‘Dayak, Wake Up’

Abstract

Struggles over land are a vibrant issue in today’s Indonesia and especially pressing in Central Kalimantan, as it is the new frontier of coal extraction. The mining areas overlap with the land used by ethnic groups, all subsumed under the term ‘Dayak’. Linking to ethnic revitalization since the 2000s, the Dayak Misik (Dayak, wake up) scheme promises ‘indigenous Dayak’ to secure formal rights to land. In the framework of what I call ‘frontier ecologies’, members of the ethnic group Murung implemented the scheme and may be successful in securing access and rights to land in the future. However, the semi-nomadic Punan Murung rejected the programme because it contradicts their dynamic approach to space in the framework of place-based, interrelated ecologies. Thus, essentializations and instrumentalizations of ethnicity and the constitution of space affirm current hegemonial notions of land and indigenous rights, in which either people or plurality are excluded.