Assimilation into the Kristang identity and culture and becoming able to identify as a Kristang person have been foundational and core components of how the community has expanded since its inception in Melaka in the 16th century. The core of Kristang identity and culture itself as a Portuguese-Malay indigenous creole will always remain irrevocable and unchanged; beyond that, as a creole ethnic community, we are not bound by or subject to traditional or mainstream notions of race and ethnicity, where in addition to many non-Kristang spouses assimilating into Kristang and eventually becoming perceived and accepted as Kristang, we have often looked for and concretised humanising and liberating ways of making space for others rejected by society, including people of mixed-race or uncertain origin, orphans, queer people, neurodivergent people, people escaping from abusive families or places of origin or governments, people born from socially undesirable or psychologically horrifying situations, and generally people who are treated as outcasts or undesirables by the rest of the planet. In ourselves, as a highly egalitarian creole and Indigenous ethnic community, we continue to be rejected, marginalised and ignored by many institutions and agencies, as well as our own governments, and so have in many ways taken it upon ourselves to become the eleidi or collective for others that we ourselves were never allowed to be part of, based on our shared core values; because we are creole, everything that the people assimilating into Kristang bring with themselves — their own ethnic backgrounds, histories, stories, songs, art and ways of being — also then becomes something that we creolise from as a way of honouring their decision to be part of our world and our eleidi in such a deep way.
Home of the Kristang revitalisation initiative and leadership of the Kristang community