LEARNING FROM THE GREAT WISDOM OF THE NATURE

S. Djuweng and Edi Petebang

West Kalimantan is the most affected area of the smoke from the forest fire. State ministry of Environment, Sarwono Kusumaatmadja states, that some 20 million people are endangered by the smoke. The flight from and to Pontianak have been canceling for three weeks. The travel agents stop their activities. The land transportation from and to Kuching also halted. In normal condition five buses go and came to and from Kuching to Pontianak.

ChaoticThe authority in Malaysia even plan to evacuated 2.2 million people of Sarawak to Peninsular Malaysia. In addition, the Sarawak State government have been declared a state of emergency. The school are in holidays. Moreover, a hundred of fire brigade members have been sent to Pontianak to help the local government to domesticate the fire.

Smoke not only affected Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah, but also Southern Philippine. In the telephone conversation with Wilfred Tangau from Sabah on Tuesday (Sept 24), the local people in Kota Kinabalu are wearing mask when travelling outside home. “Situation is a bit chaotic. It’s dangerous to be outside home. I even stop smoking,”he said through international line.

Different from Sarawak government, West Kalimantan provincial government only states that the province is in a state of red alert, a level below state of emergency. The schools holiday was started on Monday morning. Apart from the closing of airport and travel agency, it seems that people are not well aware about the situation.

In Kalimantan side, it is reported that 20 students collapsed in Banjarmasin. At the same time, health authority in Pontianak states that the number of people visiting private clinic and hospital are reaching 4,000 per day. Main hospitals in Pontianak are also full. In kinder section, the patients are far above the capacity level. Santo Antonius hospital in Pontianak preparing temporary floor- bed for children.

According to Pontianak City Mayor, R.A. Siregar, the air pollution level is 1,890.3 microgram perm3. Therefore he urged the people to wear mask, to stop school activities, to warn the parents to control their children for not playing in the open air; to instruct all drivers to turn on their vehicle lamps; and to urge the people to monitor the next development of the situation from the authority.
The street-seller children are also wearing and selling masks. Normally, a simple mask is sold at Rp 200.00, but it increase to Rp 500.00. A long the street, all newspapers stand offers the mask. The price of a mask is range from Rp 500.00-Rp 2,500, depends on the quality.

Moreover, night life are temporarily stopped. All discotheques, pubs, keraoke, restaurant at all classes are still in operation, but are lack of attendants (sepi pengunjung). Mr. Miden Maniamas, a traditional chief of Kanayatn Dayak as quoted in Kalimantan Review states that the present smoke condition never happened during his 58 years life-time. “This is extraodinary. I strongly refused that the smoke is caused by Dayak farmers. We know how to control fire when we burn our paddy-field or ladang,”he said.

On Saturday (sept 20) a group of students and youth called themselve “Forum for Supporting President Soeharto’s statement on Smoke” demonstrating the head of Provincial Office of Cash-Crop Estates (Kepala Dinas Perkebunan Kalbar), Mr. Ir. Karsan Sukardi. He made a statement as quoted by Akcaya local newspaper as saying that the smoke is caused by the traditional farmers, while President Soeharto states that the smoke comes from land clearing for HTI, estates, and transmigration sites.

Failed to meet Karsan on Saturday, the students again went to the office on Wednesday. On the dialogue facilitated by Pontianak Pontianak Militaray Commander, Karsan refused the students allegation. The students asked him to apologise to the traditional farmers. The students also will bring Karsan to adat court as he abused and harrassed the Dayak farmers. Some tourists trapped in Pontianak are really disappointed with the situation. “I would not come to Kalimantan should I knew that situation is really bad,”said Cameroon Bell from Australia. He came to Kalimantan a few months ago, travelling to the interior areas, and return to Pontianak and then trapped in the smoke.

The LosesIf we could predict the loses, the lost on biodiversity and the power of nature to regulate itself is countless loses. It need at least 35 five years for tree to regenerate. Should the awareness of the 20 million people are at the level of Sarawakian, all would go to clinic. If each one spent average of ten thousand rupiahs, then we lost by some 200 billion rupiahs. We can also include the burden of flight companies, travel agency, bus Pontianak-Kuching, and the province’s income from tourist, as well the income of restaurants, and entertainment business. How much this all? Countless. Is this in comparison with 10.9 % of economic growth of West Kalimantan?

