Tnyafar: Women, Livelihoods Strategy in Selaru Island, West Southeast Maluku District

Abstract

Tnyafar as local wisdom is closely related to women as a regulator of family income strategy. Through tnyafar women express alternatives to meet the needs of families in a variety of conditions, both social, economic, and physical environment. One of the strategies undertaken in tnyafar concept is to do farming activities with a variety of food crops, plantation crops, even developed a special food crops currently facing food emergencies also utilization of coastal areas for seaweed commodities. Thus, women have demonstrated the role of implementing farming activities had even surpassed conception of agroforestry is known so far. Therefore, at this time the role of women not only dominant in the domestic area, but be extended to cover public areas. Keywords-local knowledge, women, livelihood strategies, small island, dusun, and arin. I. INTRODUCTIO N Background Women role was recognizable since a long ago. Communal tradition divided work categories into light and heavy. Such work division has been attended by Tanimbar community in Maluku Tenggara Barat. Men were charged with heavy work, including opening field for a new planting land, cutting trees, clearing spot for business location, and others. Women only continued what men did after heavy work finished. It means that after field was opened, then activities of preparing seeds, planting, managing against pest and disease, weeding, harvesting and marketing, were works that must be done by women, and it became their legacy throughout generations. All these processes were given a label of "Tnyafar" where households left their village and settled temporarily on their farmland. Indeed, Tnyafar process was a local wisdom that placed women in an important position for fulfilling household necessities. Early description of Tnyafar was explained as following: 1. Women role was aligning with Tnyafar implementation, where women role was extensive and severe. It impacted on the continuity of Tnyafar which also influenced the sustainability of fulfilling household necessities because Tnyafar was also considered as a strategy of household livelihood. 2. Women activities were compatible to Tnyafar implementation because the displacement of women role dominated public sector, meaning that women was previously occupying domestic sector, but their role shifted from domestic to public realm, with a possible domination in public sector in the future. The community of Selaru Island was the occupant of coastal part of the island. Their local economic was dominated by farming and fishery sectors. In farming sector, the community cultivated crops including tubers, legumes, corns, vegetables, and dry-land rices. Farming and fishery sectors were managed on Tnyafar. Land-open method for shifted-farming or gardening was using slash-and-burn system. It involved traditional technology and local technique, and it was still influenced by customs that regulated the relationship between human and soil/land. In some villages, the opening of new garden must apply procedures in the customs although few changes had recently been made (Atsea, 2011). Pattiselanno et al (2015) explained that in recent days, fallow period was shorter because people tended to look for the land nearby their residence to be cultivated as garden. It was evident possibly because primary forest was too far from the village. The opening of new road could help shortening the journey the farmers must take to go to their gardens because it provided clean path free from bushes that could be past over by farmers by riding on rented-motorcyclist.