After a four-year absence, I’m back to the Republic of Indonesia with the intent of staying for a full year this time. Compared to my previous visits, in 2013 and 2015, where the focus was primarily on wildlife conservation efforts, my primary intent this time is on an indigenous tribe which has been a particular obsession of mine over the past several years. They’re called the Orang Rimba (translated to “people of the forest” in their language) and they live in the rainforests on the island of Sumatra.
Unique in that they’re a forest-dwelling people living in a region (central Sumatra) which has been heavily influenced by many large kingdoms and empires (i.e. Melayu Kingdom, Srivijaya Empire and more recently with the introduction of Islam) throughout its history. Being one of the few animist and nomadic peoples left on Sumatra, they really do stand out from their Malay speaking neighbors, who live in villages and are Islamic practitioners. Unfortunately, this is one of the root causes of their problems. As observed by authors of both Indonesian (Prasetijo, 2015) and Western backgrounds (Berta, 2014; Sager, 2008), the Orang Rimba are considered to be the lowest order of the social caste in Sumatran society. Often, they are referred to as “Kubu” by villagers which means someone who is uncivilized and lives in the forest/wilderness, is stupid and lacks any sense of culture or religion (Sager, 2008, pg. 5). Due to this discriminatory meaning, most Orang Rimba take great offense when called a ‘Kubu’ as denotated by the statement of one Orang Rimba below:
We are ashamed of being called Kubu. Orang Terang (the Malay people) say Kubu means stupid and backward. We don’t like to be called that. - Penggunang Leman, Orang Rimba (Prasetijo, 2015, pg. 95)
No doubt that due to this prejudice, conflicts between Orang Rimba and village people are not uncommon, with the Orang Rimba almost always being the victims in such clashes (Prasetijo, 2015, pg. 158). More pressing than discrimination has to be the loss of the Orang Rimba’s forest home.
Being hunter-gatherers who occasionally practice shifting cultivation (in a manner not dissimilar to many Amazonian Indian tribes), their lifestyle depends on large expanses of intact primary rainforest for their cultural survival.
Sadly, Indonesia has experienced rapid deforestation over the past few decades, to the point where, in 2012, the country briefly outperformed Brazil in total deforestation rate, despite being only a third of the size (Margono et al., 2014).
Most of this has to do with the expansion of two major industries: palm oil and pulp & paper. Sumatra has borne the worst of this environmental atrocity, as 70 percent of Indonesia’s palm oil production occurs on this island (Berta, 2014, pg. 8).
Much of where the Orang Rimba people live is on a so-called ‘palm oil hotspot’: Jambi province on central Sumatra. Due to this overlap, many Orang Rimba have lost their forest entirely and are now reduced to beggars barely making a living, often forced to steal palm fruits to make ends meet (Prasetijo, 2015, pg. 175-176). Luckily, there is one spot where the Orang Rimba are allowed to still live a forest-dwelling life: the Bukit Duabelas National Park. Home to approximately 40 percent of the remaining 3,800 Orang Rimba (KKI WARSI, 2008), the area is considered the cultural center for the tribe.
The National Park was originally created in 2000, after being lobbied by both the Orang Rimba and the local non-profit environmental organization, KKI WARSI (Prasetijo, 2015, pg. 179; Sager, 2008, pg. 17). Created in 1992 as a collaboration of various smaller NGOs, KKI WARSI has since focused on community conservation efforts by using traditional customary rules (adat as its referred to in Indonesia) as a people-friendly means to conserve forests. WARSI’s effort came at a pivotal point as the northern part of the National Park was originally slated to be industrially logged before it was converted to NP status (Prasetijo, 2015, pg. 179-180). To return the topic to myself, it is through WARSI that I am here. And it’s at Bukit Duabelas National Park where I’ll be conducting a research project regarding a new Zoning System that the National Park authority is implementing.
A New Management Plan
Having been made into a National Park, the authorities are deciding to take the next step by rearranging the Management System of the NP to include the Orang Rimba customary system/adat. They are deciding to do this by dividing the NP into seven different zones.