Learning from natureIn the mid of 17 century, one of the Local Government in the United State of America declared a war against the wolfs. The wolf population were above the tolerated limits, so that they disturbed the human being. The government, then send some hunters to kill the wolf. First class hunter is not a balance rivals for wolf who could not oppose the gun and bullets. Realising that hundred of wolf killed every day, one of the hunters finally refused to shoot the wolf. When he asked why he refused to do his job, he replied “Neither wolfs nor mountains agree on what I am doing, because everything in the world has the rights to exist in itself.”. The story was told by Dr. Stephan Harding to “Towards an Ecological Economics” class at Schumacher College, United Kingdom, about two years ago.
According to Stephan, this view is then being one of the principle of Deep Ecology, that, ‘the well-being and flourishing of human and non-human Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value); these values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes (Naess, 1995).” Deep Ecology is a meta Ecological Science.

Modern people would cynical when hearing that Indigenous Dayak people believe that Great Nature has her Great Spirit. Everything that existed has each own living spirit: Spirit of land, spirit of rivers, spirit of stones, spirit of tree and forest, and the spirit of human beings. Above all those spirits there is The Spirit of Spirits.
Considering that everything has its own spirit, everything has the same right to exists. If human beings are to use those things, they have to apply to the Spirit of Spirits, and this application occurs in the forms of ritual ceremonies.
Modern people could not hear the screaming of million of trees that logged down from Kalimantan rainforest, for various development projects: logging concession, timber industry plantation, cash-crop plantation and mine development projects. They could only enjoy the money resulted from it, to expense their luxurious lifestyle. The trees, animals, soil, water, stone and other living and non living creatures of course seems to be entrust, that it could not oppose against the human being. However, the massive exploitation on forest resource based has disturbed the balance of nature. Hence, the self-regulation of the earth is also skewed.

As found by Professor James Lovelock, a British scientist, the earth has its self-regulation power. The higher the bio-diversity, the more the earth regulate itself. On the contrary the lower the level of biodiversity the lesser the regulatory of the earth. He name this theory after a name of the Greek’s Goddess, Gaia.
The massive exploitation on natural resources for the sake of high economic growth has weaken the power of the earth to regulate itself. The waste of logging companies, the block river because of logging roads, and the erosion in the water catching areas, all have disturbed the mechanism of nature. The forest could not prevent itself from forest, as its self-defend components have been destroyed by human being.

The worse is the clearance of primary forest to develop the timber industrial plantation (HTI), and cash-crop plantation projects. All those HTI plan fast-growing species, and monoculture plantation. Evidently, they have the same size of leave, and the same thick of dried leaves on the grown. They are an easy-get burnt materials. When fire start in any part of it, it would easily spreading out to the whole area.

The Dayak is also of the opinion that everything in the world can be used to fulfill the basic needs of human being. However, human beings should not do everything even if they can do it. This basic principle has been made concrete in a set of laws that known as Customary Laws. These laws then govern the whole aspects of people livelihood.

Greedy people are not aware of their negative attitude towards the environment. At the same time, environment has no mouth to protest. When NGO activists warn that massive exploitation would endangered our planet, they are accused of opposing the development, and then opposing the authority.

The present smoke tragedy teach us that uncontrolled exploitation towards natural resources is no doubt endangered the human being. This a lesson from the silent nature.***

This article published in The Jakarta Post daily

AR MECER: ROAD TO BETTER LIVING THE KALIMANTANA WAY

Edi Petebang , Contributor , Pontianak | The Jakarta Pos, Wed, 12/02/2009|

Ask him about credit unions, and Anselmus Robertus Mecer’s face will break into a beaming smile.

Since 1982, the man has dedicated his life to developing credit unions, cooperative units that provides loans and other services to their members.

The 65-year-old could not help but feel proud, as he is finally reaping the benefits of years of hard work.

Until the middle of this year, he has helped set up and developed 58 cooperative
units across the country, from Papua to Batam on the Riau Islands province. Overall, his credit unions include 547,965 members with total assets of Rp 3.6 trillion.

His success made him popular among the union’s members, earning him the nickname of the “walking credit union”.

The secret of his success lies in his ability to create financial products suited to the needs of locals, their lifestyle and philosophy of life.

The four activities – engrained in locals’ everyday life – he decided to use as founding blocks for his products consist of religious rituals, daily consumption, providing seeds for farming activities and social activities.

“Whether they aware of it or not, the four activities are their road to safety,” said the father of six.

