Tanah Berkat (Blessed Land): The Source of the Local in the Banda Islands, Central Maluku

Abstract

In this paper Winn argues that the inhabitants of the Banda Islands use their connections to their land (the islands themselves) as a means of legitimizing their status as “being local,” despite the fact that they all recognize themselves as descendants of immigrants. They affirm their status as local through membership in an island-wide moral and social order known as negeri adat and the continual practice of rituals associated with that order. For those members who are Muslim, their connection to Islam serves to further strengthen this sense of community and locality.Negeri adat is an idealized form of a community, which represents and is used to support and idealized notion of proper social relations, and establishes a set of physical and moral conditions that are understood as underpinning and enabling community resistance. Locals often emphasize that social differentiation based on issues of origin in negeri adat is impossible, because everyone is ultimately the son or daughter of an immigrant. All those who immigrated to the island in the past were required to join negeri adat, and to support it. Negeri adat also has connections to issues of land ownership and agriculture, as the rules and dictates of it are often employed in deciding issues of inheritance and control over land (as opposed to the rules and dictates set out by the Indonesian government, which legally owns all of the land).The strength of negeri adat is drawn out of and reinforce through rituals associated with keramat, sites on the islands that have been rendered sacred through their association with mythical and historical spiritual figures. For the Bandanese, the land itself is sacred; it is by virtue of its nearness to God that those who involve themselves with the rituals of the land can be seen as local. Keramat gain importance after the deaths of spiritual figures they are associated with, but it is not the spiritual figures that make them sacred; rather, the spiritual figures (such as mythical founders) are conduits for the blessings that God has bestowed upon the land. Keramat bear witness to the generalized significance of the Banda Islands in the eyes of God. Consequently, in order for the Bandanese and other immigrants to be considered local, they have to hold to various rituals associated with these sites (and with negeri adat).