This new Zoning System will give the Orang Rimba officially declared areas where they can hunt, use for shifting cultivation and secure locations which they reserve for ceremonial purposes. In theory, this is a great idea and I was personally thrilled when I first heard about this last year. However, I have read anecdotical reports which indicate that the process may not have been entirely consensual. Given conservation’s rather contentious history with indigenous peoples, I would not be surprised if this was the case. This motivated me to take the initiative to conduct a consensus survey with the Orang Rimba Temenggungs (a position which is equivalent to a chief) to see if they truly agreed with the Zoning System or if it was made through corrosion. This process will take up to a year considering that the Orang Rimba are a reserved people who don’t immediately trust outsiders (Berta, 2014, pg. 12). So far, I’ve met up with the National Park authority to discuss my project. The impression I’ve got was that they seem confident they got the Orang Rimba’s full support as showcased by the thumbprints they received from all thirteen Temenggungs in BDNP. This indicated that they “signed” the paper thus “agreeing” with the Zoning System. I was still uncertain if this was truly the case and I’ve talked with WARSI employees about my concerns. It turns out that WARSI employees were themselves unsure about the results as the Zoning process happened rather quickly and published before they gave any real input. This raised eyebrows for me and only convinced me more to conduct my project. On a side note, another reason for my visit is to conduct my own personal wildlife survey in the National Park. To the best of my knowledge, the last “survey” (if it can even be called that considering how small scale many of these sample studies were) was done back in 1998 by the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI) which estimated that there were 10-12 Sumatran tigers in the Park (unfortunately, I couldn’t find a link to the report). Since then, there has been virtually no effort or even attempts to monitor wildlife in the NP. How many wildlife species there are and the overall quality of biodiversity in the NP are practically unknown. Though I do hold hope that they’re in decent numbers, at least in comparison to the relatively small size of BDNP. This is due to the Orang Rimba’s tribal taboos which forbid the hunting of many endangered species (i.e. tigers, elephants, and even the critically threatened helmeted hornbills) due to them being perceived as the incantation of local gods/deities (Sager, 2008, pg. 146).
Though this hasn’t stopped Sumatran elephants from becoming locally extinct in the late 1980s (Sager, 2008, pg. 65). Regardless, I’m keen on finding out BDNP’s biological treasures though I’ll have to gain the trust of the Orang Rimba, the traditional owners of the forest, first before I can proceed with this.
At Camp
Coming to WARSI’s field office/camp and meeting the Orang Rimba for the first time was somewhat of a contradictory feeling for me. On one hand, I was more than happy to finally meet the people that I had prior only seen in books and online articles. On the other hand, most of the Orang Rimba were clearly skeptical of me and kept their distance; only giving me awkward stares. It didn’t create the most welcoming experience, considering how much I desired to meet with them. I’m not alone in this initial response, as Anne Berta (2014) wrote in detail of her experience. For her, it took a few months before the larger Orang Rimba community opened up to her presence. I can’t blame the Orang Rimba for this, for their history with the outside world is one of abuse. Historically, when the forest was much more expansive, the Orang Rimba stayed well away from the outside world, running away to the forest if they accidentally encounter a non-Orang Rimba. This was due to slave raids which were common in the region in past centuries (Sager, 2008, pg. 67). In more recent times, discrimination and deforestation no doubt forced them to maintain this mentality. Still, the Temenggung I met, Ngrip, and Mangku Besemen welcomed me openly, despite the language barrier, and made the situation feel a little more inclusive.
Pretty soon, many of the young boys, male adolescents, and young adults opened up to me as well. Particularly the young ones as they wanted to know more about the outside world. It’s them I spent much of my time with at camp and in BDNP. In the end, I can definitely say that May was a good month for me on getting to know new people, despite the initial barrier.
New Information
To end this blog entry, I would like to say that, for the final two weeks of May, I went to Yogyakarta on Java island to get my visa extension. During my time in Jogja (Yogyakarta abbreviated), I decided to learn as much Bahasa Indonesia as I could at a place called Puri Bahasa, an accredited school for language learning.
I won’t write much on this, considering I want to keep this blog about the Orang Rimba, but there is one important note I received from one of my teachers. Since the topic of the Orang Rimba was brought up, she told me that it was a common method for many companies in the recent past to fool the Orang Rimba by getting them to “sign” an agreement with their thumbprints. Without consulting the Orang Rimba about all the details of their intent. This brought up what the National Park authority told me. That they got the people’s “agreement” by getting their thumbprints. Of course, this isn’t definitive evidence of anything but it is telling of what both governments and companies are willing to do to get what they desire. I know that the Indonesian government is trying to improve relationships with indigenous peoples lately but, given how recent and weakly enforced this is so far, I would not put it past them that such strategies are still used to get procedures done.
Work Citations:
Berta, A. E. V. (2014). “People of the Jungle: Adat, Women, and Change among Orang Rimba” (Master's thesis). University of Oslo, Norway.
KKI WARSI. (2008). “Survey Bio-Regional Jambi”.
Margono, B. A., Potapov, P. V., Turubanova, S., Stolle, F., & Hansen, M. C. (2014). Primary forest cover loss in Indonesia over 2000–2012. Nature climate change, 4(8), 730.
Prasetijo, A. (2015). “Orang Rimba: True Custodian of the Forest”.
Sager, S. (2008). “The sky is our roof, the earth our floor: Orang Rimba customs and religion in the Bukit Duabelas region of Jambi, Sumatra.” The Australian National University, Australia.