| Introduction |
| The psychology of forest man gave way to the psychology of field |
| man, as timber retreated before the axe. In that new way of life, in that removal from the dictates of the wild trees to the safer confines of the cabin and the house, men also put a distance between the savage behaviour necessary for survival by hunting and the milder behaviour possible for agricultural folk who could store food and plan a seasonal diet. (...) culture became more possible at each remove from the wilderness and more critical of that primitive past (Sinclair 1977: 22) |
| . | While the Asian Development Bank is implementing a multi-million |
| dollar project on the island of Siberut to protect its biodiversity and its unique traditional culture, provincial officials are preparing proposals to convert a large part of the island into a palm oil plantation. If these plans will be implemented it will no doubt be necessary to import a substantial workforce. This will most probably mean transmigration which, until now, has not affected the island. |
| These two views and their corresponding plans of action regarding |
| Siberut’s future and the destination of its people and resources, are worlds apart. They represent on the one hand the idea of maintaining a kind a wilderness condition including a traditional people versus the idea of converting ‘unproductive’ forest land to a more profitable form of land use on the other. In the latter view no detailed thoughts are given to the local people. |
| These contradictions cannot simply be related to attitudes of |
| government versus national or international NGOs. They refer largely to contradictions within the government itself. This is also not a new phenomenon. Over the last few decades heated debates have taken place within the bureaucracy itself with, in some cases with a strong support from the international environmental and tribal peoples’ movement. |
| In talking about the government, it is mainly the provincial |
| government of West Sumatra which plays a central role regarding Siberut. As this province is the homeland of the Minangkabau people, and the provincial government is heavily dominated by this ethnic group, it is also the Minangkabau version of centrally issued policies that has become a crucial element in the process of change on Siberut in addition to more locally |
| conceived policies and decisions. |
| In this paper I want to discuss the views of the Minangkabau |
| regarding the natural wilderness and cultural ‘wildness’2 of Siberut both in their official positions as governmental employees as well as in their non- official positions, that is as ordinary members of the dominant ethnic group with regard to Siberut. In peasant views in general as well as in perceptions of governmental officials wilderness and wildness are often closely connected. People living in an undomesticated nature are almost by definition ‘wild’, and uncivilized people. They are supposed to eat wild foods and wild animals; they live in modest huts and their general life style is devoid of any refinement. The forest dwelling people are supposed to live of nature; they consider themselves as subordinate to nature and do not even aim to dominate over it. |
| First of all I will give a brief sketch of the island and of the |
| Mentawaians and then I will discuss the views and involvement of the Minangkabau on Siberut. It will be important to differentiate between between those who have come to Siberut as voluntary migrants and those who have been officially transferred to the island as civil servants.3 Island Siberut is the largest of the Mentawaian Islands at some 80 kilometer off the west coast of Sumatra (see map 1). It is inhabited by about 23,000 Mentawaians and a small number of migrants, predominantly of Minangkabau origin. In relation to its total land mass of about 4,090 km2 the island is sparsely populated. About sixty village settlements are scattered over the island though administratively there are only twenty villages (desa), divided over two subdistricts (kecamatan) (North and South Siberut) within the district (kabupaten) of Padang-Pariaman. |
| Siberut has been an oceanic island for at least 500,000 years and its |
| fauna and flora have evolved in isolation from the dynamic evolutionary events on the Sunda Self. Hills rise steeply, though the highest peak on the island is less than 400 meters. Many rivers dissect through the thick forest. |
| The Mentawaians are traditionally organized in patrilineal groups of |
| approximately 30 to 80 people living in small settlements, called uma, along the banks of the rivers. These groups of people were autonomous political units. There was a high frequency of marriages between uma members living in the valley of a particular river, but political units were never formed at that level. The size and density of the population must have been rather stable for a long period. Hunting, fishing and gathering provided most of the daily food. Sago starch, obtained from the sagopalm (Metroxylon sagu) was and still is the staple. Stands of wild and planted sago occur in the swampy areas and along the banks of the river. There is also some domestication of free roaming pigs and chickens. In addition to these food resources people cultivate root crops, bananas and fruit trees. Annual crops like rice and corn are absent however. |
| The partial division of labour was limited to specific tasks between |
| men and women. Each family was to a large extent economically self sufficient but friends and relatives were always willing to assist in the construction of a house, a dug-out, or for clearing the forest for fruit trees. The only specialist in the villages was the medicine man, the kerei, responsible for communication with the spirits and souls, which play a very important role in the traditional animistic religion of the Mentawaians. Differences in wealth were limited and related to differences in ability and diligence. The Mentawaians never created substantial economic differences because of the generally accepted norms for dividing and distributing possible benefits deriving from these personal qualities.4 |
| Because of numerous processes of change, like missionary activities, |
| forced resettlement, logging, and local development activities, life on Siberut is moving in different directions. Some of the groups have resisted outside pressure and continue to live more or less ‘traditionally’, they have not given in to new religions and life styles. Others however have embraced ‘modernity’ and given up the life style of their ancestors almost completely. The majority of people fall within these two extremes: they combine in a creative manner elements of both worlds in constellations that may change according to the circumstances and outside pressure. For that reason it is hard to speak about the local people. There is substantial internal variation among the people on the island. |
