Noer Fauzi Rachman
A talk at Inter Asia Cultural Studies Conference 2017 - Plenary Session 02 : “Social and Political Movement: Inter-Asian Legacy”, 28-30 July 2021. https://iacs2017.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/plenary-sessions-28-30-july/
”Indeed, some ‘custom’ were new of recent invention, and were in truth claims of new ‘rights’ …
Custom was the rhetoric of legitimation for almost any usage, practice, or demanded rights. Hence, uncodified custom – or even codifies – was in continual flux ...
So, far from having the steady permanence suggested by the word “tradition”, custom was a field of change and of contest, an arena in which opposing interests made conflicting claims.”
(E.P Thompson, 1993:6)
December 30 of 2016 was an important day for activists and communities who work for the policy change in regards to the rights of the indigenous peoples in Indonesia. This was the day when a special ceremony was held at the national presidential palace in which President Joko Widodo was honor nine groups of masyarakat hukum adat (the term used in Indonesia for indigenous peoples) a ministerial decree that recognized their claimed customary forest (hutan adat). Despite the total area of these customary forests that had received government recognition was still quite small, it was only about 13,000 hectare for 5,700 individuals, these activists still perceived this ceremony was an important symbolic event that showed the shift of government political in regards to the indigenous peoples rights to control their customary forest areas.
The major indigenous peoples organization, AMAN (the Alliance of the Indigenous Peoples of Indonesia's Archipelago) has welcome and appreciate the government willingness to grant these recognitions of people’s customary territory. AMAN and their allies had been demanded the follow up government actions after the Constitutional Court Ruling on the case number 35/PUU-X/2012, which was passed at May 16, 2013. This Constitutional Court Ruling had re-established the legal status of masyarakat hukum adat as a right bearing subject, and re-affirmed that customary territory is the property of masyarakat hukum adat. As a result, the Court ruled that customary forest (hutan adat) is no longer part of the state forest zone (kawasan hutan), but part of the forest subject to rights (hutan hak), the policy practice that the Ministry of Environment and Forestry failed to recognize in the past. Due to this ruling, the Indonesian state has an authoritative reference by which the ownership status of customary territory need to be restituted. Therefore, for the indigenous people advocates, the ruling shows a new landmark in Indonesian agrarian politics (Rachman and Siscawati 2016).
After this constitutional court ruling, the activists expected that the government, at that time was under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to begin the process of recognizing the masyarakat adat land rights claimed within the state forest zone. The Ministry of Forestry at that time, Mr. Zulkifli Hasan, failed to take any meaningful action to comply to the court ruling. There was almost no action from the part of the government to revise the Forest Law or move on with the plan for recognizing the customary forest (hutan adat). This was the condition prior to the event took place on December 30, 2016 at the national palace, Jakarta.
This talk will seek to explore the following question: what are the factors that had been contributed to the shift of government policy in regard to the customary forest (hutan adat) that brought the event December 2016? Why this policy change became possible after Joko Widodo was elected as president in the mid of 2014? What are the role of civil society activists in this policy change process?
In telling this story, we were inspired by Tania Li’s paper about the practice of assemblage (Li 2007), which draws the concept from Foucault (1977:194). The concept of assemblage is helpful for us to understand various elements that have contributed to the endurance support for a possibility of the customary forest intervention is articulated. As Tania Li applies the concept to Community Based Forest Management, we also perceive the customary forest (hutan adat) “is the assemblage that has emerged in the space of struggle between villagers and forest bureaucracies on the forest edge” (Li 2007: 5). Perceived it as assemblage, according to Li (2007:2) “flags agency, the hard work required to draw heterogeneous elements together, forge connections between them and sustain these connections in the face of tension”. We also aims to show the importance role of multiple parties involved in the process to assemble “heterogeneous elements – discourses, institutions, laws, administrative measures, scientific knowledge, moral prescriptions, material interests...” (Li 2007: 26). Then, our focus should be in exploring how these heterogeneous elements are assembled by actors who support the government policy change for customary forest.
