The traumatic decline of Malay kingdoms in the Indonesian province of Riau and, more recently, the area's rapid economic development, has prompted some Malay intellectuals to articulate a concern for cultural and ethnic specificity. In the search for local definition, some have suggested that it may be found among Riau's suku asli groups small, indigenous forest-based and aquatic societies that retain strong economic and cultural links to the territories and natural environments that they have occupied for generations. This paper is primarily concerned with issues relating to the identity and cultural survival of one such group the Suku Petalangan who number about 20,000 and occupy the once thickly forested Kampar river hinter lands on the Sumatran mainland where they engage in swidden farming, collecting forest products and fishing. Suku Petalangan leaders have described themselves to me as Melayu asli darat (authentic inland Malays) and rakyat bekas kerajaan Pelalawan (people of the former kingdom of Pelaiawan). I have also observed that, depending upon the situation in which identity was an issue, individuals identified themselves or were identified according to their village of birth, clan origin and/or residency. In this paper I argue that Petalangan arts and performing arts in particu lar have a vital role to play in the transmission, expression and celebration of Petalangan cultural identity, and that these functions exist in the context of, and perpetuate a set of, social, environmental and legal codes and attitudes known as adat. Drawing extensively upon the natural envir onment for primary analogies with social life, Petalangan adat reflects a world view in which territorial tenure is central to their concepts of self. And yet in recent times the Petalangan and many other small-scale soci eties in Riau have found that their long-standing assumptions about territ orial tenure are insufficient to protect them against land loss resulting from the intervention of outside powers that include government as well as private and international business interests. As many of the Petalangan territories do not show the designated signs of structured utilization such as tillage, fencing and built structures, they are deemed by the government to be vacant and therefore available for sale to the highest bidder. Regarding the issue of continuing local cultural identity, the govern