| The tropical rainforest on Siberut is well known for its rich endemic |
| wildlife including four primate species. Endemic birds and other animals and plants are also relatively abundant on this island, which makes Siberut an important island in the natural heritage of Indonesia but also internationally (World Wildlife Fund 1980). Siberut as Minangkabau rantau |
| The Minangkabau people of West Sumatra well known for their |
| wonderlust and tendency to migrate (merantau). Together with the Buginese they belong to the most mobile ethnic groups in Indonesia5. The dominant patterns in their migration history are labelled as a process of village segmentation moving into newly cleared forest land, circulatory migration of males looking temporarely for work outside their home area and finally the largely urban migration, also called ‘Chinese migration’, referring to the rather permanent nature of the Chinese to other areas (Naim 1979 and Kato 1982). Kato rightfully refers to these patterns as ideal types, allowing for variations. The migration to the island of Siberut certainly falls outside these types. The movement to this island is of a different nature and it also has different consequences. |
| At the present moment there are well over 2,000 Minangkabau |
| living on the island of Siberut. The majority of them live in the two harbour villages on the east coast, Muara Sikabaluan and Muara Siberut, but cut across the island in almost every village, one or more Minangkabau are to be found as traders, shopkeepers or teachers. They live a rather isolated life amidst the tribal Mentawaians. Most of the Minangkabau have come to the island as voluntary migrants. They have done so mostly with their families and try to make a living as a trader, fisherman, farmer, contractor, tourist guide, carpenter or, at least until recently, as a temporary employee in the logging business. Some of them work as crew members on the small trading vessels which connect Siberut with the mainland of Sumatra. Other Minangkabau were transferred to the island because of official assignments in governmental positions. Most of them are men who left their families behind on the mainland of Sumatra. I will refer to them later. |
| Voluntary Migrants |
| A mixture of agricultural and other activities throughout the year is |
| typical for almost all voluntary migrants’ families. Very few devote themselves entirely to one kind of activity. Within the family they combine cash income generating activities with fishing, swamp rice cultivation and some coastal agriculture for subsistance and cash purposes. These migrants to Siberut do not originate from the core area of the Minangkabau, that is the Central Highlands of West Sumatra, nor from the city of Padang, the booming capital of the province. Most of the migrants come from areas around the coastal towns of Painan and Pariaman. This is to be explained by the fact that in former times these places were harbours for sailing ships going out to numerous places along the west coast of Sumatra and the adjacent islands like Nias, the Batu Islands, Siberut, Sipora, Pagai and Enggano. |
| The Mentawaian Archipelago is a relatively recent destination for |
| Minangkabau migrants but it is known that traders visited the islands with their sailing ships (biduk) irregularly for centuries, even though none of them settled down permanently (Kato 1980). They roamed around the islands for months in search of trade products. In particular they were looking for coconuts, sago, rattan, turtle shields and resins in exchange for glass beads, iron wear, cloth and tobacco (Hinlopen and Severijn 1855). Once in a while there were conflicts and even killings between Minangkabau and the local Mentawaians about these transactions. It was only after the Dutch colonial administration actually occupied the island of Siberut in the first decade of this century that some Minangkabau (and Chinese) sailing traders dared to settled down on the island. In the beginning the community was very small, numbering not more than a few families from Pariaman and Painan. They were traders and fishermen. Their houses were constructed very close to the mouth of the Siberut river at some distance from the military barracks. The establishment of an open penal settlement for about 250 condemned criminals from Java an Sumatra in the 1920s meant a substantial relief for the Minangkabau settlers, as the criminals were used to dig ditches and to construct and maintain landing stages for their sailing ships and the governmental boats. The convicted men were also forced to build quay walls of mangrove poles to protect the Minangkabau houses and governmental offices against flooding. |
| By the time the Japanese took control over the island in 1942 there were about thirty families living in Muara Siberut which had become the centre for the local administration and for trading purposes. A number of traditional sailing ships were also built in this village using the high quality wood on the hills nearby. In the meantime another Minangkabau harbour village had developed in the north of the island, Muara Sikabaluan. In the period after the Japanese occupation the number of voluntary migrants increased but so did the number of civil servants, policemen and teachers who were transferred to Siberut. The community in Muara Siberut had a difficult period during the PRRI rebellion (Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia) at the end of the 1950s. For a long time there were no ships from Padang to deliver food products and other goods or to load forest products from the island. The Minangkabau were forced to become completely self-sufficient for that time. It was only after suppression of the revolt in 1961 that the communication and the flow of goods returned to normal. Defining the Island’s Wildness and Wilderness How do the Minangkabau migrants look at Siberut? How do they look upon the local people and upon the forest? And to what extent have these views determined their activities related to the forest and the relations with the local people? Theoretically there is an interesting difference between these two elements (forest and people) compared to the situation on the mainland. Forest is a well known phenomenon for the Minangkabau so to some extent at least one could expect a certain kind of continuity in basic attitude and practices towards the forest. Ethnically however the situation is different as the land of the Minangkabau is culturally rather homogeneous and even the neighbouring ethnic groups share many cultural traits and have been strongly influenced by one another over the course of decades and even centuries. On Siberut however this situation is radically different. But first I will take a closer look at the perception of the forest. To the Minangkabau in West and Central Sumatra forest is a well known phenomenon though the process of deforestation has greatly reduced the |