The resulting products include loans for old times (ritual), loans for daily activities (consumption), loans for investment (providing the seeds) and social loans, such as for healthcare and burial purposes.

The product names are then customized to match the characteristics of particular members. For example, financial products for unions whose members come from Dayak tribes are given Dayak names. The same goes for other products. Mecer’s strategy has helped develop credit unions in Kalimantan faster than in any other island. According to data from the Inkopdit, the national umbrella organization for credit cooperatives, Kalimantan’s unions ranked first to third in terms of number of members and asset value, out of 187 credit unions surveyed in September.

The biggest is Pancur Kasih credit union in Pontianak with 72,906 members and assets worth Rp 619 billion. The second was Lantang Tipo union, with 80,858 members and Rp 610 billion in assets; and the third place went to Keling Kumang with 59,783 members and Rp 271 billion in assets.

The success of credit unions in Kalimantan has brought many visitors to the island, local or from Malaysia, The Philippines and Vietnam, eager to set up their own cooperatives at home. Mecer then helps them with creating their own credit unions until they can run them independently.

Mecer’s system has helped create credit unions designed on the same model in Papua, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Java and all over Kalimantan, but he has yet to help individuals from overseas.

“I have received requests to help establish several units in neighboring countries but due to limited resources, I have not been able to fulfill these requests,” said the former high school teacher and lecturer at Tanjungpura University in Pontianak.
Credit unions established in West Kalimantan have not only boosted the economy but following the 1997 ethnic clashes, they also helped promote peace and reconciliation.

“We realize that within the credit unions, we blend in regardless of religion, race or status. Our basic principle is democracy, solidarity and no discrimination.”
The union’s work made the Brussel-based Coopération Internationale pour le Developpement et la Solidarité (CIDSE) select Mecer in 2007 as one of 17 people in Asia who dedicated their lives to promoting peace.

Mecer said many people initially held prejudices against credit unions, mistakenly believing they belonged to Christians who were using them to convert people to Christianity.

He said the prejudice was understandable since credit unions were first introduced in the country by Catholic priest Albrecth Karim Arbei SJ in 1967, and brought to Kalimantan by Dayak people who were also Catholics.

“But credit unions are absolutely not connected to any religion or ethnic group. Do we ever get asked about what religion our money is associated to, when we go shopping to the market?” he said at his home.

In Kalimantan’s villages, especially in West Kalimantan, banks are losing ground to credit unions, he added.

He said most people preferred credit unions because they put people, not profits, first, like most banks, and they also provided training for members.

“The credit union’s philosophy is to help ourselves through cooperation, solidarity, trust, learning, independently… The principle behind a credit union is that money is just a means but the most important thing is the people…,” said the former member of the West Kalimantan Legislative Council and former representative of Kalimantan’s Dayak minority ethnic group at the People’s Consultative Assembly.
Born and raised in a simple family in Kepatang regency, West Kalimantan, Mecer left his hometown after graduating from elementary school to attend a high school in Singkawang.

After finishing his bachelor’s degree at Bandung’s Teachers Training Institute in 1978, he became a lecturer at Tanjungpura University while teaching at several high schools.

Since his university days, he and several of his friends were already concerned about the rampant poverty among tribal communities, which they agreed resulted from poor education.

In 1982, he set up the Pancur Kasih social work foundation, which manages junior and senior high schools in 1982 and then founded Pancur Kasih credit union in 1987.
“The founders and members were teachers. We initially only invested thousands of rupiah, and many people laughed at us,” recalled Mecer, who is now chairman of the Kalimantan Credit Union Coordination Board, the main credit union organization in Kalimantan.

Between his time as a lecturer and teacher, Mecer and his colleagues continued developing credit unions in villages.

After all these years, he still tirelessly promotes credit unions.

“The biggest failure of government-sponsored cooperatives is that the government is never really involved, standing on the sidelines merely supervising, so it’s not responsible for the organization’s life or death,” he said.

Although the credit unions he helped developed have improved people’s wellbeing, Mecer still has another hope.

“I’m sure that if 50 percent of people in West Kalimantan and in Indonesia become credit union members, the number of poor people will decrease. This is the biggest contribution credit unions can make to the nation.”***

Tekla Tirah Liyah: In defense of Kalimantan women

Edi V. Petebang ,  CONTRIBUTOR ,  PONTIANAK   |  The Jakarta Post Monday, 04/06/2009| 

In a remote riverside village in East Kalimantan, one woman is taking on tradition and a patriarchal culture in her struggle to improve the lot of local women. It takes two days of sailing against the strong currents of Mahakam River to reach Mamahak Tebok village in Long Hubung district in West Kutai regency.

