Ethnic Narratives and Indigenous Rights in Indonesia: A Case Study from Merauke, Papua

Abstract

The realisation of indigenous rights to land as stipulated in the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples entails that its norms and principles need to be activated in order to function at the grassroots level. In Indonesia, narratives of ethnicity are frequently deployed at the levels of discourse and practice to suggest that these rights accrue only to those peoples who are indigenous and to contextualise the position of indigenous peoples in the legal and political systems. However, does a reference to ethnicity achieve certain ends pertaining to the protection of indigenous lands? Can ethnicity achieve the promise of autonomy to which supporters of indigenous rights aspire? Upon examination of the case of indigenous land of the Marind Anim in Merauke Papua, Indonesia, it is revealed that national, legal and political discourses surrounding ethnicity in the context of the relationship between Papua and Indonesia have shaped the social practices through which claims towards the protection of indigenous rights are being constructed. Furthermore, in their interactions, laws, norms, practices and actors not only demonstrate the gap between demands and how equal solutions for protection indigenous rights are asserted, they also pose some risks in limiting political dialectics on autonomy for indigenous peoples.