Forest conflicts and the informal nature of realizing indigenous land rights in Indonesia

Abstract

Despite a widening legal scope for indigenous rights, the invocation of indigeneity to claim land rights rarely empowers marginalized communities. This article develops an explanation for why this formal recognition of community rights actually has little substantive impact on local struggles over land in Indonesia. Employing almost two years of fieldwork on how rural communities employ indigeneity-based land claims in South Sulawesi, it argues that claims for land rights on the basis of indigeneity are settled not simply on the basis of law, but also on that of the relative bargaining positions and the character of informal linkages between communities, their mediators and local authorities. Indigenous status therefore must be understood as a privilege most likely to be obtained by those groups with relatively strong connections to influential state actors. In contrast, communities that are in conflict with local state actors tend be excluded from obtaining the status of indigeneity and hence the state is likely to deny them their land rights claims.