Indonesia is a country of rich maritime culture. One of the reasons for this is the archipelagic nature of the country. Indonesia is a country with 5.8 millions m2 of its territory is marine water. Our sea is three times larger than the land, which is only 1.9 millions m2. These waters—located in the tropical zone which support high biodiversity—is also the location where around 17,000 islands, mostly small in size, sit. This makes Indonesia as the second longest country in the world in term of coastline (95.181 km). With these geo-spatial characteristics, it is a nature call for Indonesians, particularly coastal people to adapt their live and livelihoods to marine environment. Thus, for us to develop maritime culture is essential. Further, it is not just a maritime culture but a culture that should be adapted to tropical waters— with mega bio-diversity—, shallow and deep water of and between Idian and Pacific Oceans. Hence, it’s logical if our maritime culture is so rich.
In Indonesia, the discussions of maritime culture should, at least, talk about four categorical but interlelated cultural groups associated with four types of communities; (1) the Bajau or Orang Laut (The People of the Sea) or commonly also called the Sea Nomad, (2) fishing communities, (3) sailing communities, and (4) coastal communities. In this regard, according to national sensus 2000, Indonesia was a home to 158.970 Bajau people (Sea Nomad). Although majority of them have given up living on the boat, most of them still live either in settlement contructed on the coastal waters— they still live on the water—or in the coastal land. They are those whom more than 70% of their live and livelihoods depend on marine ecosystem. They are the very people of maritime culture. Indonesia is also a home for 2,261,874 fishers (2016). They fish with 625.633 boats of various size (2014, see Figure 1 for some examples), majority of which (95,6%) are less than 10 gross tones. The latter means that they are small scale or traditional fishers. They are those who learn fishing knowledge and skill from their fellow fishers of older generation or their peers. So, it is legitimate to say that fishing for them is practicing culture.
On sailing culture, the archipelagic nature of the country has also forced people to use sailing as a traditional mode of transportation. This is recorded in one of our songs. When we were little, we used to sing the following song:
Although most of people would think that the song records our historical fact as most of the sailing traditions, particularly associated with long overseas voyages, have gone, but some domestics’ intra and inter islands traditional sailing (
Finally, on coastal communities, the statistics are as follows, 140 millions out of 250 millions of Indonesian are living in coastal areas and 297 of 540 districts/cities are aso located on coastal areas. Altought not all coastal communities has strong maritime culture, studies show that many coastal communities have developed traditional marine/coastal resource management. Studies also found that these tradition scatered from the western tip of the country, Aceh to the eastern most, the Papua (Figure 3).
A comprehenship discussion of Indonesian maritime culture, i.e the Sea Nomads, fishing and sailing cultures as well as traditional marine resource management is beyond a scope of a single article or even a book. In fact a comprehenship discussion on one cultural category alone might deserve many articles or books. Nonetheless, as an introductory work, this paper would like to cover a discussion on traditional marine resource management focusing on their characteristics, the state and various empowerment efforts. In this regard, I would describe two examples from Papua and Maluku.
Traditional Marine Resource Management in Indonesia: Examples from Papua and
Maluku
The practice of traditional marine resource management in Papua lies in two main concepts,
In practice, nonetheless, the daily management of the communal marine territory is led by village government
The second concept is
Similar to the practice in Papua, traditional marine resource management in Maluku also lies in two main concepts. The first concept is
On types of rights associated with a petuanan unit, the same as in Papua, people in Maluku recognize
As a sign of their familiarity, a basis of their territorial claim, as well as for management purposes, in Maluku, people usually develop elaborated traditional zonation or naming systems to their territory. The followings are two examples of this. The first one is from Kei Besar (Great Kei) island and the second is from Dullah Laut Village, Kei Kecil (Small Kei) archipelago in Southeast Maluku. Figure 5 shows that people divide marine area into eight different zones, each zone has its own name, characteristics and use. For example,
In Dullah Laut Island on Kei Kecil archipelago, people recognize their marine area via naming rather than zonation system (see Figure 6). The sea territory (
The second concept in the practice of traditional marine resource management in Maluku is Sasi. This concept refers to system of beliefs, rules and rituals pertaining to temporal prohibitions on use of a particular resource or territory
In the former time, before 1970s, the Bia Lola Sasi could last until three years. Since 1970 an until now people harvest Bia Lola and Tripang every year, usually close to Christmas time for Christian communities. The driver of implementing the tradition of Sasi, in this regard, is the income from harvesting the marine species.
The State and Empowerment of Traditional Marine Resource Management
During the Indonesian New Order Regime (1966-1998), particularly after the passing of the Village Law No. 5/1979, Indonesian traditional world was in crisis; being marginalized and weakened. As Johannes (1978, 1981) identified in Micronesia, the weakening of the marine culture was due to government regulations and intensification of market economy. The New Order Regime looked at tradition and traditional people as barriers to development. In fact, development was meant to modernize the Indonesian traditional world. The Village Law No. 5/1979 was an instrument to create a ‘modern’ village government body and system that were the same for all Indonesian. Thus there was no room for Indonesian traditional cultures and organizations. The penetration of market economy has also eroded traditional social cohesion and institutions. People rushed for cash as they needed more money for fulfilling their new needs brought about by market economy. Traditional norms and leaders were no longer important. In fact, tended to be disregarded.
