The Land is my Mother, the Sky my Father

Features - February 17, 2006

Ruslan Sangadji, The Jakarta Post, Palu, C. Sulawesi

There is a vast forest rich in a great variety of natural resources such as ebony (Dyosphiros celebica) and other types of wood, as well as various kinds of flora, including medicinal plants.

At the center of this forest area -- which is endowed with many species of fauna, including the indigenous dwarf buffalo locally called anoa and lies between 400 and 1,600 meters above sea level -- you can find stilt houses, locally called sau-sabua, in a naturally laid out row like that in an urban settlement area.

Naked children play freely, chasing one another at the foot of the stilts and in the yards of the houses, which lie at an inclination of 60 to 80 degrees.

They are free in nature, playing their wooden boat-shaped plucked zithers and their bamboo flutes, the melodious notes from their musical instruments merging with the sound of the breeze.

Unlike urban kids who are always restless about their future, these kids, who never bother going to school, are free from any concern about their future.

In the distance, on a mountain slope, farmers are busy taking care of their farming land. As inheritors of these traditionally bequeathed plots of lands, they take the land to be their own mother: Tana Indoku, Ummaku Langi (The Land is My Mother, the Sky My Father).

This is Kamalisi, a rural forest area where the Da'a, Inde and Unde people, three sub-ethnic groups of the Kaili, the indigenous people of Palu, Central Sulawesi, live. Wandering from one place to another as nomadic farmers, they live within the boundaries of well-organized traditional plots of land with their own ways of land management.

The plots of land they control are named after natural, social, political or cultural events to ensure that the later generation will always be reminded of these events. This method of naming of these plots of land also serves as evidence of these people's struggle to maintain the property of their traditional community.

These plots of land are passed on to the present generation communally and they are not meant to be controlled individually. Privilege is unknown in this community. Social relations, tradition and hierarchy regulate the prevailing communal rights to ensure that in their social lives everybody is equal.

A plot of land is associated with control and also with the culture that has shaped association regarding the symbols that demonstrate the strength of collective economic resilience.

Therefore the people living on Gawalise mountain range have long considered their land and its natural resources as not only economic assets and commodities but also as communal property for the well-being of their community members, on the basis of the principle that living creatures in a particular area enjoy the same right to live and that they need and protect one another.

"Our principle is that every living creature in a traditional area enjoys an equal right to live as natural resources, locally called katuvua, to ensure human survival. Likewise, human beings must also take good care of natural resources because man and nature are in fact complementary," said Yuji, a local customary elder.

"Unfortunately, their natural resources and plots of land can no longer be called their traditional land following the appearance of businessmen, who, with the blessing of the government, claim their land as state-owned property that must be exploited. As a result, the buzz of chainsaws in operation echoes in this mountainous area. "They have taken our wood and we can no longer hunt animals like boars, anoa, deer and birds," Yuji added.

Their age-old customary convention that a customary sanction, called givu, will be imposed on whomever arbitrarily takes wood in a way that will damage nature, is no longer effective in the face of power and money.

Their givu requires that the name of anybody violating this traditional convention be announced before the public and that the customary elders appointed by the community should decide in Bantaya, a place for customary gathering, what sanction should be imposed on the violator.

"A customary convention is like a clasp of the hand. This convention is not strict. However, once it is enforced, nobody is free from it," said Endi, an activist of Kamalisi Customary Community.

Harley, a non-government organization activist in Palu, said that the lives of the customary community living along the Kamalisi mountain range are not a romantic tale. Stories about their experiences, their environment and the sources of their livelihood are true stories. "They are a social picture illustrating how the oppressor class treats the oppressed," he noted.

For those who live in the Palu Valley, Kamalisi is known as Gawalise, a name originating from the Dutch colonial times. Nobody knows clearly the reason for this change in name, though.

Kamalisi is the highest mountain in Marawola district, Donggala regency, Central Sulawesi, to the west of the town of Palu. The people living along the Kamalisi mountain range and plains believe their ancestors used to live in Kamalisi.

The peak of Kamalisi is locally known as Ulu Jadi or Ulunggatoka Pinandu, and is believed to be the origin of the traditional community dwelling in Kamalisi area.

The traditional peoples of Da'a, Inde and Unde, and the tribes living along the Kamalisi mountain range, believe they came from a very old place at the peak of Kamalisi (Ulu Jadi or Ulungatoka Pinandu.) Their famous saying is "Pinandu tananilemo ngari tanah Pinandu" (created from earth, a lump of earth that gives life and gives livelihood to every creature living along the mountain range area.)

That's why groups living on the Kamalisi mountain range area believe that man and natural resources depend on each other and that equal position and right have been bestowed on each. Man and natural resources must take care of each other. Therefore, no living creatures must make other living creatures their objects.***