From Bizarre Encounters to Native Strangeness: Indigenous Otherness and Insider-Outsider Interactions in Indonesia

Abstract

This paper analyzes how native strangeness is produced alongside native-settler, insider-outsider frictions in Indonesia. While peculiar cultural stereotypes of Indigenous others cannot be separated from Orientalism, which follows the unequal power relations established by colonialism, another dynamic that brings about these stereotypes are the messy encounters between Indigenous people and migrants. The constantly expanding circuit of extractive capital brings disciplined bodies to resource frontiers, which intermingle with local peoples in circumstances that do not allow for proper understanding of each other. However, the strange and dangerous images of Indigenous people do not only circulate among settlers, but are also employed by Indigenous communities to negotiate, vent their grievances, or assert their autonomy, especially in the years since decentralization and the massive wave of local-migrant conflicts in 1999.