Right fire for right future: how cultural burning can protect Australia from catastrophic blazes

The Guardian, Lorena Allam, Sat 18 Jan 2020

Traditional knowledge has already reduced bushfires and emissions in the top end, so why isn’t it used more widely?

Kija Rangers conduct prescribed burning in the East Kimberley in 2019.
Photograph: Supplied/Kimberley Land Council

Indigenous fire practitioners have warned that Australia’s bush will regenerate as a “time bomb” prone to catastrophic blazes, and issued a plea to put to use traditional knowledge which is already working across the top end to reduce bushfires and greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is a time bomb ticking now because all that canopy has been wiped out,” says Oliver Costello of the national Indigenous Firesticks Alliance.

“A lot of areas will end up regenerating really strongly, but they’ll return in the wrong way. We’ll end up with the wrong species compositions and balance.

 “That’s why we need to get Indigenous fire practices out into the landscape in the coming months, to start to read the country and look at areas that need restoration burning in the short term.”

As Australia comes to terms with this season’s catastrophic fires, Indigenous practitioners like Costello are advocating a return to “cultural burning”.

What is cultural burning?

Small-scale burns at the right times of year and in the right places can minimise the risk of big wildfires in drier times, and are important for the health and regeneration of particular plants and animals.

Different species relate to fire in different ways, Costello explains. Wombats, for example, dig burrows to escape, while koalas climb into the canopy.

“When you understand the fire relationships they have, their own fire culture, then you are really applying the right fire for that culture so that you’re supporting the identity of that place.

“When you do that, you get more productive landscapes, you get healthier plants and animals, you get regeneration, you discourage invasive elements, which are sometimes native species that might belong in the system next door.

“It’s so important to apply that right fire for right country, so you can maintain the right balance.”

Aboriginal rangers and traditional owners conduct burns in the Katiti-Petermann
 Indigenous Protected Area, in the remote desert country near the Western
Australia and Northern Territory border. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

Dr David Bowman is a professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania. Bowman describes Indigenous fire management as “little fires tending the earth affectionately”.

“The affectional is the opposite of mechanical. It’s with emotion. So it can be reverence, affection, fear, a whole range of emotions, but it’s an emotional relationship you have with land using fire to create mosaics and flammable habitat mosaics, which are really good for biodiversity and a really good way of managing fuel load.”

Where is it used in Australia?

In northern Australia, Indigenous land ownership is widespread. Caring for country and ranger programs in protected areas has delivered a degree of autonomy to traditional owners to walk the country, burning according to seasonal need and cultural knowledge.

Indigenous fire management involves “cool” fires in targeted areas during the early dry season, between March and July. The fires burn slowly and in patches.

In the Kimberley, the Land council holds community fire planning meetings throughout the early dry season to ensure the correct people are burning their country.

“Traditional owners are consulted and native title holders design burn lines and fire walk routes,” the KLC acting CEO Tyronne Garstone says.

“These burn lines are approved by the group and Indigenous rangers perform the on-ground work, backed up by modern technology with rangers taking constant weather readings and recording the conditions of the day.

“They work very well at combining the old people’s fire practices with modern techniques.”

Even so, climate change is affecting their ability to do “right way” fire management, Garstone says.

“These ‘right way’ fire days are getting fewer and fire behaviour is changing along the same lines as over east. Late season conditions are also driving more fires in unusual ways due to the climatic conditions we are currently facing.”

Kija Rangers conduct prescribed or ‘cool’ burning in the East Kimberley
in the dry season, 2019. Photograph: Supplied/Kimberley Land Council

How effective is it?

The Darwin centre for bushfire research at Charles Darwin University maps bushfires weekly. Since traditional burning was reintroduced on a large scale, the centre has collected enough data to show that the area of land destroyed by wildfires has more than halved, from 26.5m hectares in 2000, to just 11.5m hectares in 2019.

“We have annual fires up here,” the centre’s research fellow Andrew Edwards says. “Forty per cent of the top end could burn every year. So we had to do something about that.”

“We were originally much more interested in biodiversity, Aboriginal employment and getting people back on country to manage it properly, but when the carbon economy came along we saw a way to manage fire to abate greenhouse gas emissions.

