Adat in Central Sulawesi Setyoko, I
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336 Arianto Sangqji Schrauwers, A. (2000) Colonial 'Reformation' in tlte Highlands of Central Sulmvesi. Indonesia, 1892- 1995, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 15 Adat in Central Sulawesi Setyoko, I. (1998) 'Upaya pemerintah Indonesia dalam pembangunan masyarakat terasing', paper presented at a UNDP/UNESCO seminar on masyarakat adat, Contemporary deployments1 Jakarta, 6 August. \ Sulawesi Tengalt dalam angka 1998 (1999), Palu: BPS Propinsi Sulawesi Tengah/ \ Bappeda Propinsi Sulawesi Tengah. I '\ Tania M Li Weber, R., Faust, H., and Kreisel, W. (2002) 'Colonial interventions on cultural landscape of Central Su1awesi by "Ethical Policy": impacts of the Dutch rule in .1 Palu and Kulawi valley 1905-1942', Bogor: STORMA (Stability of Rain Forest 1 •I Margins) Project, discussion paper. 1 The term adat (custom) is used frequently in Central Sulawesi. It has multiple meanings, and is picked up and instrttmentalized for a variety of purposes. Although various authorities believe they know what adat is or should be, the polyvalence of the term makes it difficult to control. To invoke adat is to claim purity and authenticity for one's cause. Adat is deemed to be naturally present in, indeed the essence of, Indonesian society. It also, paradoxically, defines an arena of intervention: adat is represented as fragile, deficient or in decline, in need of protection, strengthening and restoration. It shares these characteristics with the concept of community, imagined as a natural state that nevertheless requires intervention at1d correction in order to make it complete. These features of the term adat render it deployable for a wide range of political projects. On one end of the spectrum are attempts to institute orderly rule through adat. The adat invoked in the service of rule is conceptualized as hierarchical but still democratic, because it emerges from the people; it is disciplinarian but ! ~ promotes harmony. On the other end of the spectrum are attempts to 1 challenge state authority in the name of popular rights and capacities for self-government and social justice. Central to the oppositional agenda is the reclaiming of customary rights to land appropl"iated by the colonial regime and its successors. As 1 will show, one agenda for adat promotion and restoration can slide into or indeed be reversed by another, using key terms such as sovereignty, autonomy, and responsibility to different effect. My goal in this chapter is to provide an inventory or map of some con temporary deployments of the term adat that I have observed in Central Sulawesi over the past five years. I outline the contexts in which they have arisen and the projects they set·ve, a11d explore the stakes implied by the idiom of adat for different parties. Three features of Central Sulawesi render it especially interesting for an investigatioll of this kind. First, as Sangaji explains in this volume (Chapter 14), social and cultural formations in Central Sulawesi have been shaped by histories of migration; long-stattding littks to markets and state or chiefly regimes, and the influence of world religions. As a result, the issue of which social groups qualify as customary I communities, and the nature and extent of their customary rights, is a 338 Tania M. Li Adat in Central Sulawesi 339 matter of contention and debate. The vicissitudes of the adal: concept in this land rights would take the form of grants of state land, rather than recogni province serve to highlight dilemmas in the adat rights movement that are tion of pre-existing customary rights. However the governor has not pro not unique to Central Sulawesi, but arise there in especially concentrated vided any supporting evidence or arguments for the claim that there is forms.2 Second, Central Sulawesi is a province in which the discourse of no ad at land, and AM AS UTA has been calling for the ruling to be revoked. adat serves as an effective means of rallying and organizing political action. As Sangaji points out, there is lots of documentation about the existence of For this reason, it cannot be ignored or dismissed as esoteric, antiquarian, local, customary tenure regimes all over the province but little or none or reactionary, or critiqued with a view to replacing it with an alternative about the purported sovereignty of the rajas over territory and natural such as the idiom of class. For better or worse, the discourse of adat is a resources (Sangaji 2003: 18). AMASUTA is atguing for a provincial regulation political force. Finally, Central Sulawesi has been the site of violent conflict (Perda) on the existence of customary commuhities, and hopes to take the \ initiative in defining criteria for recognition. But AMASUTA, as Tonittgki since 1998, focused in the city of Poso and its environs, but extending to the I ., (2003) laments, is equally unclear about who should be recognized as adat city of Palu and to rural areas such as Morawali. Although