As Tania Li, in her paper, shows that important role of the multiple parties involved in the assemblage community forestry, in this paper, we explore the role of multiple actors -- activists who worked inside and outside the state, the reformist in the bureaucrats, and including scholars and donor institutions from various national backgrounds. Moreover, part of these heterogeneous elements are the discourse about masyarakat adat and their role in the forest management, the emerging of the concept of collective rights in the human rights movement, the discourse of climate change that behind the continuation of donor interest to support funding for indigenous people organizations, and the role of laws and regulations such as Forestry Law and the Constitutional Court ruling. Since significant policy change often possible at the time of changing of government regime, we also explain why the national election in 2014 is key factor in our analysis in explaining the government shift in political practice related to customary forest. The time frame in which we use to analyze these elements that form the assemblage of customary forest takes place around twenty years.
We need to start with the moment when the politics of indigeneity in Indonesia, i,e, the establishement of Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN/Indigenous Peoples' Alliance of the Archipelago) in 1999. AMAN provides a unified national movement platform for the localized and sporadic struggles of Adat communities against the systemic land dispossession. AMAN used the term masyarakat adat as the translation for the term of indigenous peoples as defined by the UN Declaration on the Right of Indigenous Peoples. Then, this is an important and interesting case to study. Fascinating works of some critical scholars need to be mentioned here, among other: Li (2000, 2001, 2010), Afiff and Lowe (2007), Acciaioli (2007), Moniaga (2007), Tsing (2007, 2010), Davidson and Henley (2007), Bedner and Huis (2008), and Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin (2013).
The analysis may be divided into two time frame, i.e. before and after the Constitutional Court Ruling in 2012. The discussion before the court ruling in 2012 will be focused on the emergence of AMAN in 1998 and the support of scholars and activists including donor agencies in the endurance of advocacy in regard to the rights of masyarakat adat to control their customary territory. This coalition had been tried to insert their idea for the recognition of the customary territory during the process of revision of the previous Forest Law of 1967 into the Forest Law no 41/1999. However, the government foresters continued to block the idea to support the legal recognition to masyarakat adat and their customary territory. Then, in 2012 AMAN decided to go to the Constitutional Court for judicial review. Here we also emphasis of the importance of the discourse of indigenous peoples as a sustainable forest manager and the emerging of concept of collective rights in the UN universal concept of human rights.
The key important achievement of AMAN is the Constitutional Court Ruling of the Case Number 35/PUU-X/2012. It started when in 2012, AMAN submitted to the Constitutional Court a judicial review against some articles in the Forestry Law 41/1999 that stated masyarakat adat customary forest was part of the state forest zone. As a result of this forest regulation, masyarakat adat has no rights to control their own customary territories. AMAN argues that statement in the forest law is against the Indonesian constitution that recognize masyarakat adat customary rights over their customary territories. It turned out, the Constitutional Court judges accept AMAN argument and instructed the government to acknowledge the rights of masyarakat adat. The constitutional court had ruled that these customary forest (hutan adat) was part of private ownership of the masyarakat adat, therefore should be not part of the state forest zone. This is a counter-hegemonic legal maneuvering, the term used by Rachman and Marsalam (2017), which succeeded to produce an important ruling that the people customary forest should not be part of the state owned forest.
In the section that discuss the work of actors in the time after the court ruling in 2012, it is crucial to recognize of the role of the Indonesian Human Right Commission (Komnas HAM) in organizing the National Inquiry on the Right of Indigenous Peoples on their Territories in the Forest Zones. We describe how does the political change after the national election in 2014, have shaped in the big way the activists strategy to push the agenda. We begin our description with the role of some activists in the process of inserting agendas to recognize the rights of masyarakat adat within the official document “Joko Widodo-Jusuf Kalla Vision, Missions and Action Program” (Jakarta, May 2014) and connecting Joko Widodo, the Presidential Candidate, to AMAN leaders. After Jokowi, the popular nickname for president Joko Widodo, was elected, activists strategies have change in the big way. Some activists decided to work from inside the government to influence the policy. Then they worked with a number of reformists inside the government who are supporting president Jokowi’s agenda.
Bibliography
Bakker, Laurens and Sandra Moniaga. 2010. “The Space Between: Land Claims and the Law in Indonesia” Asian Journal of Social Science 38 (2010) 187–203.
