Fields of the Lord: Animism, Christian Minorities, and State Development in Indonesia

2. Highland Places and Peoples

��� 2 ��� Highland Places and Peoples D utch colonial administrators began their work in Central Sulawesi by formally identifying what they considered distinct languages and ethnic groups. The Tobaku and their eastern neighbors speak a language that linguists categorized as “Uma,” after the local word for “no.” Like all Central Sulawesi highlanders , the Tobaku also were placed into the generic ethnic category of “Toraja.” The panoply of highlanders’ ethnolinguistic labels and divergent “autonyms” indicates their ambiguous political status, their long-term evasion of state supervision, and the imperfect population group classifications that all state and mission administrations require. To call the Tobaku “Uma people” borrows an eccentric colonial linguistic category that classified all groups in Sulawesi after their word for “no.” To call them “Toraja” borrows a vastly overgeneralizing colonial category for little-known interior peoples. To call them “Pipikoro” borrows a synecdoche of recent missionary linguists. To call them “Kulawi” reifies a feature of the colonial and postcolonial bureaucratic hierarchy. To call them “Tobaku,” as I do, acknowledges these peoples’ own name for themselves, although it reveals fewer of their ties to neighboring groups. Central Sulawesi highlanders name themselves after their dwelling places, usually in reference to rivers, mountains, or trees. Tobaku elders say their autonym, “people of Tobaku” (to Tobaku), refers to the waters of a small Lariang tributary near Siwongi, one of the earliest heartland villages. The Lariang River, which runs broad 47 and muddy in the western lowlands, spouts from myriad sparkling sources in the upland domains of the Tobaku and other Uma-speaking peoples. The Uma word for the Lariang, koro, also means “river,” it being the only waterway in their homeland. A name used by some for the Uma homelands is pipikoro, “the banks of the river,” and eastern Uma-speaking people simply call themselves to Pipikoro, “people of the river banks.” Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) linguists who worked in the eastern area near Kantewu use the term “Pipikoro” to designate all Uma speakers and their language (Barr, Barr, and Salombe 1979). Tobaku people in the western areas, however, use the term only to define the eastern populations near Kantewu and Peana villages. Like many peoples of the Indonesian archipelago, including state-level polities such as the Balinese (Lansing 1991, 56), Uma peoples consider the higher waters and mountains—where they happen to live—purer and more sacred than the lower waters and lands below. Indeed, community wastes do float downstream, and everyone knows that the cleanest drinking water is collected upstream from the village. The consort to Tobaku people’s experiential involvement with the river is the mountains, which range from 1,000 to over 2,000 meters in their homeland. “It is this way with us mountain people” is a phrase that Tobaku people often use to explain a custom or excuse their modest material circumstances. Their dual identity as both “mountain people ” (to bulu’, Uma; orang gunung, Ind.) and “owners of the area” (pue’ ngata, Uma) or “original people” (orang asli, Ind.) is a verbal means by which the Tobaku and other highlanders distinguish themselves geographically and ethnically from their two kinds of lowland Muslim neighbors, Kaili and South Sulawesi immigrants. Dutch and Indonesian governments seeking control throughout the twentieth century have pressured highlanders to reside permanently at lower elevations along the major footpaths. Nevertheless, many communities continue to move up and down through the forests along the Lariang tributaries in search of game, forest products, and 48 ��� chapter two the swidden garden lands upon which their subsistence depends. This type of local or “internal travel” in which the whole community participates can be differentiated from the “external travel” to regional centers such as Kulawi and Palu, which is conducted mainly by male traders, community leaders, and the occasional visiting outsider. As Tsing (1993) has noted, the ability to travel widely or control settlement mobility can differentiate men from women, leaders from followers , and government officials from rural citizens. The context for these politically contingent conditions of mobility is created or at least exacerbated by the geographical extremes found on the island of Sulawesi. Environmental niches in Central Sulawesi vary greatly between the coastal shelves and the interior mountain ranges. The narrow strips of coastline are generally flat, hot (frequently reaching 35°C), and extremely dry. The Palu Valley in particular is the driest region in all of Indonesia, with only 40–80 centimeters (15–30 inches) of rainfall...