“It was pretty bad before that happened,” Edwards says. “It was just fires running wild across huge tracts of north Australia that nobody was doing anything about.”

Edwards says the top end cooperative model can be adapted to southern conditions.

“That’s what needs to be looked at. Obviously there’s a lot more infrastructure to set up, but it’s collaboration and education.

“If we want to manage our natural environment properly, we need to be doing prescribed burning. There’s so much cultural knowledge out there still, and it’s being totally ignored. There’s hundreds of Indigenous rangers out there now doing this work.”

The Oriners and Sefton Savannah Burning Project creates carbon credits, using
strict scientific methodologies, approved through a rigorous accreditation process
with the Department of Environment, to store carbon in the natural landscape.
Photograph: Richard Wainwright/Caritas Australia

Will these practices be widely adopted?

In southern Australia, Oliver Costello says, Aboriginal knowledge systems are far less valued but hold important solutions.

The Coag national bushfire management policy includes a commitment to “promote Indigenous Australians’ use of fire”, but Indigenous fire groups like Firesticks Alliance say they need more resources to build capacity.

“There are a lot of policy settings at a high level that support us, but there’s nothing in between. There’re no resources,” Costello says.

“There’s no investment really outside of northern Australia Indigenous fire management of any significance, and they had to build a whole new economy to support it through carbon.

“There’s always investment going into future firefighting capacity, more trucks, more helicopters, more this, more that. What we need is people getting out into the landscape now, with the knowledge to start to heal it.

A small cool burn managed by Indigenous firesticks alliance.
Photograph: Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation/PA

Professor Bowman says it is possible to “blend Aboriginal with European and modern scientific approaches to create an opportunity for all land users and land owners”.

He suggests small-scale local “Green fire” groups modelled on the Landcare program.

“I would like to see a crossover between Indigenous and mainstream fire management groups, where there can be exchange and recognition.

“Because in the end there’s two things which are important to [remember]: all humans have come from a fire management background in their cultures, it’s just that some cultures ended up obliterating that knowledge because of industrialisation.

“We should really prioritise employment of Aboriginal people. But when there’s a gap we could be filling that gap with community groups. And there’s a really good opportunity for Aboriginal people to be involved in training.

“We need to encourage and promote the philosophy of Aboriginal fire practice because that’s going to be a really important pathway for sustainable fire management and also for healing because so many communities have been traumatised and shocked by the scale of the burning.”

Costello says the areas that haven’t burned this time around are now even more vulnerable.

“They are critical parts of the landscape [that need] to be able to support the animals and plants that have survived. And so those areas are going to be under increasing pressure and they’re also at risk of a future fire.

“There was an economy before settlement that supported this, a resource economy based on people looking after the land and having all that they needed.

“Now in the modern society it revolves around money. So we need to build economies that support cultural practice and acknowledge traditional custodianship.

“There’s all this canopy that’s been burnt away. We’ve got knowledge and techniques that can help heal that country in the future. It’s going to take some time. We’ve got probably two or three years before we can really be effective in some of that country because it needs to recover. But if we don’t get in there after that, then we miss our chance.”

The much welcomed rain in Australia might be too much of a good thing, as flash floods were reported in some area https://t.co/rNjVYeiU9T pic.twitter.com/Bgml3Yz50f

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 18, 2020

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Indonesian forest fires putting 10 million children at risk: UN

Yahoo – AFP, September 24, 2019

Indonesian children get a dose of oxygen from a Red Cross volunteer. UNICEF says
the forest fires are puttling nearly 10 million children at risk from the toxic air (AFP
Photo/Tri Iswanto)

Jakarta (AFP) - Indonesian forest fires are putting nearly 10 million children at risk from air pollution, the United Nations warned Tuesday, as scientists said the blazes were releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases.

The fires have been spewing toxic haze over Southeast Asia in recent weeks, closing schools and airports, with people rushing to buy face masks and seek medical treatment for respiratory ailments.

Jakarta has deployed tens of thousands of personnel and water-bombing aircraft to tackle the slash-and-burn blazes set to clear agricultural land. The fires are an annual problem but this year are the worst since 2015 due to dry weather.

