Tribal people must plan own future: Senior official

JAKARTA (JP): Tribal peoples in Indonesia must play an active role in planning their own future, while the role of outsiders is merely to provide them with various options, a senior official of the Ministry of Education and Culture said yesterday.

"Outsiders should only provide them with the necessary knowledge and technology, supplying a wide range of choices from which the tribal peoples can choose," Director General of Cultural Affairs Edi Sedyawati said. "The people must always be given the opportunity to choose," Edi stressed.

Edi, an archeologist by training, was addressing a meeting on indigenous peoples which focused on the Suku Anak Dalam tribe.

The Anak Dalam live in three regencies in the Jambi province of Sumatra: Batang Hari, Sarolangun Bangko and Bungo Tebo.

For years the government has tried to integrate the Anak Dalam people into the modern world.

Ignatius Setyoko, the Director General of Social Welfare Promotion of the Ministry of Social Services, said that, of the 25.9 million people in Indonesia who live below the poverty line, 1.2 million belong to isolated tribes.

Officials and non-government researchers have pointed out that the existence of the Anak Dalam, who live in the forest and depend on the forest for their livelihood, is now being threatened as forest concessionaires encroach on their traditional land.

Setyoko said yesterday that isolated communities in Jambi number 1,814 families or 7,623 people.

The government has been encouraging these families to settle in one place as forested land disappears. This has proven difficult because, by custom, these people move from one place to another within the forest.

Responding to difficulties in "integrating" communities which are considered backward, Edi said that not all aspects of traditional cultures need to be changed.

"For instance, the Javanese no longer believe in the divinity of their kings, but they still adhere to certain rituals," she said.

Edi was discussing two reports from government bodies on the Anak Dalam, one from the Jambi office of the Provincial Development Planning Board, and another from the Jambi office of the Ministry of Social Affairs.

She stressed that any move towards change should come from the tribal communities themselves.

"If modernization must involve the Anak Dalam, the best and most durable (form) would be if the desire to change came from them," she said, adding that sensitive and patient facilitators must support such wishes on the part of tribal peoples.

Edi cautioned against efforts to use indigenous peoples as tourist attractions. "We must be very careful...Preserving a people as a backward community and displaying them as an attraction is degrading to human dignity," Edi told The Jakarta Post.

A few non-government organizations also participated in the meeting. R. Yando Zakaria and Djaka Soehendera of the Institute for Social and Cultural Analysis said there was a need to recognize customary laws.

"All folk laws should be elevated in status to become national laws, even though they apply in certain social systems only," the researchers argued. This would guarantee that customary rights would not be forced to succumb to new national laws, they said. (anr)