This study introduces the concept of Water Oral History as a new approach to understanding Malaysia’s water history through the voices and memories of local communities rather than technocratic records or official statistics. In the postcolonial context, the history of water in Malaysia has been dominated by administrative and developmental narratives that silence the lived experiences behind policies and dams. This article argues that an oral approach to water history opens a path toward the decolonisation of epistemology by rejecting bureaucratic discourse and restoring the voices of communities, Public Works Department workers, villagers, fishermen, and women who serve as both users and custodians of water. Through oral historical interviews, these micro-narratives reveal how experiences of drought, flood, and water disruption shape emotional politics and local identity, dimensions long neglected in mainstream historiography. Crucially, Water Oral History is not merely a documentation method but an intellectual act of reclaiming history as a site of social struggle. It reconsiders who holds the authority to write water history, the colonial engineers and state officers or the people who endured their decisions. Within postcolonial and subaltern frameworks, oral memory functions as a living archive preserving indigenous knowledge of river management, water rituals, and communal solidarity. By positioning people’s voices as historical texts, Water Oral History reframes water as more than an economic resource, as a symbol of power, dependency, and resilience in post-1957 Malaysia. This concept expands water heritage studies and challenges conventional historiography by shifting authority from the archive to the oral.

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