Almost 10 million people under 18 -- about a quarter below five -- live in the areas worst affected by fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island and the country's part of Borneo island, the UN children's agency UNICEF said.

Small children are especially vulnerable due to undeveloped immune systems while babies born to mothers exposed to pollution during pregnancy may have low birth weights and be delivered early, they said.

Thousands of schools have been closed across Indonesia due to poor 

air quality (AFP Photo/CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN)

"Poor air quality is a severe and growing challenge for Indonesia," said Debora Comini from UNICEF.

"Every year, millions of children are breathing toxic air that threatens their health and causes them to miss school -- resulting in lifelong physical and cognitive damage."

Thousands of schools have been closed across Indonesia due to poor air quality, with millions of youngsters missing classes.

Schools were forced to shut across Malaysia last week as dense smog from its neighbour clouded the skies, while Singapore was also shrouded in haze during the weekend's Formula One motor race.

Air quality had however improved in Malaysia and Singapore Tuesday, and the skies were clearer.

There have been a series of wildfire outbreaks worldwide, from the Amazon to Australia, and scientists are increasingly worried about their impact on global warming.

From the start of August to September 18, the fires emitted about 360 

megatonnes of carbon dioxide (AFP Photo/Wahyudi)

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, part of the EU's Earth observation programme, said this year's Indonesian fires were releasing almost as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as blazes in 2015, the worst for two decades.

From the start of August to September 18, the fires emitted about 360 megatonnes of the greenhouse gas, compared to 400 megatonnes over the same period four years ago, the service said.

One megatonne is equivalent to one million tonnes.

At the peak of the 2015 crisis, the fires were emitting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each day than all US economic activity, according to environmental watchdog the World Resources Institute.

Indonesian man walking in reverse to save forests

Yahoo – AFP, August 5, 2019

Medi Bastoni walks 20 to 30 kilometres backwards every day under the scorching sun,
with a rear-view mirror attached to his backpack to avoid bumping into objects (AFP
Photo/Medi BASTONI)

Jakarta (AFP) - An Indonesian man is walking 700 kilometres (435 miles) from his home on a volcano in East Java to Jakarta in the hope of drawing attention to the archipelago's quickly shrinking forests -- and he is doing it backwards.

Medi Bastoni, a 43-year-old father of four, set out on his arduous, in-reverse journey in mid-July, with the goal of reaching the capital by August 16, a day before the Southeast Asian nation's independence day anniversary.

"Of course I'm exhausted, but I'm willing to do this to fight for the next generation," Bastoni told AFP.

"(My home) is losing all of its trees so I have to do something. I can take the pain and fatigue."

Walking backwards is a siganl to Indonesians to reflect on the past and remember 

how national heroes fought for the good of the country (AFP Photo/Medi BASTONI)

When he arrives, Bastoni said he hopes to meet with president Joko Widodo and highlight deforestation across the archipelago including at his home on Mt. Wilis, a dormant volcano.

Indonesia suffers from one of the high rates of deforestation in the world, according to Greenpeace.

Bastoni walks 20 to 30 kilometres backwards every day under the scorching sun, with a rear-view mirror attached to his backpack to avoid bumping into objects.

Along the way, supporters cheer him on, offer him meals or a place to stay overnight. But Bastoni always leaves at dawn to stay on schedule.

Walking backwards is meant as a siganl to Indonesians to reflect on the past and remember how national heroes fought for the good of the country, he said.

In Mataram Declaration, Belated Recognition of Indigenous Rights

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia,  Apr 23, 2015

The government is finally getting serious about recognizing Indigenous
groups’ forest rights. (Antara Photo/Ahmad Subaidi)

Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara. Proponents of the rights of indigenous groups have hailed a pledge by the Indonesian government to do more to recognize their stewardship of forests, seen as crucial in efforts to stave off deforestation.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar made the so-called Mataram Declaration last weekend in a belated response to a May 2013 Constitutional Court ruling relinquishing the state’s default claims to forested areas settled and used by indigenous groups.

“Long before this, civil society organizations and local communities were struggling for the recognition and protection of customary land,” said Abetnego Tarigan, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi. “Now the government has shown good faith, and we really appreciate it.”

He said the central and local governments often violated indigenous people’s land rights because the latter lacked title deeds to their land. In many cases, he noted, the people were disenfranchised of their rights, and their land given over to logging, plantation or mining operators.

“There are a few policies that regulate the rights of local communities to the land, such as the 2012 law on customary forests, but they don’t cover the recognition of people’s customary territory, so we need another framework to guarantee it,” Abetnego said. “This declaration should really be a form of political will for all stakeholders to push the recognition and protection of customary forests managed by the people.”

Civic-centered development

At the signing of the declaration on Saturday in Mataram, in West Nusa Tenggara province, Siti said the government and other stakeholders were committed to expediting the process to craft policies that improved the welfare and protection of local communities and conserved the environment.

“These policies are really important,” she said. “President Joko Widodo’s government has indicated that the citizenship concept is a democratic one, in which we seek to bring welfare to the people.”

She said the government was making efforts to involve people, especially indigenous groups, in environmental protection.

“Here, our development must be civic-centered,” Siti said. “This issue has been echoed by the people and environmental organizations, and now the government is listening.”

Under Joko’s 2015-2019 National Mid-Term Development Plan, the administration plans to designate 12.5 million hectares of land for “social forestry,” in which indigenous groups and local communities will commit to sustainable forestry practices, and nine million hectares for agriculture.

“These [social] forests can be developed as community forests, village forests and customary forests,” Siti said, adding that the agricultural land, to be staked out from former logging concessions, would go primarily to subsistence farmers.

Collaborative effort

Siti said it was important for all stakeholders — the central government, regional administrations, civil society organizations and local communities — to work closely together.

“The policy is ready to go, but we can’t do it alone. We need help from other stakeholders to cooperate. For example, I hope the Home Affairs Ministry will help us identify indigenous communities and their problems to ensure that all land is distributed rightly and fairly,” she said.

“We also need civil society organizations to work with the people on mediation, community building and others. Access to welfare for all Indonesians is our responsibility.”

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, an adviser to the Home Affairs Ministry, said the institution was open to cooperating with the other stakeholders.

“But the identification process isn’t easy. There are a few requirements to meet before we can definitively say that a given community is an indigenous one,” he said. “The process must be really selective. And this is the task of regional leaders.”

Zudan said that for a forest community to qualify, it would have to show some kind of environmentally sustainable practice in its interactions with the forest.

“Here we need experts and help from civil society organizations,” he said.

People first

Siti said the new policy, unlike previous ones, prioritized the role of people in economic development through the exploitation of forests and other natural resources.

“I believe the system will be no longer like the past, when government didn’t put the people at the front of its development plans. Now, we must use dialogue in our approach to developing the economy of this country,” Siti said.

West East Nusa’s Deputy Governor Muhammad Amin welcomed the declaration, but said further talks on the issue were still needed between the central government and regional administrations.

“We realize there hasn’t been a regional policy that recognizes the territorial rights of indigenous people. However, with this declaration, we hope that the people will receive greater consideration in the policy-making process,” he said. “Should the synergy run smoothly, we may be able to achieve an environment-oriented development framework.”

Yansen T.P., the head of Malinau district in North Kalimantan, who was among the more than 30 regional heads attending the Mataram Declaration, said an increasing number of regions across the country were beginning to prioritize land rights protections when crafting new policies.

“We’ve been done a lot for several years now to show our support for our environment,” he said. “We have vast areas of natural resources and considerable local wisdom. The forest we have is the forest we must hold on to. We understand that people depend on the forest and they will try to maintain it. But to do that, we in the regional government have to provide them with legal certainty.”

Yansen said he hoped that future investments would “take the side of the people.”

“We don’t need to exploit all of our natural resources right away. We have to think about our children, grandchildren and our future generations,” he said. “Hopefully the central government’s policy will accelerate the recognition of indigenous people’s right to the forest.”

Test cases

Adi Rozal, the head of Kerinci district in Sumatra’s Jambi province, said his administration had designated 12 swaths of forest as customary forests.

“Now we’re waiting for coordination from the central government to issue a policy that fully mandates the forests for use by the local community,” he said.

Mathius Awoitauw, the head of Jayapura district in Papua province, agreed that while the central government had a key role to play, it was local governments that would serve as the test cases for various frameworks on the issue.

“All we need to do to establish nationwide synergy is to hold regular dialogues to test how capable regional governments and people are in managing their forests. In addition, there should be a regulation that truly guarantees the rights of each region to map its own customary forests,” he said.

In prioritizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities, the government has switched from an earlier paradigm that served large corporations, said Chalil Muhammad, the chairman of the Association for Community and Ecology-Based Law Reform, or Perkumpulan HuMa.

“There’s a need to create a scheme to build rights coordination between the central government, regional governments and the people in an effort to prevent forests from rampant exploitation,” he said. “These stakeholders need to change their mind-set. We need to increase human resource capacity and fix existing forestry policies.”

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno

Indigenous Communities Embracing Ecotourism

Jakarta Globe, Ryan Dagur, Apr 06, 2015

In an effort to preserve their ancestral rainforests, indigenous settlements across
the archipelago are turning to eco-tourism initiatives driven by non-profit
organizations. (Ucanews.com Photos/Barmen Simatupang)

Sui Utik, West Kalimantan. When Lukas Alfario Surya Dewanto arrived at the remote Sui Utik hamlet deep in the forests of West Kalimantan last year, he wasn’t sure what to expect.

A student at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Lukas and his friends had little understanding of indigenous culture and life.

After two months of living with local families, however, Lukas has come to appreciate the unique site. The hamlet, which borders the northern part of Malaysia’s Sarawak state, is a stunning place: ancient trees and the forest canopy; birds, bears, snakes, and deer roam freely alongside fresh streams.

“We came here to feel how to live in the middle of ancestral forests and to get to know the local people that have protected the forests for years,” said the 23-year-old. “I want to go back there someday,” Lukas added.

Whether that is possible depends on the indigenous Dayak Iban’s ability to protect their sacred land. Already, Sui Utik is the only community in Kapuas Hulu district’s Batu Lintang village that hasn’t sold their trees or turned their land into palm oil plantations.

Instead, the villagers have banked on eco-tourism, hoping that by attracting students, locals and foreigners alike, they can convince the world of the importance of protecting their land.

Strong commitment

Over the past decade, a number of companies have come to the hamlet and surrounding areas to collect woods. With them, they brought Malaysian ringgits to lure the indigenous residents.

“We refused it. It was only the Sui Utik hamlet that rejected it. Almost all other communities living in other hamlets of the village as well as other villages accepted it,” said Raymundus Remang, 42, a community leader.

For the indigenous Dayak Iban living in Sui Utik, it has been a tradition that they only use about a third of their 9,500-hectares of ancestral forests for crop planting. They let the rest of the ancestral forests grow as they are — making it an appealing locale for loggers.

“Although we are told that we will be given money, we don’t want it,” he said.

Thanks to their strong commitment, massive trees such as gaharu or agar wood and ulin or Borneo ironwood can only be seen in Sui Utik.

Neighboring hamlets and villages only have few small trees. Worse, they are covered with palm oil plantations.

“We need money, indeed. But we don’t need to sell our ancestral forests. We love our ancestral forests so much,” Reymundus continued.

Unlike many of their neighbors, the villagers have held on to their traditional beliefs, including one that says destroying nature will only create a catastrophe.

“If any activity of illegal logging comes in, the existing order will vanish. We don’t want our next generation to see damaged nature because of their parents’ deeds,” Raymundus said. “We bring our children and grandchildren to our ancestral forests. We teach them how to protect our ancestral forests. We also tell them how important the effort is,” he added.

The community also calls on every member to plant trees starting as a young child. This has become an obligation. It’s hoped that this will allow for an ample supply of wood when they grow up and need to build houses.

For young indigenous men like Verdianus Muling, 23, such an obligation is never a burden.

“We will take care of our ancestral forests,” Verdianus said. “If we destroy our forests, we will have to face the impact,” Inam, 31, added.

Customary law

To protect the forest, indigenous villagers institute a complex traditional law — violations of which entail sanctions.

The customary law regulates, among other things, the correct time for planting trees, growing rice and cutting timber.

Traditionally, before cultivating their land between September and October, the Dayak Iban hold a ritual in which they slaughter a chicken to be given to so-called guardians of the land.

A similar ritual is held before cutting down trees, which includes the prayer: “Have mercy on us, we have to cut down trees as we need woods.”

Sanctions, meanwhile, depend on the gravity of the violation. If someone steals fruit from trees planted on a neighbor’s land, for example, he must give at least one sack of rice to the owner of the land.

A tribal leader is the one who decides the sanction.

“We respect this customary law. We even introduce it to our children and grandchildren,” Apay Janggut, a 44-year-old tribal leader, said.

Apay is a common honorific in the Iban language.

The 304 people living in Sui Utik adhere to the rules closely. Each of the hamlet’s 30 families is allowed to cultivate at least three hectares of land during a three-year period.

After that, they must move to another piece of land and leave the old one, a strategy that protects and preserves the ancestral forests.

The forests, in turn, provide all that the community needs. Its people hunt for animals, go fishing, and search for herbal medicine.

“Our forests have everything that we want and need,” assured Apay Salim, another tribal leader.

Deforestation

Forest comprises 60 percent of Indonesia’s land area, which makes it the third largest area of tropical rainforest in the world.

However, deforestation is an ongoing threat. Recent reports have found that Indonesia may have the highest rate of forest loss in the world.

Between 2000 and 2012 more than 6 million hectares of forest was lost, according to a University of Maryland study published last year and headed by a former Indonesian forestry official.

When it comes to deforestation, indigenous people comprising more than 500 communities across the archipelago play a significant role in protection and prevention.

And what the Sui Utik hamlet community has achieved received praise from Zenzi Suhadi, a forest campaigner with the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi.

“Sui Utik shows that indigenous people make an effort to protect their ancestral forests for generations,” he said.

According to Zenzi, 58 million out of 130 million hectares of forest in the country — Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku and Papua islands — have been turned into palm oil plantations or gold and manganese mines.

“I don’t know the exact number of permits for the plantations and mining. But it’s more than 10,000,” he added.

In having avoided such fates, the hamlet serves as a correction tool for the local government.

“People living in Sui Utik show that indigenous people have a local wisdom, which can help them survive if it is preserved well,” said Agapitus from the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), an umbrella of indigenous communities in the country.

Development of eco-tourism

The indigenous people’s effort in protecting their ancestral forests in Sui Utik has driven GreenIndonesia and AMAN to jointly develop an eco-tourism initiative.

Besides the hamlet, the initiative involving six communities of indigenous people from across the country is also developed in other areas with indigenous communities such as Bali, East Nusa Tenggara, Jambi and Maluku.

Through the program, women weavers from all over Indonesia connect, share knowledge, and keep their traditions alive. The communities work with many local plants to create unique colors and pay close attention to maintaining the environment where the vegetation grows.

According to Yopie Basyarah, program manager at GreenIndonesia, the initiative aims to re-enliven the culture of the indigenous people.

“We try to develop everything purely coming from the indigenous people in Sui Utik. We don’t want to do things that we want, but we always ask the indigenous people about what they want,” he said.

In January, GreenIndonesia joined a tourism program held in Oslo, Norway, to introduce the initiative.

“We wanted to introduce Sui Utik hamlet to the world. What impressed us during the program was that so many people said they wanted to visit Sui Utik,” he added.

Dozens of Norwegians have promised to visit the hamlet in June.

Support for the development of eco-tourism in the hamlet also comes from the local Catholic Church.

“The initiative is in line with the indigenous people’s effort in making nature their best friend,” said Father Marchadius Markus Golo of Benua Martinus.

The community sees nature as something which cannot be separated from their Catholic faith, he said.

Nearly all members of the indigenous community are Catholics.

“They see nature like they see the body and the blood of Christ. The land is like the body of Christ, and the water is like the blood,” Marchadius said.

The indigenous people have such way of seeing things because they view nature as something given for free by God.

“This is their faith, and with this faith they have the commitment to protecting their ancestral forests,” he added.

In Kapuas Hulu district, 51.6 percent of its 3.1 million hectares of land is a conservation area. Only 20 percent is given to palm oil plantation companies.

“We don’t want to force the indigenous people like those in Sui Utik hamlet to accept palm oil plantation companies. They already have a commitment to protecting their ancestral forests,” deputy district head Agus Mulyana said.

But eco-tourism is far from a guaranteed salvo.

Konkordius Kanyan from Lembaga Bela Banua Talino, a local NGO dealing with agrarian issues, stressed that indigenous people would likely face challenges with the development of eco-tourism.

“Eco-tourism will bring changes when everything is measured with money. The indigenous people in Sui Utik must be able to maintain their cultural values which they have kept for so long,” he said.

Residents, however, remain hopeful that their chosen path will succeed.

“We feel happy [with eco-tourism] as we can earn money from so many visitors coming here. This helps [our community],” Raymundus said.

For him and other members of the hamlet, turning their protected forests into an eco-tourism attraction may well be the best way to improve their lives.

“People come to Sui Utik, and it makes us believe that what we have chosen so far isn’t wrong,” Raymundus said.

This story is a publication of Ucanews.com and is edited for style by the Jakarta Globe.

Ryan Dagur is a special correspondent for Ucanews.com.

The Kenya Dayak’s ‘Journey Home’ to Their Tribal Roots

Jakarta Globe, Tunggul Wirajuda, Jul 14, 2014

Filmmaker David Metcalf will host a fundraiser exhibition in August to fund his
 film ‘The Journey Home’, which aims to raise awareness about the importance
 and wisdom of indigenous culture in Indonesia and around the world. (Photo
courtesy of David Metcalf)

To foreign observers the 800 inhabitants of the village of Setulang live in a rustic idyll at the edge of a pristine forest. But these members of the Kenya Dayak that live in the North Kalimantan district of Malinau yearn for a paradise steeped in the traditions of their tribe.

“I left our original homelands when I was a small boy. But I have happy memories of my time growing up in the forests and playing in the rivers,” says Pilius, a village elder, who last saw his ancestral lands in 1969.

The land that Pilius remembers is an area of forests which they call Tala Olen , or “the forbidden forest.”

The tribesmen, particularly the elders, feel a spiritual connection to Tala Olen’s forests, rivers and land, located in an area called Long Saan, which is an eight-day journey by canoe up the Kayan River.

There are strict cultural rules about cutting down the trees in the forest or damaging it in any way, a reverence that has not changed despite their move to Setulang for economic reasons. The draw of Tala Olen is also felt by their descendants who are charmed by the elders’ stories of paradise.

“My grandfather told me many stories of growing up [in Tala Olen ] and how they lived back then. His description of it made it look like paradise,” says Herman, a young villager. “I would love to visit and pay my respects to him.”

But the Kenya Dayak’s ancient way of life and their culture of preserving the forest is under threat. Here in Kalimantan, logging and dam projects are destroying huge swathes of the forest.

Environmentalists estimate that over 52 percent of Kalimantan’s forests has already been lost.

“We don’t exactly know what will happen in the future. Will the next generation keep our agreement [to conserve the land], or will they damage it, and open new land to loggers to serve their self interest?” Kenya Dayak elder Kole Adjang asks.

“ We hope that by example [sic], our great grandchildren will also take care of our land and Tala Olen.”

Taking the Dayak’s home

In the face of these threats to Borneo’s cultural history, photographer David “Dayak Dave” Metcalf is seeking to help reunite the Dayak with their ancestral homelands.

As with many indigenous peoples throughout Indonesia, such as the Asmat and Kamoro tribes of Papua or the Badui in Java, the Kenya are hampered by poverty. As such, they can’t afford the cost of the journey to Tala Olen .

Metcalf seeks to provide the means for the villagers to revisit their homelands, a journey that he intends to chronicle in a film he will title “ The Journey Home .”

“I came up with the idea of granting the tribe their dream of visiting their ancestors’ burial grounds deep in the heart of the forest,” says the Bali-based New Zealander, adding that the journey entails more than the just the nostalgia of homecoming.

“We need to raise funds to make the film. As things currently stand, the logistics are only sufficient to take six elders to Long Saan,” says Metcalf, who is also the author of “ Indonesia’s Hidden Heritage: Cultural Journeys of Discovery ,” a chronicle of his travels through Indonesia.

Metcalf is putting on a fundraiser at the opening of an exhibition on indigenous photography in Jakarta’s Kunstkring Paleis cultural exhibition hall on Aug. 12.

