Country: Indonesia

Group: Dayak

Date: 4/12/2020

Team: Colleen Clauss (lead), Erika Walker, Vianney Mancilla

The transmigration (transmigrasi) program sponsored by the Indonesian government has sent migrants from different parts of Indonesia into the historical land of the Dayak people, people of several indigenous ethnic groups from the island of Borneo. This has put pressure on their culture and the environment that provides their traditional livelihood. This pressure has led to violent pushbacks by the Dayak people, as they are “traditionally farmers and hunters [and] feel marginalised by rapid development in the region and view the migrant Madurese as aggressive settlers,” competing with them for their jobs and land (“Horrors,” 2001; Head, 2001; O’Connor, 2003). The Indonesian government’s attempts to maximize the harvesting of lumber, rubber, and palm oil have made the Dayak people living in these areas less able to provide for themselves through growing rice and hunting local wildlife (Minority Rights Group, 2018a; O’Connor, 2003). The government did not acknowledge the Dayaks’ rights over their land, and in the 1970s, approximately 2.5 million indigenous people, including the Dayaks, were displaced by logging and other activities (Minority Rights Group, 2018). The largely Christian and Kaharingan Dayak population may feel that their religion and culture are threatened by the influx of Muslim Mandurese, whom they “accuse…of being insensitive to their customs and culture” (Head, 2001). The in-flow of Indonesian transmigrant people (mostly from the country’s larger ethnic groups) and their customs leads the Dayaks to see “transmigration [as] a form of cultural imperialism, another mechanism for the ‘‘Javanization’’ of Indonesia” (O’Connor, 2003). Authorities fail to allow the Dayak to express their language and culture in areas of education or administration, and non-Dayaks are increasingly dominating in areas of public life in their traditional land (Minority Rights Group, 2018).

Our team ranked the data quality as a 2 because specific evidence was found from a peer-reviewed journal, which supported information from credible, less formal sources. This is an appropriate example of ethnocide because the Dayak people’s traditional means of livelihood are being taken away due to land grabs and destruction of their environment. The Dayak people may also feel that their religion, its place in their culture, and other customs of theirs are being threatened by the influx of transmigrants.

Sources

  1. Head, J. (2001, February 28). Analysis: Behind the Borneo violence. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1185736.stm
  2. Horrors of Borneo massacre emerge. (2001, February 27). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1191865.stm
  3. Minority Rights Group. (2018b, January). Dayak. Minority Rights Group. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/dayak/
  4. O’Connor, C. M. (2003). Effects of Central Decisions on Local Livelihoods in Indonesia: Potential Synergies Between the Programs of Transmigration and Industrial Forest Conversion. Population and Environment, 25(4), 319–333. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:POEN.0000036483.48822.2f