preserve it."
However, there has been an extensive debate whether the Bajau Laut people are indigenous to Sabah, said Dr Vilashini Somiah, an anthropologist and senior lecturer at Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.
While the Bajau Laut people are native to the Sulu Sea, Dr Somiah said "there's no definitive position" that they are indigenous to Sabah.
"This whole issue about who belongs and who is indigenous in Sabah in itself is a very difficult one to tackle," she said.
"Simply because much more prominent and obvious indigenous groups … have argued that anybody that doesn't come from customary land-based practices are not indigenous."
Statelessness means Bajau Laut are 'invisible'
When colonial powers including the British and Dutch conquered and divided territories in South-East Asia, including maritime areas, the Bajau Laut lost their legal rights over coastal areas, said Mr Nantang.
As a result, many of them became stateless and "invisible".
With no nationality documents or other official identification, hundreds more could face evictions in the future, Mr Nantang said.
In June, Mr Nantang was arrested by Malaysian authorities and later released on bail.
"I was charged under the Sedition Act because I raised many issues about [Bajau Laut people] whose homes were demolished and burned," he said.
Amnesty International Malaysia's executive director Katrina Jorene Maliamauv said that the Sabah state government should end its evictions of the Bajau Laut communities and "not punish those who expose what is going on".
"The authorities must also fulfil its state obligations to protect, respect, and uphold the rights and dignity of stateless people and Indigenous persons – including the Bajau Laut people," a statement from Amnesty said.
According to Pusat Komas, a Malaysian human rights group, the Bajau Laut have faced "systemic discrimination".
"Their forced removal raises serious questions about the equitable treatment of ethnic minorities in Malaysia," the group said.
Dr Somiah explained that some other indigenous groups in Sabah oppose classifying Bajau Laut people as indigenous because they "themselves feel that they are treated very unjustly due to systemic racism".
"It does highlight racism, prejudices, class division, poverty issues and an urban-rural divide," she said.
'They want to become law-abiding Malaysian citizens'
Some of the Bajau Laut have adapted to a land-based lifestyle.
This includes communities on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi who hold Indonesian citizenship.
"Granting them citizenship could be a solution, because when they are undocumented they are considered invisible and their rights are ignored," Mr Nantang said.
"They actually want to become law-abiding Malaysian citizens, they want to go to school.
"When they are not given an education, they do not know what rights they have."
Dr Somiah said Malaysian politicians had long dithered on the issue of granting stateless people citizenship.
"Sitting on the fence has been very beneficial for them," she said.
"While it is sort of set to appease much more politically correct members of society, they're also very careful to gazette and institutionalise these changes because the members of the electorate that are completely anti-migrants, for example, will not stand for it."
Malaysia's Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said at the end of July that there were 28,000 Bajau Laut people in Sabah and 6,200 of them were officially Malaysian with valid birth certificates and identity documents, local media reported.
He said the government "acknowledge the existence" of the Bajau Laut community and were planning to resettle the displaced at Pantai Manis, a town south of Sabah's capital Kota Kinabalu.
Mr Saifuddin said authorities would have training courses for community members with interests in agriculture, aquaculture and other areas.
Still, having been undocumented for decades, many Bajau Laut people remain accused of being "migrants" and cannot access public services such as health and education, Mr Nantang said.
"They are now scattered, going to nearby islands, some to the mainland and staying wherever they can.
"They do not have homes and they live in fear because their houses were burned down."
