SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia Vol. 28, No. 3 (2013), pp. 516–41 DOI: 10.1355/sj28-3e © 2013 ISEAS ISSN 0217-9520 print / ISSN 1793-2858 electronic Constructing Rights: Indigenous Peoples at the Public Hearings of the National Inquiry into Customary Rights to Land in Sabah, Malaysia Fadzilah Majid Cooke Malaysia has declared its vision of developed country status by the year 2020. Much has been written about its top-down development approach, its relative economic success and the social as well as environmental costs of such approach. In 2011 and 2012 the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) set into motion a national inquiry into the status of customary rights to land in the country. As part of the inquiry, a nationwide series of consultations was held over several months in 2012, culminating in formal public hearings in Peninsular Malyasia, Sarawak and Sabah. A major objective of the inquiry was to evaluate ways which could make development in Malaysia more inclusive and delineate obstacles to a better acknowlegement of indigenous peoples’ rights to customary land. Keywords: Malaysia, indigenous rights, customary land, peoples’ organizations. Processes of inclusion have been an important focus both of theorizing on development and of practice concerned with promoting the inclusion of marginalized or partially included groups in the socio-political and economic life of society. In the political sphere, theorizing about civil society and the expansion of political space has sought to provide a “voice” to groups that have been traditionally absent from politics and the politico-administrative system at the local and other institutional or spatial scales (Weiss and Saliha 2003, pp. 6–7; Moulaert et al. 2005, p. 1970). In Malaysia, despite a tendency for state suppression of dissent and distrust of non-government organizations (NGOs) (Weiss and