similarities to Malays. However, Semelais retain much from their Austroasiatic heritage.

Prior to incursions by the state during the Malayan Emergency, their culture was sustained by pioneering shifting cultivation and the trade of minor forest products, especially resins and rattans. They were autonomous and self-supporting. Since the 1950s there has been a severe and ongoing alienation of their lands and waterways through logging of extensive lowland primary forests and expropriation of the land, primarily by FELDA oil palm schemes,