I thought the indigenous people of Singapore would be peoples like the Orang Laut, who seem to have lived as indigenous groups working for past polities but not directly making themselves geopolitically relevant. But a lot of people have been saying that Malays are the indigenous people of Singapore, even though it seems like most of them also immigrated here with the Chinese and Indians, and Malaysia itself has its own designated indigenous groups, so it doesn't make seems for them to both be so simply considered indigenous? IMO, it's a little like claiming that Italians are the indigenous people of Nice and Mexicans are the indigenous people of California. Maybe it also involves how we define indigenous peoples? Not too sure.
Article 152.2 of Singapore’s present constitution states that
The Government shall exercise its functions in such manner as to recognise the special position of the Malays, who are the indigenous people of Singapore, and accordingly it shall be the responsibility of the Government to protect, safeguard, support, foster and promote their political, educational, religious, economic, social and cultural interests and the Malay language.
However, I can’t find an answer as to exactly why this clause was inserted in the first place, or what precisely those who drafted the constitution had in mind when using the word “indigenous”.
My personal theory is that the word "indigenous" refers not to "members of the very first community of homo sapiens on the island". Instead, it refers to "the people who were in Singapore before British colonial rule brought with it large numbers of Chinese, Indian and European immigrants", which is a recognisable description of the Malay community. I base this on the commonly accepted definition of the term “indigenous people”, as well as the way Malays have been viewed by both themselves and the British.
To start with what “indigenous people” actually means, there isn’t an “official” internationally accepted definition of the term “indigenous people”, which sometimes makes identifying who’s indigenous and who’s not difficult. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, while acknowledging this, also provides this common definition:
Both of these conditions are fulfilled by the Malay population of Singapore. This definition also allows the same group of people to be both “immigrants” and “indigenous” at different points in time. For example, at the time the Malays arrived in the region and established dominance, the Orang Laut and Orang Asli would have been considered “indigenous”. When the British arrived in the region and established dominance, the Orang Asli, Orang Laut and Malays could all be considered indigenous.
Setting definitions aside for the moment, if you’re wondering who the very first humans in Singapore were, we actually might know.
We’re straying into anthropology rather than history here, but Southeast Asia is generally considered to have been populated by two main waves of homo sapiens. The first are the “negritos”, who are presumed to have arrived 70,000 years ago, possibly earlier. These are generally defined by 3 phenotypic features: dark skin, spiraled to frizzy hair, and short stature.
The second are the “mongoloids”, who are believed to have migrated out of Taiwan and southern China and spread across Southeast Asia, displacing and intermarrying with the negritos until only a few recognisable negrito populations were left. These populations include the Aetas in the Philippines and the Orang Semang in Malaysia.
In the past, the prevailing theory was that negrito populations had survived in communities isolated from the "invading mongoloids", unchanged from tens of thousands of years ago. However, genetic studies have since found that these populations do share genes with neighbouring populations, providing clear evidence of genetic mixing. They just happen to, for reasons that range from convergent evolution to the results of random gene combinations that just happen to result in those phenotypes, look different.
Thus, going by this theory, the very first homo sapiens to arrive in Singapore would be the negritos.
Going back to the original question, the Malays themselves recognised that they were not the original inhabitants of Malaya and Singapore.
Much of what we identify as “traditional” Malay culture and the spread of the Malay language can be traced to the powerful Malacca Sultanate (c. 1400 to 1511). Presenting itself as a model Malay Muslim polity, subsequent polities in the region sought to model themselves after its example.
A valuable source of information about the Sultanate is the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), a romanticised history of the Malaccan Sultanate. In it, the Malays are clearly portrayed as “migrants” to Singapore and the Malay Peninsula. The Sejarah Melayu opens with the genealogy of the Sultans of Malacca, tracing their bloodline back to Alexander the Great, who is clearly not “local”. Eventually, Sri Tri Buana, one of Alexander’s descendants, miraculously appears on a hill in Palembang. Later, he leaves, and when his fleet arrives in Riau Lingga, the Queen of Bintan takes him as her son and provides the support of her Orang Laut. With this support, Sri Tri Buana establishes the settlement of Singapura. The settlement falls after 5 generations of Sultans, and the then Sultan flees north and founds Malacca.
The oldest version of the Sejarah Melayu we have access to was compiled in the early 17th century by the Johor Sultanate, which was trying to position itself as the successor Sultanate to Malacca, and thus overlord of all Malays. We can thus assume that this version is not someone trying to do a hatchet job by tagging the Sultans as “foreigners” - clearly the blood of Alexander the Great was far more important than being indigenous to the area. The Sejarah Melayu also draws a distinction between the Malay Sultan who is in search of a place to found a kingdom, and the Orang Laut who are native to the waters around Riau Lingga and Singapore.
The powerful Sultanate of Kedah to the north of Malacca also had its own annals called the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, which tell the story of Kedah’s Hindu-Buddhist rulers before the kingdom’s conversion to Islam. The annals also trace the first ruler’s lineage to Alexander the Great, have him arriving and founding the kingdom, and mention the Orang Asli that are already living in the area.
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