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  • Adat and Indigeneity in Indonesia: Culture and Entitlements between Heteronomy and Self-Ascription ed. by Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin
  • Adam Tyson (bio)
Adat and Indigeneity in Indonesia: Culture and Entitlements between Heteronomy and Self-Ascription. Edited by Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2013. 240 pp.

Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin has contributed to academic debates about indigenous Balinese traditions and rituals for the last two decades. Her latest edited volume targets a wider readership than fellow [End Page 769] specialists on Bali by emphasizing the comparative scope and value of the study of indigeneity. Indonesia’s political transition in 1998 created new opportunities and battlegrounds for indigenous peoples to “recapture what they have lost: dignity, recognition, rights, and possessions, namely land” (p. 7).

The Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara, AMAN) is on the front lines of the battle for rights and recognition, claiming to represent thousands of disenfranchised communities throughout the country. In May 2013, Indonesia’s constitutional court ruled on the 1999 Forestry Act to allow, in principle, millions of hectares of forest land to be reclassified as indigenous or adat land. Concession-holders, including agribusiness concerns and extractive companies, will be required to engage in direct negotiations with indigenous communities. While the impact of the court decision and the practicalities of implementation are “difficult to anticipate” (p. 8), Hauser-Schäublin’s well-organized book provides the analytical tools to investigate this landmark court decision. This usefulness notwithstanding, much of the empirical evidence presented by the book’s twelve contributors reinforces what is already known about the adat movement, raising some concerns about originality.

Chapters Two and Three review the status of indigenous peoples in international law, with reference to International Labour Organization conventions and United Nations declarations. The right to self-determination remains a thorny issue, as it requires “parallel sovereignty within the state’s territory” (p. 25). While the authors of those chapters, Katja Göcke and Maria V.C. Ormaza, provide convincing accounts of state anxieties surrounding parallel sovereignty, they do not give sufficient consideration to the capacity of “sovereign” indigenous communities to self-govern, self-regulate, or manage natural resources endowments effectively.

Chapter Four is written by Indonesian activists with direct involvement in land disputes. Their account of the repressive tactics used against adat communities by pulp and paper companies and mobile police brigades in West Nusa Tenggara and Sumatra ring [End Page 770] quite true and remind me of cases I observed in Sulawesi. The use of aggregative data (pp. 44–45) is problematic, however, as the reader is left with an uneven account of land disputes. Yance Arizona and Erasmus Cahyadi spend most of their chapter reviewing a proposed bill for the recognition and protection of adat communities, known as RUU Pengakuan dan Perlindungan Hak Masyarakat Hukum Adat, or RUU PPHMHA. The authors discuss the gradual development of the bill and document the successes and setbacks experienced by lobbyists and mediators. My critique of this approach, published elsewhere (Tyson 2011), is that lengthy courtroom proceedings, negotiations and legislative processes such as RUU PPHMHA often serve to preoccupy NGO leaders and divert attention and resources from the real political battleground — the villages and communities that border plantation and mining concessions.

In Chapter Five, Stefanie Steinbach critically reflects upon the ways in which “indigeneity is strategically performed” (p. 64). This performance is a complex expression of power and resistance against plantation companies. It features a diverse cast of local, national and global actors with an interest in indigenous rights and environmental conservation. The case of the activist group called SAD 113 is examined in detail by Steinbach, revealing links to political parties (in this case, the Partai Rakyat Demokratik) and national unions (in this case, the Serikat Tani Nasional or National Peasants Union), which are jointly demanding the release of approximately 3,800 hectares of land by the palm oil company PT Asiatic Persada. Steinbach acutely observes that common political goals are eclipsing cultural differences in Jambi, Sumatra, although she could have written more about the cultural incongruities that still exist in many parts of Indonesia. These incongruities challenge the notion of a...

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