Author takes advantage of fact to work of fiction

Author takes advantage of fact to work of fiction

Lie Hua, Contributor, Jakarta

Indonesian Gold; By Kerry B. Collison; Sid Harta Publishers;
Hartwell, Victoria, Australia, 2002; 626 pp.

By far its closest neighbor, Australia, in reality, is quite far
from Indonesia in virtually every respect. For Indonesians,
Australia is just like a country somewhere in Europe or in the
U.S., although it is just somewhere down under.

Understandably, Australian literature is not as familiar to
Indonesian readers as European or American. Although in politics
Australia often makes headlines in Indonesian newspapers,
articles about Australian literature -- let alone Indonesian
translations of Australian literary works -- rarely make it to
the Indonesian mass media. Consequently, the names of Australian
writers are virtually alien to the Indonesian literary public.

It is against this backdrop that Indonesian Gold assumes its
significance in the relationship of Indonesia and Australia in
general. A novel based on facts that are very familiar to
Indonesians, Indonesian Gold makes good reading from the first
page to the last because the writer weaves an intricate plot,
gluing the reader to his seat for the entire story.

A literary story is always based on facts. Literary critics
have debated the difference between a news story and a story. In
a news story, the journalist reports an event as it is. Of
course, the journalist has its own viewpoint of the incident and
perhaps other journalists will report the same event from a
different viewpoint or perspective.

The impact on readers is whether they will or will not favor
or side with a particular event reported as a news story. This
bias is natural as it is related to the ideology of the medium
publishing it.

A writer may see the same event but not report it to readers
as naked reality. He will dress this reality so that it will
appear as something that he would like his readers to see. In
this context, it is his wishes that will decide how the reality
will look to the readers. These wishes are the message that the
writer would like to get across to the readers. So both news
stories and stories can be interesting but they serve different
purposes.

If you read Indonesian Gold, you will find a lot of events
that resemble the reality in Indonesia's business and political
arenas. Names like Tommy Eluay or General Praboyo of the Army's
elite force must ring a bell to Indonesian readers.

Gold prospecting in Kalimantan may remind you of the Busang
gold scam by Canadian BRE-X minerals company. It made headlines
all over the world but turned out later to be merely a scam.
There was no gold. BRE-X went bankrupt and this scam claimed at
least one life, that of a Filipino geologist.

Collison has based his story on the Busang fraud. There you
have an intricate story involving international high-class
politicking and business games. In the story Canadian and
Filipino mining companies and their chief officers are involved
in business intrigues, vying for much-vaunted new deposits in
Kalimantan.

However, Collison does not just tell us how the characters in
this novel are involved in international high-class business
games. More importantly, he captures in this novel the plight of
the indigenous Dayak people, whose land has been encroached upon
by the presence of both Indonesians and foreigners prospecting
for gold. More than that, Collison also describes how Soeharto's
New Order marginalized the Dayak people with its transmigration
project.

The book also shows how the First Family, in an attempt to
control areas rich in mineral deposits, deployed the Army to
control the Dayaks' land.

Collison chooses to focus on the Penehing Dayak tribe in this
novel. Jonathan Dau, the chief, used to be a pilot in the
Indonesian air force. Later, he retired and led his people. He
has an only child, Angela, a graduate of the Bandung Institute of
Technology.

However, as the story develops, Angela, seeing the
marginalization of her people by the Javanese transmigrants and
also by the presence of Army troops, decides to lead her people
after the death of her father. Jonathan is shot when protecting
his daughter, who was intended to be shot at close range by an
officer of the Army's special elite force.

There are touching moments in the novel when the writer shifts
his attention to the suffering of the Dayaks in their attempt to
defend their ancestral land. The greed of the Indonesian rulers
and the avarice of the foreign mining concessionaires have forced
the Dayak people deeper into the jungle, which later leads to
outbreaks of communal violence with outsiders.

The gold business aspect of the story is nothing unusual, just
like any other story that portrays the dirty tricks and rivalry
in business, but the novel becomes more compelling because the
writer intentionally raises the issue of the plight of the Dayak
people.

Facts have been turned to advantage in this novel. The
advantage is that it serves as a mirror for us to reflect upon
part of our history during the dark days when the New Order ruled
ruthlessly.