From this village, Tekla Tirah Liyah has, since 1997, been motivating women in the downstream riverside hamlets to fight against gender discrimination and injustice.

The 42-year-old is one of the few women in Kalimantan taking on the patriarchal culture in communities bound by customs.

Tekla, born to Dayak Bahau parents, has frequently proved her willingness to make sacrifices for her cause – not least that she is separated from her husband and children for weeks at a time. But she accepts such sacrifices and challenges as part of the life of an activist.

“Many important decisions involving rural people’s livelihood have come from men, with women playing no part and being subjected to rules that make it hard for them to become leaders,” Tekla says. The upshot of this is that “women have been victimized by such decisions”.

She points out that women were the first victims of the arrival of logging, oil palm plantations and coal and gold mining operations, but had been excluded from the decision-making process allowing such activities.

“The main problem confronting Kalimantan women is the deep-rooted patriarchal culture in all aspects of daily life, which results in gender discrimination, injustice and oppression,” she says. “The prevailing economic system only turns women into a commodity for exploitation.”

While studying in Samarinda, Tekla, a law graduate of the city’s Widya Gama Mahakam University, realized that women had been subject to considerable injustice; she determined to oppose such discrimination, as it was unlikely the men would do anything on this front.

In 1997, she joined an NGO in Samarinda and chose to work in the downstream villages of the Mahakam River.

She has spent much time in the years since then in a traditional motorboat, cruising along the river and its tributaries to visit nearby hamlets, where she and her peers have informal discussions with local women and girls.

“We listen to their grievances, make them aware of their rights and suggest some alternative solutions,” says Tekla.

The discussions led to the creation of 11 collective business groups, with a total of 250 women as members. Their activities include growing vegetables, raising cattle and making handicrafts. To make the most of their ideas, in mid-1999 Tekla and several fellow activists set up an NGO called the Perkumpulan Nurani Perempuan (Women’s Conscience Association).

Before founding this organization, women activists held a discussion where they shared their personal experiences in advocacy for community members in East Kalimantan. Through this discussion that realized that in many cases of a violation of communal rights, women’s interests were harmed the most.

“Many NGOs were operating in East Kalimantan in areas such as custom-based communities, human rights, environmental affairs and labor issues,” she says. “But none was dealing specifically with women’s rights.”

Among the issues Kalimantan women facing are the educational gap between men and women, the limited opportunities for women to assume leadership, high maternal mortality, human trafficking, women’s poor access to information, women’s low representation in politics, sociocultural conditions that diminish women’s quality of life and the increasing threat to women posed by mining operations and plantations.

The NGO’s activities include organizing village women, training community organizers, village administrators and communal heads, facilitating business ventures, motivating women, and providing guidance on running a farming business.

In late 2008, it facilitated the supply and plantation of 300,000 rubber trees in 10 villages in West and East Kutai. The project aimed to increase local incomes, restore former forest concession areas and maintain communal land.

But perhaps the NGO’s greatest achievement was the creation of a local financial institute called Petemai Urip Credit Union in April 2002, of which Tekla is executive chair.

As of March this year, the credit union had assets valued at a total of Rp 20 billion. Most notably, all its seven executives, nine of its 13 employees and 2,500 of its 3,500 members are women.

“We made no requirement that they had to be women, but the union’s male members seemed to be aware that the institute was set up and developed by women,” Tekla says.

Tekla is also on the executive board of the Kalimantan Credit Union Coordinating Body (BKCUK), which coordinates 54 credit unions across the country, with total assets of Rp 3.5 trillion and 500,000 members.

To achieve synergy in the Kalimantan women’s movement, Tekla and her peers in the island’s other three provinces organized the first Kalimantan Women’s Congress with 250 participants from different ethnic groups, religions and professions.

At the congress, held in Pontianak in late February, they shared and discussed their experiences and ideas for the development of the women’s movement in Kalimantan, as the first step to strengthen and unify their struggle against gender injustice, discrimination and oppression.

They ended the congress with an eight-point declaration, setting out the need for the consolidation of the women’s movement for peace and justice; advocacy for gender justice and mutual respect among groups; the need for government policies to guarantee justice for women and prevent conflict; free public services for women’s education and reproductive health; the guarantee of community management of resources; and building of women’s capacity to evaluate development programs.

