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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

BFF

Some days before, I’m being pinged in my ***, a friend asked me to join a group chat with another friend. Those are two of my best friend in the world. Amazingly they are the ones who are not in similar group age, not in similar profession, not having the similar background. They and I only had one thing in common : our passion on one thing and one thing only : racing car.

Due to my passionate hobby, I found so many like me, ones who would dedicate their every spare time into it. I love racing cars and so are they. We met by chance, and by new amazing this century tool : internet. Funny thing is , when we met, we are so overwhelmed by our passion in racing, but after we get to know each other, we drifted away from that topic. We then discussed everything under the sky and hey ho, we are becoming best of friends.

Friendship which I appreciate more than some because ours are no pretensions. Ours made not due to physical encounters (which sometimes somehow could direct to prejudices). Ours made by the meeting of minds and thus I treasure.

When we chat I realized (with bit of surprise) I love them and they me. It’s amazing to know that people whom you rarely (and in one or two cases never) can really, I mean really understand you. They are the people who shared your dreams and would work hand in hand with you to reach it. They love me. That simple fact still amaze me.

I admit, I gloss some facts about me when we first know,but hey, anyone would not want so share everything on strangers don’t they ? but that doesn’t change the fact that they are ones who understand the driving force behind every decisions I made and I thank God for that.

How Indigenous You Are ?

Indigenous peoples are people, communities, and nations who claim a historical continuity and cultural affinity with societies predating contact with Western culture. These peoples consider their local cultures to be distinctly separate from contemporary Westernized cultures, and many continue to assert their sovereigntyand right to cultural self-determination. That’s the definition I got from Wikipedia. The question is, are the people of Indonesia considered indigenous ? and I am asking the whole majority, the big clusters of major ethnic groups than inhabited Indonesia, not some economically marginalized ethnic groups which automatically fall to indigenous category just because of that reason.

Let’s read the first sentence. And focus on the phrase “predating contact” . It meant that every single person in Indonesia who has a straight to the line Indonesian ancestor are indigenous. Technically.

Now lets see the statistic ;according to 2000 census Javanese 40.6%, Sundanese 15%, Madurese 3.3%, Minangkabau 2.7%, Betawi 2.4%, Bugis 2.4%, Banten 2%, Banjar 1.7%, other or unspecified 29.9% .Pardon for not getting newer census, but I think the demography would not change much.

As I know it, every ethnic groups in Indonesia claim a historical continuity and cultural affinity with societeies predating contact with western culture. Thus explained, each and every ethnic majority in Indonesia considered indigenous.

But again, is that the only considerations for indigenous-ity ? and how important the label indigenous anyway ? is indigenous is another label for discrimination ?

I tried to be fair in assessing this issue. I browse quite a lot of site discussing indigenous-ity (although internet is not the most trustable sources in the world mind you). Most of the sites talking about the indigenous as a state in which people find themselves being marginalized by one way or another, most exceptionally is the financial stances and the lack of acceses.

Then I think about one’s wise word I heard: your perception shapes you. So, if we considered that indeigenousity similar to poverty, is it the way to condemn the so called indigenous people into that fate ?

And if that is so, should we stop this issue altogether ?

Not very long ago, I heard one of the local government officials said that local government had developed a programme to help the indigenous (in our case it’s the people live in very remote area, unable to access education and financially poverty stricken- hey ho, that’s a universal definition of indigenous I guess) people in our local regency.

The indigenous people , he said will be relocated into more accessible location, in which they could access market, education and so on related to so called modern life. Then, the people will learn to interact with “ours” and adopting our way of life and being modernized. For the pilot project, 70 families will be relocated.

That sounds like a good plan – in a way. In another, do we really want to see yet another local wisdom left this earth ? yes, that so called local wisdom don’t help them got tons of money or getting a PHD for free, but it is part of our history, our heritage. Cannot we preserve the heritage and promote modernization all the same ?

Sunday, March 28, 2010