often presented I in· media accounts as a struggle between Muslims and Christians, the rela communities. tionship between identity and territory, or the right of one group to rule by One solution to the problem of legal t"ecognition is to proceed on a virtue of its historic attachments to a place, a right understood as customary spatialized basis by mapping customary territories. AMASUT A has made or adat-based is centrally at issue. By tracking diveJ·se deployments of adat such mappihg part of its work plan (AMASUTA 2003). At a seminar I hope to shed some light on why the concept has become relevant or sponsored by AMASUTA in 2000 in conttection with its first congress, compelling for different groups in Central Sulawesi at the current time. representatives of the National Land Agency urged AMASUTA to proceed .' with mapping customal"y lands as soon as possible, so that BPN would ·' know the extent of customary claims and could avoid allocating the same Adat in formal national law land to plahtations or other ventures (AMASUT A 2000: I 03) . BPN officials The term adat appears in an impressive number of national laws and were quite prepared to accept the existence of customary communities regulations from the 1960s onwards. Although the New Order regime was - they just wanted to know who and where they are.3 The same request accused of trampling customary rights through its Forest Law of 1967 1 was echoed by representatives from other government departments at the clauses of that law and numerous other legal instruments of the New Order seminar. Mapping, however, is unlikely to solve the problem. period continued to refer to adat communities and adat rights (Sirait et al. Following its first congress, in 2001 AMASUTA held an executive meet 2000). As Sangaji notes in this volume, adat rights were recently confirmed ing to prepare a detailed wotk plan. I attended this meeting as an observer. in a constitutional amendment, and in a parliamentary declaration (TAP During discussions of mapping, most participants argued that they already MPR IX, 2001) on Agrarian Reform and Natural Resource Management. had maps- their desa (village) maps. They saw little point in trying to devise Yet reference to adat in formal national law does not circumscribe or even a separate map covering their wilayaft adat or customary domain. The few clarify the question of who and where and what are adat communities. who advocated the mapping of wilayah adat had made maps in co Rather, national law supplies a problematic to which people in Central operation with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the context of Sulawesi concerned to assert adat rights have to respond. If laws state that particular struggles, notably the struggle to recover access to ancestral land adat communities are to be recognized so long as they exist, the critical enclosed by the Lore Lindu National Park, a process described by Sangaji question is how and by whom that existence is determined. For Ronny (this volume, Chapter 14). These maps document the presence of human Toningki (2003: 1), elected head of Central Sulawesi's adat rights organiza agency in the creation of the 'nature' protected by the park, and advance tion AMASUTA, the questions of who and what and where exactly need the customary claim that investments of labour confer enduring rights. to be answered concretely, by criteria and definitions that can be made Mapping of this kind is particularly relevant on land claimed by the state to operational. Otherwise, he argues, adat rights will continue to exist only be state forest, especially where there are relatively isolated hamlets located on paper. There is a great deal at stake in definitions and in the processes far from the centre of the desa. In many cases, however, desa maps or through which criteria are established. counter-maps could serve equally well to reassert the claims of local forest In Central Sulawesi, the governor of the province announced in 1993 users against the state. In a study of forest viiJages in Java, Hery Santoso that there was no adat land in Central Sulawesi, because all the land in (2004) found that forest department maps showed extensive areas of state the province is classified as be/cas swapraja, royal domain passing to the forest land marked by small, scattered dots representing human settlement. national government at independence. He was supporting a 1992 ruling by Very little land was attached to these dots. The maps create the impression the National Land Agency (BPN) that procedures for formalizing individual that villages are merely clusters of dwellings accommodated precariously f 340 Tania M. Li Adat in Central Sulawesi 341 and awkwardly on state forest land. The administrative system, by conttast, lands would help to identify blocks of land free from ad at claims that can be constructs the entire territory of Indonesia as a grid of provinces; districts, allocated to other users will not be realized in cases where adat claims sub-districtR and desa.