Is The Constitutional And Legal Recognition Of Traditional Community Laws Within The Multicultural Country Of Indonesia A Genuine Or Pseudo Recognition?

Abstract

Indonesia is well known amongst Southeast Asian countries for it multicultural identity in terms of ethnicity, religion, race and social stratication. Indonesia embodies its motto of Unity in Diversity, which refers to the culturally rich conguration of Indonesia, containing cultural capital and cultural power. Sowever, cultural diversity also yields con-ict due to inter-ethnic and interreligious disputes that have the potential to generate social disintegration and even threaten the fragmentation of Indonesia as a Nation State. In the eyes of legal anthropologists, sources of con-ict are often based on discriminatory policies expressed within the State’s law and legislation with regard to the recognition and protection of local communities across the country, namely adat’ communities practising traditional, customary law, known as ‘adat’. Thus, State laws enacted and enforced by the Government tend to dominate and marginalise, even ignore the rights of the local communities, particularly regarding access to and control over natural resources, which is otherwise governed by the adat law of the region. This paper attempts to oer an answer to the fundamental question of whether the 1945 Constitution recognises and protects the traditional communities and their adat laws by employing a legal anthropological approach, with the purpose of obtaining a better understanding of development of State law in a multicultural Nation and looking towards a more just and equitable Indonesian State law.