Seventythree is working with an alliance of Indonesian civil society organisations in service of remote and small-island communities who face particular threats from climate change. The partnership focuses on building self-sufficient, grassroots community organisations, as guardians of their ancestral land and seascapes; and on linking them together as movements capable of holding their leaders to account.
Guardianship – reweaving the web of relationships that sustains life.
With the support of Nia Tero, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Ocean Initiative and our other donors, Seventythree’s alliance of partners in Indonesia is working to shape new discourse around guardianship (perwalian in Bahasa Indonesia) of place and community, and with special focus on remote coastal and small-island communities.
This focus on guardianship (or stewardship) addresses long histories of colonisation and top-down development that have severed people’s connection to their land, their identity and to each other, and have entrenched high levels of dependency on external aid and initiative. It is a legacy that leaves communities especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change and with no voice in the energy transition.
In working with communities in Papua and Sulawesi, our partners are learning that the practice of guardianship is ultimately about reweaving the web of relationships that have sustained communities over centuries but in ways that also equip them to face the realities of the world today.
In other words, guardianship is about what it means and takes to be in ‘right relationship’ with oneself, others in community, the land that sustains us and, now also the structures that govern us.
Their work with community groups consist of practical actions through which communities are rediscovering what it means to work together, such as community gardens and actions to restore mangrove; recalling and re-enacting ancestral traditions through art and story telling, where these help to make sense of their efforts; and learning, once again, to how make collective decisions and hold each other to account.
Their experience demonstrates the importance of compassion and forgiveness in holding a community together; and how healing relationships in the community and work to care for the land are interconnected. It has created the space to question modern notions of land ownership, not as a disposable asset to be sold for compensation but as a collective mandate for protection and care. It reveals nature as integral to people’s identity and spiritual wellbeing.
Community guardianship in Indonesia
The lead organisations within our partnership in Indonesia are Training for Transformation Papua (YP3SP) dedicated to the revitalisation of indigenous communities in West Papua using popular education methods; Citah Tanah Mahardika (CTM), a youth organisation dedicated to participatory action research and community organising in South Sulawesi; and Yayasan Barunastra which, through its policy platform Arkipel, is working to institutionalise direct policy feedback between national policy makers and grassroots communities.
All three are new organisations, established to address particular gaps in the existing civil society ecosystem. These include strong, representative community organisations on the ground; conceptual understanding, methods and tools in community empowerment; and grassroots community movements with capacity to organise and deliver collective advocacy campaigns.
YP3SP and CTM are each nurturing a growing constellation of new community organisations in the regions they work in, including the Fyarkin community group on the island of Numfor (Papua Province), the Paiah group in Okaba (South Papua Province) and the Passe’reanta group in the Tanakeke archipelago (South Sulawesi Province).
Each of these communities represents a story of people who have found new hope in working together to escape debt and dependency, reconnect with their land and identity, rebuild their ability to produce their own food, and organise to demand better of their leaders.
By exposing policy makers to these examples of community renewal, YBN is in turn working to shift their understanding of local autonomy and initiative not as a threat but as an essential source of innovation and resilience that, in fact, contributes to national goals.
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