Suraya Afiff and Noer Fauzi Rachman (2019) “Institutional Activism: Seeking Customary Forest Rights Recognition from within the Indonesian State”, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 20(5):453-470. https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2019.1670245
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Abstract
This article aims to explain why the adat movement activists in Indonesia could expand their campaigns for state recognition of adat community rights to activities from within the state apparatus. We argue that three combined processes have contributed to the conjuncture that made institutional activism possible: the preparation of the 2014 national election offered activists opportunities to influence the government agenda; the emergence of a conscious strategy for conducting institutional activism; and the coalitions between some key state officials and the movement’s actors. This article also analyses the problems that institutional activists faced, in particular resistance from influential actors at various government units who were not sympathetic to the adat movement’s agenda. Therefore, the impact of this activism on policy changes so far remains limited. The authors’ personal involvement in this case of institutional activism to promote customary forest provided access to the information for this article.
Keywords: Customary Forest; Masyarakat Adat; Institutional Activists; State–Movements Interaction; Indigenous Land Rights
Introduction
On 30 December 2016, a special ceremony was held at the national palace, where President Joko Widodo (popularly known as Jokowi) honoured nine indigenous com-munities with a ministerial decree legalising their claims over customary forests, or hutan adat (Table 1).1 We were among about one hundred people from different organisations who also attended the ceremony that day. The total area of the custom-ary forests that received government recognition was actually quite small, about 13,000 hectares for approximately 5,700 individuals.2 However, despite this fact, the indigen-ous peoples’ activists and their allies who attended the ceremony felt overwhelmingly enthusiastic and with high expectations that from now on, more indigenous commu-nities would be granted customary land rights. From these activists’ points of view, the ceremony symbolised a campaign success by obtaining government recognition of indigenous peoples’ customary claims.