Benda-Beckmann, Franz von, and Keebet von Benda Beckmann. 2011. “Myths and Stereotypes about Adat Law A Reassessment of Van Vollenhoven in the Light of Current Struggles over Adat Law in Indonesia”. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. Vol. 167(2-3):167-195.
Burn, Peter L. 1989 ‘The Myth of Adat’, Journal of Legal Pluralism 28:1-127.
_____. 2004. The Leiden Legacy: Concepts of Law in Indonesia. Leiden: KITLV Press.
_____. 2007 ‘Custom, That is Before All Law’, in: Jamie S. Davidson and David Henley (eds), The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics: The Deployment of Adat from Colonialism to Indigenism, pp. 68-86. London/New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
Colchester, Marcus., Sirait, Martua. & Wijardjo, Budhi. 2003. The Application of FSC Principles 2 & 3 inIndonesia: Abstacles and Possibilities. Jakarta, WALHI and AMAN
Dove, Michael R. 2006. “Indigenous People and Environmental Politics”. Annual Review of Anthropology 35:191-208.
Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta (edt), Adat and Indigeneity in Indonesia: Culture and Entitlements between Heteronomy and Self-Ascription. Göttingen Studies in Cultural Property, Volume 7.
Henley, David and Jamie S. Davidson 2007 ‘Introduction: Radical Conservatism – the Politics of Adat’, in: Jamie S. Davidson and David Henley (eds), The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics: The Deployment of Adat from Colonialism to Indigenism, pp. 1-49. London/ New York: Routledge Curzon.
Li, Tania. 2000. “Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42(1): 149–79.
_____ 2001. “Masyarakat Adat, Difference, and the Limits of Recognition in Indonesia’s Forest Zone”, Modern Asian Studies, 35(3): 645–76.
2010. “Indigeneity, Capitalism, and the Management of Dispossession”, Current Anthropology, 51(3): 385–414.
Moniaga, Sandra. 1993. "Toward Community-Based Forestry and Recognition of Adat Property Rights in the Outer Islands of Indonesia," Pp. 131-150 in Fox, J. ed (ed.): Legal Frameworks for Forest Management in Asia: Case Studies of Community/State Relations. Honolulu: East-West Center.
_____ 2007 ‘From Bumiputera to Masyarakat Adat: A Long and Confusing Journey’, in: Jamie S. Davidson and David Henley (eds), The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics: The Deployment of Adat from Colonialism to Indigenism, pp. 275-94. London/New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
Peluso, N. L., and Vandergeest, P. (2001) ‘Genealogies of the Political Forest and Customary Rights in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand’, Journal of Asian Studies, 60(3): 761–812.
Persoon, G. A. (1998) ‘Isolated Groups or Indigenous Peoples: Indonesia and the International Discourse’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 154(2): 281–304.
Peluso, Nancy. L., Suraya Afiff and Noer Fauzi Rachman. 2008.“Claiming the Grounds for
Reform: Agrarian and Environmental Movements in Indonesia. Journal of Agrarian Change, 8(2): 377–407.
Pettinicchio, David. 2012. “Institutional Activism: Reconsidering the Insider/outsider Dichotomy.” Sociology Compass 6 (6): 499–510.
Rachman, Noer Fauzi. 2011. “The Resurgence of Land Reform Policy and Agrarian Movements in Indonesia”. Dissertation. University of California, Berkeley.
Rachman, Noer Fauzi, and Hasriadi Marsalam. 2017. “The Trajectory of Indigeneity Politics against Land Disposession in Indonesia”. Sriwijaya Law Review 1(1):122-142.
Sirait, Martua. 2009. Indigenous Peoples and Oil Palm Plantation Expansionin West Kalimantan. Indonesia, Cordaid, The Hague.
Thompson, E. P. 1993. Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture. New York: New Press.
Tsing, Anna L. 2007. “Indigenous Voice" in Indigenous Experience Today. de la Cadena and Starn (eds). Pp. 33–67.
_____ 2010 “Adat/Indigenous: Indigeneity in Motion” in Words in Motion. A Tsing & C Gluck (eds), Duke University Press, Durham, pp. 40-66.
Tyson, Adam D. 2010. Decentralization and Adat Revivalism in Indonesia: The Politics of Becoming Indigenous. London and New York, NY: Routledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment