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Peluso 2005
Peluso 2005
To cite this article: Nancy Lee Peluso (2005) Seeing property in land use: Local territorializations in West Kalimantan,
Indonesia, Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 105:1, 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/00167223.2005.10649522
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Seeing property in land use: Local
territorializations in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Abstract Keywords
This paper looks at ways of seeing property rights and making Territorialization, landscape, land rights, counter-mapping, forests.
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The old man told us they had occupied this site in Sang- into the site, did not occur simultaneously. The first group
gau since approximately 1920. They had "purchased" the moved downriver from this living site in the late 19th cen-
rights to it from its previous occupants. The terms of the tury after two major headhunting raids. The new group
transfer of occupancy and use rights had been negotiated moved in much later - nearly two decades after formal
by two customary (adat) leaders- one from each group. "pacification" of headhunting by the Dutch. This was
The original settlers agreed to transfer rights to occupy the when the negotiations and ritual transfer took place.
site- a territory- including rights of access to the fal- Once transferred, neither the terms nor the signifi-
lows of swiddens they had once farmed, and rights to two cance of the negotiation passed from the first village's col-
relatively large tembawang, forest gardens filled with lective memory. Around 1977, more than 50 years after
fruit trees, including durian trees (Durio zibethinus) the ritual transfer, a resident of the "new" village decided
planted by several generations of their ancestors. The to make a swidden in a forest site where a cluster of durian
terms of the exchange were meant to acknowledge the la- trees would have to be cut. News of the plan to cut the
bor and claims of the ancestors who had created these durian trees traveled fast. The current adat leader from the
valuable resources - the cleared forest for fields and the first village traveled upriver and demanded additional
tembawang. The transfer also required certain ritual prac- customary compensation, not only for the direct descen-
tices to appease these ancestors for making the transfer. In dants of the trees' planter(s), but also for the whole vil-
determining the terms of the exchange, the adat leaders at lage. The payment was meant to finance a feast and cere-
the time considered the extent of the fallowed fields, the mony to appease the spirits of the ancestors who had
numbers of standing trees, and numbers of tembawang planted those particular trees. Moreover, the "new" resi-
within the territory being exchanged. dents did not object; they paid the fines associated with
The transaction was notable for several reasons. First, cutting durian trees and provided the required ritual food
the move away of the first group, and of the second group for the ceremony.
the ancestors of the tree-planters were not ritually recog- be intentional or not, but it is not only a response to state
nized. Maybe they just wanted to appease their neighbors. discourses of territorial resource management - the de-
Whatever the reason, the incident reveals that neither le- mands and assumptions in local claims may pre-date state
gal systems nor state notions of territoriality always and claims (Wadley, 2003). Thus while the power relations
forever determine what will actually happen. Even in that inhere in local territorialities may involve bio-power
transactions adhering to "customary" guidelines, alterna- (the disciplining of human practice through both coercion
tive territorialities or ways of seeing property in the land- and consent), they do not necessarily invoke the authority
scape can confound the intended rationalities of formal of national governments (Gramsci, 1971; Foucault, 1984).
government and property practices. Like state or international NGO or other forms of territo-
In many parts of the world today, territorial solutions rialized practice, localized efforts to discipline practice try
to land use and other resource conflicts have become to make certain forms of behavior vis-a-vis resources
tools of choice. Activists, scholars, planners, develop- seem normal. In some cases, local territorialities are sim-
ment practitioners, and other ordinary people deploy ter- ply overlooked or not noticed by state authorities, while
ritorial strategies and tactics to make claims on resources, state ideas of how things should work are ignored by local
ranging from gold mines to forests to agricultural land. actors (Wadley, 2003). Nevertheless, when different
Territorialization- the creation and maintenance of spa- views of normalcy, legitimacy, or rights come into conflict
tialized zones within which certain practices are permit- within the same space or territory, problems can ensue.
ted based on the explicit or implicit allocation of rights, This paper examines a few of the multiple expressions
controls, and authority- is important in global, national, of territorialized property relations that have emerged or
and local resource management strategies. Yet its ubiqui- developed in the western districts of West Kalimantan
tous presence in all manner of global and local fora, and throughout the 20th century. While I will not go into detail
its multiple forms, expressions, and origins, demand on this here, the research suggests that increasing territo-
more in-depth understanding. Why? Because territoriali- rialization- for conservation and development as well as
ties based on a variety of legitimating discourses are not for civil administration or natural resource management
exclusive zones of influence and they are clashing all - underlies and informs some aspects of the recent eth-
over the place. nic violence in this region.
Scholarly analyses of territorialization have typically Two distinct cases are made. The first example, of
focused on the analysis of the state and its agencies or on Salako Dayaks who live today in the village of Bagak
global trends (Sack, 1986; Steinberg, 1987; Barber, 1989; Sahwa, shows several different scales of "local" territori-
Menzies, 1994; Vandergeest & Peluso, 1995; Sivara- alization practices and processes. Planted and protected
makrishnan, 1997, 1999; on the global, see Brenner, trees have played important roles in processes of claiming
1999; Sassen, 2000; Sundar, 2001; Sikor, 2001). Nation- land under individual or collective jurisdiction. On the
ally focused studies have examined governmental one hand, clusters of long-living trees, primarily durian
processes of "internal territorialization" (Vandergeest & trees (Durio zibethinus), serve as markers in the broader
Peluso, 1995). These characterize state activities follow- landscape, showing where sets of people have lived in the
that does not conform to village boundaries. Although or group to affect, influence, or control people, phenom-
these landscapes of past settlement show the villagers' ena, and relationships by delimiting and asserting control
histories, Indonesian government policy drew the bounds over a geographic area." Resource control by territorial-
of administrative villages around their current living sites ization works by some person or institution of authority
in the late 1970s, intending, among other objectives, to cut determining how people may or may not use resources
them off from that regional territorial history. found within spatial boundaries. However, the directness
The second case talks about NGO practices that are ex- and intentionality implicit in this definition are not always
plicitly territorializing customary rights through counter- present in the creation of territories. Sometimes territori-
mapping. This has been accomplished through a mobi- ality comes about through less direct actions and shifts in
lization of the powerful discourse of customary rights in practice (Ludden, 2003; Moore, n.d.).
legal and policy circles in Indonesia. NGOs have inspired To understand the particular forms of territoriality that
and assisted many local communities in making maps of are recognized and not recognized in these West Kali-
village resource territories, particularly in forest areas mantan communities, however, it is important to under-
where settlements had been declared illegal by the na- stand the nature of state territorialization. NGO activity to
tional forest mapping and administration projects of the establish customary rights of villagers and to formalize
1970s and 1980s (Moniaga, 1993). The "counter-maps" property claims emerged in response to national policy
produced are expected to gain legitimacy by using the lan- and practice during the so-called "New Order" regime of
guage of landed property rights (territorial claims) and us- Suharto (1966-1998). The Suharto regime's intense drive
ing a "textual form"~ a map ~understood by powerful to bring the most resource-rich areas of Indonesia under
actors in the Indonesian government and international the authority of the central state apparatus was unprece-
conservation organizations. Counter-mappers are thus di- dented in its effectiveness (Li, 1999). Territorial controls
rectly engaged in the translation of ways of seeing prop- were a key part of the extension of central state power
erty and modes of thinking about, using, and representing (Peluso, 1992).
resources and claims (Peluso, 1995). All modem states divide their territories into complex
In a recent paper looking at contentious boundary- and overlapping political and economic zones, re-arrange
making practices, Wadley (2003) has shown just what a people and resources within these units, and create regu-
mixed-up process internal territorialization can be, con- lations delineating how and by whom these areas can be
tending as it does with shifting degrees of state power, and used (Vandergeest & Peluso, 1995). These zones are ad-
multiple claims to legitimacy, past and present, in setting ministered by agencies whose jurisdictions are territorial
boundaries. In particular, he demonstrates the difficulties as well as functional. The territories are represented on
of superimposing territorial, on-the-ground boundaries on maps, thus modem cartography plays a central role in the
pre-colonial conceptions of power over people rather than implementation and legitimation of territorial rule (see,
territory. My emphasis in this part of the paper is less on e.g., Anderson, 1991; Thongchai, 1994). Property rights
the establishment of boundaries, but more on the actual in land are represented on maps and administered by the
practices of Salako that established clear territorial claims state in virtually all nation-states today, although the types
"privately owned." Importantly, however, such alienated times certain plots of land would be cleared and planted
land still remains within state jurisdiction and both its repeatedly by an individual, and over time that plot would
recording and its transfer become means by which states come to be recognized as an individual's (or a couple's)
control both the people and the land they claim to "own" holding rather than common property, although other kin
(Kain & Baigent, 1992). might ask to borrow it to plant rice for a season. Such
Territorialization can thus refer to any attempt to ex- practices varied within and across villages.
clude or include people by reference to a piece of land Salako, again like other Dayaks, also recognize non-
marked in some way by recognizable geographic bound- territorial claims for access to and control of forest prod-
aries (Menzies, 1994). Boundaries must be recognizable ucts. Rights to these were/are held by the individuals who
(if not by the state by another arbitrating authority) or find, protect, plant, encourage, or otherwise manage them
they cannot serve their inclusionary or exclusionary pur- (Peluso & Padoch, 1996; Peluso, 1996). A resource's bio-
poses (Rose, 1994). logical characteristics can impart territorializing compo-
Despite Sack's (1986:21-22) claim that territorial nents. Once trees are planted or claimed, other users lose
classification and control of resources often replaces the access to the land in which they grow and to other possi-
regulation of access to specific resources within a territo- ble alternative uses of that land. If the trees retain their
rial zone, territorial controls often supersede - rather value and meaning through multiple generations, they can
than replace- other types of regulation (Sivaramakrish- preclude other uses for a long time. Owners of such trees
nan, 1999). It might be argued that only a fine line sepa- effectively gain territorial control, which can be relatively
rates the combination of territorial and non-territorial extensive if one person plants multiple trees in close prox-
rights to and controls on resources and the domination of imity.
one sort by another. As the cases described here show, When people lived in longhouses, with each family in
changes in everyday practices can be just as effective as their own apartments (hi 'ik), they planted fruit trees or
direct and open strategies for laying claim to resource ter- protected self-sown trees right outside their apartments.
ritories. Words and actions, like maps, matter. When a longhouse or an apartment moved, people gener-
ally took as much of the building materials as they could
move and used them again. In the gaps remaining, apart-
Case 1: Territorialized Salako property rights; ment members would plant more trees, especially durian.
"Villagized" territorial histories Thus these tree-planting practices during residence and in
the wake of moving meant that friends, family, and neigh-
Salako Dayaks manage a range of forest types, all with bors planted trees in close proximity to each other. Each
different sorts of origins, species compositions, and uses. tree or clump of trees (kompotn) descended to the
This is not to say, however, that they establish rigid land planters' children and grandchildren. Through the genera-
use categories or zones. The borders between these land tions, this meant that many different families owned trees
use types are blurred and uses overlap (Peluso & Padoch, within the same small territories (Sather, 1990; Padoch,
1996). 1994; Peluso & Padoch, 1996). The Salako name for these
Figure 1: Southern part of Bagak Sahwa; named encircled areas indicate timawokng (Photo and map by Charles Peters)
forests, as mentioned above, was timawokng, which trans- The broader story of Salako territorialities can be
lates as former living site (see also, Padoch & Peters, traced from timawokng to timawokng, through physically
1993; Sather, 1990; Padoch, 1994). connected groves of consecutive trees or groves that are
The location of the timawokng of Bagak Sahwa are only connected by stories. Durian trees live longer than
shown in Figure l. Transfer or sale of these trees was rel- most other fruit trees and therefore serve as the longest
atively rare, though it occurred in times of crisis (to pay term multi-generational markers. So the evidence that the
for healing, hospitalization, school fees, or other big ex- ancestors ofBagak Sahwa's residents once lived in places
penses). Given the meanings attached to these ancestral named Batukng, Bintawo' Baruk, Batakng Tangoh, Pasar,
durian trees, such transfers were fraught with meaning Marago Sanorekng, or Sarinokng is the presence of trees;
and involved important ritual. Territorial domination by a not only durian, but also tampoak, mangosteen, langsat,
single tree owner in these timawokng was also quite im- dukuh, cempedak, Kalimantan mango. How do we know
possible (see Peluso, 1996). Timawokng as a territorital they were Salako? By the names of the trees, the genealo-
entity thus came to be regarded as part of the village's gies of their managers, and the stories of the things that
common holdings. The resource of concern within these happened in those places. The presence of durian and
timawokng, however, was not the land but the trees. Indi- other fruit trees, and in more recently made timawokngs,
viduals, households, or descent groups could hold, inherit, rubber or even oil palm, provide evidence that this land
or transfer rights or access to specific trees within the was once under rice and other field crops. Burial grounds
timawokng, in the gardens around their houses or apart- were sometimes coincident with timawokng or special
ments, and in surrounding forest areas. These practices durian trees were planted in burial grounds. In either case,
produced co-existing, multi-scaled collective and individ- the practice of mixing the residences of the dead with the
ual territorialities, all in one site. ancestor trees of the living ensured that those trees would
ments were later designated parts of different administra- as Zerner (1990) has pointed out. The politics of the "nat-
tive villages. Each time a house moved or split, a decision ural" label meant that people could lose access to the fruits
about whether to establish a new burial ground or continue of their own or their ancestors' labor, and that the trees
using the old one had to be made - depending on how could be cut down or reallocated by the government or its
close or far the group moved, this would be more or less of agents.
an option. Close relations between people in Pasar and National and global territorialization processes have
Bagak are explained in part by their sharing a historical had direct and indirect sedentarizing effects here. Govern-
burial ground. This means they share a common settlement ment recognition or acceptance of earlier modes of terri-
history, even though today they are located in separate ad- torial organization has not been steady over the years -
ministrative villages (Takdir, 1998: 27). but most so-called "local" or "customary" categories can
The landscape alterations made to river sites that be- not be called purely Salako either. On the government
came bathing spaces also mark sites of former residence side, for example, settlements used to be organized into
in the forest or in old timawokng. Specific places had to benua - clusters of 4-5 longhouses or settlements with a
be marked as bathing places to prevent bathing into the "customary head" appointed for life. This person was re-
same flow of water used for drinking, and to preserve sponsible for connections with outside authorities, mostly
some degree of modesty for the bathers. These places can coming in the forms of Malay tax collectors. Through the
be identified today by the specific speckled plants and entire period Sukarno served as president of Indonesia,
flowers (puring) planted there, even if the path of the river and in the early years of the Suharto regime, "benua" was
has changed since people lived there. used as a territorial organizing form for administrative and
Embedding an intricate web of actions and meanings government data collection purposes. One kecamatan
in the landscape, residents simultaneously created a mate- (sub-district) contained several benua. But the 1979 law
rial base connecting Salako pasts and futures - in their on village authority changed all this, making villages the
cuttings, their diggings and their plantings. Manifest in the only administrative category below the sub-district level,
landscape features themselves, these networks of social and soon thereafter delimiting village boundaries that
relations are part "nature," part human - trees with only partially coincided with historical, "customary" as-
names, fruit forests that grow from the resting places of sociations.
the dead but feed the living, places where people have Less directly, the space immediately outside the for-
bathed, farmed, met, sheltered themselves from head- mal village boundaries ofBagak has "filled up" over time.
hunters and tax collectors. These landscape features were To the west of Bagak is a nearly 100-year-old Capu-
not only sites where practices of everyday life were per- chin mission and school and to the south a small (3000-
formed, but as human-nature creations, they colonized the hectare) reserve - a watershed protection area - created
land, making each site a territory. in the period after 1932. In addition to the agricultural
The village/settlement/longhouse's authority over lands and timawokng of adjacent administrative villages,
many of these timawokng territories as well as descen- created by the government, there are several special trans-
dents' access to them was obscured by the rise of central migration sites where retired police and soldiers were a!-
tory-producing practices of these Bagak Salako came in claims. Whereas previously they had claimed the lands
the 1920s. At that time, the colonial authorities initiated encompassed by the reserve by clearing forest, making
plans to turn the upper slopes of the mountain complex, swiddens, and planting the fallows, now their reclaiming
including about a third of Salako fields, fallows, and practices had to be limited to planting trees. Whereas at
forests, into a watershed protection area. This meant mov- first they might be seen as having lost control of the re-
ing people out of their current living sites and away from serve land, their practices have created a territory over
the multiple timawokng, burial grounds, active swidden which they have partial control or even "graduated sover-
fallows, and fields that they had created over the years. eignty" (see Ong, 1999).
Local resistance was for the most part intense, although Contestation is visible in the language as well. Colo-
some local leaders saw benefits in moving closer to roads nial and contemporary state authorities tried to create a
and other infrastructure (Takdir, 1998). In response to this territorially bounded landscape, complete with formal
initial resistance, the Dutch moved the proposed reserve zoning category names, but the villagers continue to use
boundary above some of the old longhouse sites, restor- their own territorial names. For example, officials would
ing a good deal of the people's ancestral territory. But refer to "being in the reserve" or "being out of the re-
once everyone was off the mountain in 1940, the territo- serve," while local people refer to places by the names of
rial establishment ofBagak Sahwa as a permanent village the ancestors who planted durian trees there, who made
was set in motion. This meant, in the old ways, that it swiddens there, or who had been a part of some memo-
would likely never become a timawokng in its own right rable historical event in those places. In other words,
- it was slated to remain an active settlement. through everyday practice and speech, they have their
Even after moving, however, people continued to ac- own zones that do not concede the primacy of the govern-
tively contest the boundaries and the very legitimacy of ment's classifications (and intended limits on their activi-
the reserve through efforts to farm or harvest products ties). Using their own terms in some sense recalls both
within it. Explicit contestation was most common during their ancestral claims to the reserve territory and the prac-
times of political upheaval. During the Japanese occupa- tices of place-making and naming that hark back to earlier
tion (1942 to 1945), the Indonesian revolution, and the times.
early years of Indonesian independence, when surveil- Other examples of local territorializations could be
lance of state forests was practically non-existent, many given but constraints on the length of this paper prevent me
villagers made swiddens within the reserve and planted going into detail. Intensified tree planting and the ever-in-
rubber and fruit in the fallows. Villagers today still har- creasing commercialization of the economy have led to
vest the durian and other fruits planted within the reserve changes in inheritance practices with a greater focus on
border during this time, and visit the timawokng created plots of land rather than on individual or clusters of trees.
before the reserve came. Some have even planted new For rubber, always and only a commercial crop, this type
fruit and rubber gardens "inside." of change has little effect on rubber's meaning. Durian, on
Yet changing political circumstances in Indonesia to- the other hand, still represents ancestral ties and claims, so
day (and since 1998) have led to a re-embracing of the be- there is a broader impact when changes in patterns of
trees as components of territorialized property. on the racial status of the claimant. Anyone or group de-
This is not to argue that these new practices will freeze fined as a "native" (inlander) could hold customary land
into immutable laws and rules, as rules are being re-inter- (tanah adat) individually or collectively. Europeans (a
preted all the time, as they probably always have been. category which included Japanese) and Chinese could
Grandparent trees, whether planted in the timawokng or in never own customary land but could lease land or conces-
other places (near swidden fallows or in current house sion rights from the government on all other unencum-
yards) still retain a great deal of meaning and value for bered state land.
many villagers. Not every descent group has privatized or The forests of Java were carved out of this state land,
territorialized rights to the trees they would have in- reserved, mapped, and had management plans drawn up
evitably held in common in earlier times. Yet tensions are during the 19th and early 20th centuries (Peluso, 1992).
emerging between new and old practices, between territo- Customary or village lands were not mapped (Burns,
rial and non-territorial forms of claiming and new ways of 1999), but constituted a kind of residual category when
seeing property. forests or agricultural lease areas and other major land
uses were surveyed, gazetted, and demarcated in the field
and on maps. Of course, not everyone inside or outside
Case 2: Directly contesting the territorial claims of government agreed with the definitions of particular tracts
the state: NGO territorializations. of land as "free" or "unfree." Conflict over land and
forests was the norm rather than the exception, even in
My second example of local territorialization involves In- colonial Java where the forest department gained territo-
donesian environmental NGOs who focused much of their rial ascendancy quite rapidly (Kartodirdjo, 1973; Peluso,
advocacy in West Kalimantan and elsewhere on village or 1992; Burns, 1999; see also, Peluso & Vandergeest,
"customary" land rights in the early 1990s. "Counter-map- 2001).
ping" became a key component to their advocacy strate- Because of differences in the origins and nature of
gies. The maps of people's claims, which largely did not colonial rule around the NEI, the legal bases of the
coincide with the government's ideas of who had rights to Domeinverklaring were contested when colonial foresters
which pieces of land, were viewed as alternatives to the first tried to constitute political forests outside Java, in-
maps used by government, industry, and "Big Conserva- cluding in Western Borneo (GOI, 1986; Potter, 1988;
tion" (Peluso, 1995). Because their efforts were conceived Peluso & Vandergeest, 2001 ). Political forests - territo-
directly in response to state policies, laws, and maps that rial entities defined as political-administrative units re-
effectively erased local people's claims from all area de- gardless of the kind of vegetative cover they actually sup-
fined as "state forest," I will briefly describe the specific ported- only came to dominate the legal landscape in
state policies and practices they were contesting before West Kalimantan after 1967, as mentioned above, when
discussing their alternative and counter -territorialities. Foreign Investment act no. 1 and Forestry Act no. 5 were
Territoriality in Indonesian forest management goes passed. Some 59% of West Kalimantan was under politi-
back to the Domeinverklaring, passed in 1870 as part of cal forest (Boomgaard, 1996). This legislation vested cen-
lands could be sold to other Indonesian citizens. In prac- under colonial forestry). Hundreds of villages that fell
tice this rarely happened, particularly in outlying areas. within the broad jurisdictions of forests mapped from an
Having a single legal code for land administration - office in Jakarta or Bogor, were simply left off the maps
i.e., a code that was not differentiated by racialized iden- (Moniaga, 1993). Some land use maps showed what the
tities as had been the case under colonial-era legal plural- government considered to be permanent cultivation (irri-
ism- was seen as a unifying mechanism for the nascent gated rice land), but even such plots could be regarded as
nation-state. At the same time, it diminished the jurisdic- criminal incursions on the state forest lands - squatting
tion and authority of some local groups over lands they -and people's rights and claims were disregarded even
had claimed or assumed were theirs under Dutch rule. In though a mere scratching of the historical surface could
some places, this sort of central government authority show otherwise. In the cases where some nod might be
was welcomed, as local "customary" systems involved given to local people's presence, compensation to local
slavery, servitude, or other feudal forms of social organi- people with resources and land within political forests was
zation (see, e.g., Afiff, 2003). In other places, it was never a recognition of territorial rights, but of rights to
viewed as a necessary part of the modernizing nation- trees (Zerner, 1990). These policies and laws created new
building process following a long period of colonialism. relations between property rights in trees and land, and
It was not until later, when the law's intents were reinter- new larger scale territorialities among state, village, and
preted and distorted under the Suharto regime, that some individual claims, forms of authority, and jurisdictions.
people began to feel the move to a single legal system had Today, these institutions, policies, and practices are
been folly. changing again in the wake of decentralization and refor-
The Forest Act of 1967, coming seven years after the masi. As Wadley (2003) has pointed out, state power since
BAL, had the effect of creating a landed estate under the 1998 has been largely ineffective, particularly in its en-
Department/Ministry of Forestry that amounted to some forcement of its own claims. Government strategies and
72% of the nation-state's total land area. Mature forest, techniques are being influenced by NGO and local insti-
in particular, had long been treated by Indonesian and tutions, practices, and constructs, while the practical poli-
Dutch governments and scientists as if it were "virgin," tics of enforcement are changing. The following discus-
and therefore automatically under the direct authority of sion, however, deals primarily with the counter-mapping
the state. Recognizing it as the product of local practices efforts that emerged and expanded during the second half
- whether protection of a standing reserve for forest of the Suharto regime.
products, or production of a standing forest through plant- No longer the quasi-clandestine enterprise it was under
ing and other forms of management in swidden fallows Suharto, since Reformasi, counter-maps have been made
- would threaten its definition as untouched and there- in thousands of villages across Indonesia and are actively
fore "free"- unencumbered. Reflecting colonial "sci- used (with mixed results) to contest the appropriation of
entific" forestry and political views, the Forest Act their lands for resource extraction, conservation, and the
clouded the possibility for any of the country's mature tourist industry (Kristianus et al., 1998).Using a method
forests to be officially viewed as products of local peo- developed by Jeff Fox of the East-West Center (Fox,
label "customary" resources by landed categories. By do- tice. While countermappers often eschew the govern-
ing so, they have (mostly inadvertently) invoked the colo- ment's overarching claims to forests, it uses some of the
nial legal system that divided land between customary categories of contemporary forest management- e.g., by
land and unencumbered state land. What the NGOs have identifYing village "protection forests" - in order to le-
missed in naming these customary lands on counter maps gitimate its claims to those same government authorities.
was the fact that even "customary land" was still "state In other words, using "villages" - a sedentary govern-
land," and still subject to colonial law, albeit through dif- ment territorial administration concept - or "protection
ferent means than those used to adjudicate commercial forests"- an ahistorical term constructed to indicate for-
lands leased to Europeans and Chinese. What differed was est areas that will not be subject to extraction- as terms
not the presence or absence of state authority, but the man- to explain local history in some ways confounds the
ner in which such lands were administered and adjudi- "counter" dimensions of "counter-mapping."
cated, i.e., through a system of native courts, whose low- In their defense, the maps became mechanisms for
est level of authority was vested in the head of a long- strengthening so-called indigenous claims to forest terri-
house. Effectively, this conferred greater territorial au- tory by using more scientific methods and technologies to
thority to local leaders and communities (at least those document these claims. Counter-mappers attempted to
recognized by the colonial government), but did not cre- use science to speak truth to scientific power, in terms rec-
ate the kind of autonomous local government structure ognizable to scientists and the policy makers they advised.
implied by the making of counter-maps and their use in They used hand-held GPS devices to make "accurate"
the current customary rights movement. measurements, they used government maps but "filled in"
The process of making these maps and the maps them- the abstract zones and conceptual environments created
selves are meant to illustrate how "indigenous" ways of by government mappers, and tried to place real people and
organizing and allocating space support or conflict with villages in the abstract empty spaces of these mapped
state forest management categories and processes. They zones.
counterpose indigeneity (which is conflated with minority In the course of these exercises, some mappers either
ethnic status on a national level) with Indonesian state purposefully or inadvertently racialized the landscape in
ideas of spatial organization. Yet the terms of counter- ways that were not exactly true to the landscape's history.
mappers are forced by the politics of the mapping contro- They counted the numbers of residents categorized ac-
versies and conflicts to use the language and tools of the cording to the languages people spoke at home and corre-
government, inevitably affecting the possible outcomes of lated the Dayak residents of these areas with various for-
the exercise. The mappers talk to villagers about village est territories. In districts which were ethnically mixed,
land tenure and inheritance, the nature of individual and the map makers assigned a majority ethnicity. Issues such
community decisions regarding resource use, and the as the historical movement of longhouses, families, and
ways that "villagers" have dealt with "outsiders" seeking individuals, and intermarriage between people of different
access to local resources. They then put this information ethnicities were glossed over an ignored. Moreover, these
onto sketch maps. This emphasis on "villages" without re- new notions of territoriality constituted a strange con-
gard to their historical origins and precedents, contradicts glomeration of colonial and contemporary governance
nial and contemporary Indonesian state. Changing Economy in Indonesia, Volume 14: Forests
Conversely, when looking at options for people whose and Forestry, 1823-1941. Amsterdam, Royal Tropical
individual and group claims were never fully acknowl- Institute.
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