Tekla said she hoped Kalimantan women would become more critical on a wide range of issues, such as the environment, trafficking of women and child, and public administration, and get involved in regional planning and budgets.

“Women should also be politically active, in general, or engaged in practical politics so their rights will not be ignored,” she says. ***

'HUDOQ', RITUAL DANCE OF DAYAK BAHAU

Edi V. Petebang, Contributor, from Samarinda, East Kalimantan

Features The Jakarta Post- April 04, 2003

Some 50 people, all wearing masks decorated with red-knobbed bill bird (enggang) feathers, emerged from one end of the Telivaq village by a tributary to the Mahakam River. 

Their bodies covered with tassels of banana leaves, each of them carried a wooden stick and a mandau (dagger). They walked towards the Amin Ayaq customary stilt house, which is 2-meters high and 12-meters by 20-meters square.  

As soon as they arrived, they danced round the house, led by the customary chief. The sound produced by their sticks when struck against the ground and the stamping of their feet, coupled by the long whining of the hudoq dancers, made your hair stand on end.  

After dancing collectively for about an hour, people began to dance individually. After the hudoq dance performance was completed, the audience could enjoy other cultural shows. 

It is on an occasion like this that the men and women of the Dayak Bahau tribe will appear dashingly courageous and graceful in their customary attire.  

 In the Dayak Bahau language, udoq means a mask. Except in Telivaq, the hudoq dance performed by the Dayak Bahau community in all other villages along the Mahakam (or Mekam in the Dayak Bahau language) river basin is the same.

The Dayak Bahau people living along the Mahakam river basin perform their hudoq ritual usually in October and November, the time when they plant rice in the unirrigated rice fields.  

Hanyak, 65, an elder from Mamahaq Besar village, Long Hubung district, West Kutai regency, said the hudoq dance was intended to accompany the soul of the paddy on its journey from the house to the rice field.  

This annual rite must be performed in the most festive manner possible to ensure that the soul of the paddy will be pleased to stay in the rice field. The Bahau people believe that animals like deer, hogs, monkeys and birds bring paddy from heaven to them. The hudoq are designed to reflect these animals. 

For the Dayak Bahau community along the Pariq River, the hudoq dance is performed every day for seven to 10 days ahead of the harvest. Each day a different hudoq dancer will appear. The climax of the hudoq festivity comes on the last day when all the hudoq dancers that have appeared before will again be seen.  

Each hudoq dance requires different masks and accessories. In the Suh Doh hudoq, for example, the inheritor of a hudoq will have to harvest one kilogram of paddy from the rice field and keep it inside a piece of bamboo before the rite is performed. The hudoq rite will be performed for this paddy and at the end of the rite, the paddy will be distributed to the entire audience. Later, this paddy will be mixed with paddy seedlings that will be planted in the rice fields in the next year.  

Although hudoq rites are not identical, generally they require wooden masks, banana leaves and roots to be used for tying. The banana leaves will be split into several parts to form tassels that are tied together by their roots. The tassels will cover the waist, the thighs, the legs, the arms and the shoulders. Every time a hudoq rite is performed, fresh banana leaves must be used. After the rite, the banana leaves cannot be burnt but must be piled up and then left to rot to be later used as fertilizer.  

Hudoq performers are usually the people staying in the village where a hudoq rite is performed. The only hudoq that can be performed by guests or by dancers from other villages is the Hakaai hudoq dance. When a hudoq dance is performed, masks depicting pests in a rice field such as a monkey, a rat, a hog, a deer and a sparrow will also emerge to entertain the audience.  

Aside from the male hudoq dancers, there are also female hudoq dancers. Some are masked while others are not. Some have their bodies covered with the banana-leaf tassels but others do not. 

If the female hudoq dancers do not wear a mask, their faces and bodies will have colorful patterns painted on. These dancers carry household appliances such as baskets.  

The hudoq dances by the Dayak Bahau women depict how the Dayak go dating and raise their babies or how they catch fish and go hunting. The hudoq performed by the Dayak Bahau women are comical.  

It is interesting to note that in the Telivaq hudoq, the highest customary chief of hudoq is a woman.

Song Devung, 80, a hudoq customary chief, said that it was a Dayak Bahau woman that first laid down the hudoq custom and became the hudoq queen. That's why even today the hudoq rite is led by a woman. This, clearly, reflects the egalitarian nature in the relationship between men and women in the Dayak Bahau community.***