It was not until 1980s concerns on traditional marine resource management emerged. Interestingly it started in Maluku with concern on Sasi. Inspired by widespread environmental and social movements, NGO activists became actively involved in empowering local leaders to revive and document their tradition (see Kissya 1995; Rahail 1995). A major focus of the initiatives has been identifying the elements of resource management and the spatial distribution of such practices. These efforts were formally acknowledged when Kalpataru—the medal for special achievement in environmental conservation was awarded to village traditional leader in Central Maluku for practicing ‘sustainable’ traditional resource management, that is the Sasi Ikan Lompa.
Adopting international discourse on the common pool resource management, academia also involved in study on traditional marine resource management in Maluku in the same period. Lokolo (1988, 1994), Bailey and Zerner (1992) and Nikijuluw (1994) and (Pannell 1997) are some examples of such works. They all consider the practice is important for both resource sustainability and protecting the right of traditional people for managing their own resources and people.
The formal government support for the strengthening of the traditional marine resource management came after the collapsed of the Indonesian New Order Regime in 1998. The changing regime has brought decentralization and more autonomy to local governments. The formal government acknowledgement on the traditional wisdom, traditional community rights come also as part of the package. Since then, many laws and other regulations mention explicitly the obligation of government, business entity to protect and regard the practice of traditional resource management, including marine resource management. Table 1(p.30) shows some of these laws and regulations.
[Table 1.] Some Laws and Regulations that Empower Traditional Resource Management
Some Laws and Regulations that Empower Traditional Resource Management
Reading the laws and regulations in table 1, we can see that the government empowerment of traditional marine resource management is more for the purpose of increasing the sustainability and fairness of the management as well as acknowledging the rights of traditional people. I should also note that at the practical level, some effort of empowerments are geared toward the development of secondary use of the practice as tourist attraction. There are some positive results for this but also some risk from its commodification. Economic motive might erode the social and cultural values of the practice. For example, people question the aspect of resource sustainability of Sasi Lompa in Haruku when so many people were invited to take part in the harvest.
Another revitalization efforts that worth mentioning, other than government regulation, is the work of conservation NGOs. This is also a relatively new trend, about a decade long. The difficulties and problems experienced my conservation NGOs when they apply conventional conservation approach—that is looking at people as and ‘enemy’ of conservation or people as ‘predators’ of those conserved natural resources and ecosystems—has shifted the paradigm to embrace the people/ community as collaborator of /for conservation. One of their strategiey of using people as their collaborators is making use of their tradition for conservation purposes. In this regard, these NGOs work with the community to strengthen their traditional marine resource management with some upgrade, that is putting in conservation concerns in the traditional practices.
One of well-known programs on this is the program developed by the Indonesian Locally Managed Marine Area (ILMMA). This NGOs have supported more than hundreds villages in Papua and Maluku to strengthen their traditional marine resource management practices. The programs include, not exclusively, the formalization of the traditional into the form of village regulation, adding permanent no take zone to the tradition of sasi and kiripup. In Tanimbar Kei, they also added access fee to outsider fishers. This fee is a new element in the tradition, but considered as very important. The access fee has made the community being able to collect enough fund to carry out more management activities. In fact, this fee has also made them possible to provide scholarship for kids to go studying in the city and helping ill people to have a better treatment in the city.
I would consider this paper as an initial step to record and share the Indonesian maritime culture. First, I argue that Indonesia has a rich maritime culture as it is, for a simple reason because we are an archipelagic country. We do not have much option rather than developing maritime culture as our means of adaptation. Second, the discussion of maritime culture in Indonesia should cover about the Bajau people (the Sea Nomad), fishing culture, sailing culture and the culture of coastal communities, particularly to their traditional marine resource management.
Further, due to space limitation, this paper only focuses on the culture of marine resource management that is practiced in Papua and Maluku. In regard, this paper tries to shows that some similarities and differences of the practices are obvious. While the basis of both practices are the concept of communal marine tenure and the tradition of closing-opening seasons, the right holder units and motives behind these practices are different. If the main right holder unit of communal tenure in Papua is keret (clan) and village community, in Maluku the rights holder unit ranging from several clans that form the core member of the community up to an ethnic group. In Papua the motive that drives the opening and closing seasons is socio-religious, while in Maluku, it is more the condition of the resources and economy.
This paper has also noted that while during the New Order Regime the tradition tend to be marginalized and weakened, the reform era (Post-new Order) have brought empowerment. These involve research and community empowerment on the ground and discursive level and also government policy support. The later takes the form of the passing of laws and regulation that acknowledge and protect traditional marine resource management.
Finally, on the ground or in the sea, the revitalization or strengthening of the culture of marine resource management is also carried out with the support of NGOs. Interestingly, this effort is not merely a means of cultural revitalization but also for environmental conservation.