The evening, which will feature eminent Indonesian designer Harry Darsono and New Zealand Ambassador David Taylor, will include performances of traditional Dayak dances.

“We hope that through raising funds to bring the elders back to their ancestral village and making a multimedia documentary about the journey, we can raise awareness of the threats to their unique way of life,” Metcalf says.

He adds that similar events will also be held at the American Club. To date, Metcalf has raised about $2,000 of the estimated $25,000 that he needs for project.

Filmmaker David Metcalf will host a fundraiser exhibition in August to fund his
 film ‘The Journey Home’, which aims to raise awareness about the importance
 and wisdom of indigenous culture in Indonesia and around the world. (Photo
courtesy of David Metcalf)

Collective effort

“The Journey Home” will be shot by a film crew from seven nations; among them New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. They include American documentary filmmaker Jason Houston, who was known for his work with the Dayak in the Malaysian side of Borneo, Robby, a member of the Indonesian world music group Navicula, and Bali-based artist Wolfgang Widmoser, whose work inspired much of the look for the Hollywood blockbuster “Avatar.”

Native American Kevin Locke, an elder from the Lakota Sioux tribe, will also be taking part. While the cultural connection between the Dayak and native Americans is very strong, Locke’s participation marks the first time that a connection between these two cultures has been undertaken.

“One of the primary purposes of [“The Journey Home”] is to raise awareness in Indonesia and other countries about the importance and wisdom of indigenous cultures around the world. This journey is about connecting cultures through art, dance, song and ancient wisdom,” Metcalf says.

“By creating a wider expression and voice for indigenous cultures globally, we can find common ground through music and dance and ancestral prayers.”

Most of all, the film will showcase Kalimantan and its place in the world.

“Kalimantan is Asia’s Amazon, representing 1 percent of the earth’s surface but 5 percent of its flora and fauna, including untold numbers of trees and plants still undiscovered by mankind. As one of the most ecologically diverse landscapes on the planet, we want to raise awareness about the Dayak people that live in Kalimantan’s forests and rivers,” Metcalf says.

“This is all the more imperative, as Kalimantan is also facing the fallout from coal and gold mining, the latter which is poisoning its streams, aside from better known problems like illegal logging and deforestation.”

Metcalf and his team of filmmakers plan to release “The Journey Home” in Indonesia and abroad by the end of this year. He also plans to pitch the film to Discovery Channel and National Geographic.

To help Metcalf and the Kenya Dayaks in their quest, contact him at www.fundrazr.com.

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"... Some of you will walk into the forest and you'll feel it. It surrounds you with its love and beauty. Gaia speaks to you. The trees are pushing out oxygen with a benevolent system of photosynthesis. The plants give you oxygen and you give them carbon dioxide. What a system! Look around. Science will say that system happened by accident - a random occurrence. Do you believe that? What a beautiful system! The trees themselves know who you are. You walk into the forest and you feel it hug you, but perhaps another is next to you who came with a chainsaw. They don't care and they don't feel it. To them, the forest is only a resource. What's the difference between the two of you? There's no judgment here, I'm just asking you. What do you think the difference is? The answer: You're letting multidimensional awareness in and they are not. You see, you are becoming more aware of multidimensional soul communication. In this case, it's your enormous soul energy communicating with the other parts of the planet who are also multidimensional.

When you make the decision that it's OK to feel this energy, it will be there. Most of humanity so far has not made that decision. They block it. The law is this - this communication will come to you only with your allowance. The moment you open the door of allowance, you may begin to feel it. Those are our rules.

It's not just allowance for communication from the creative source, but also from an amazing number of what we would call other benevolent energies. These others are represented by groups with names that you have given them. They also cannot get through to you unless you allow it. That's their rule as well. Your names for them are Pleiadians, Arcturians, Sirians, Hathors or those from Orion. There are many more, but unless you open to the possibility of them, they can't communicate either.

Most of humanity will stand next to you as you communicate and think you're not well. That's the way it looks to them. Listen, dear ones, the benevolent groups who represent your DNA essence [your seed biology] and who know who you are are many. The amount of help you have on this planet is staggering, yet the majority of humanity will not allow awareness of it or let the possibility into their reality.. ..."