Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia, Implications ...

Moira Moeliono and Ahmad Dermawan 115
state later played a role in categorizing ethnic groups and formalizing which aspects of
ethnic identity would be officially recognized. While the origins of adat communities
might be questioned, their existence today is taken for granted.
In general, adat communities define themselves by characteristics which on the
surface are similar to those used by the state: leadership issues, ownership and access to
resources including the land area, the members and the rules of their membership, their
judicial system (including sanctions not necessarily based on equity or equality), their
beliefs, traditions and customs and lastly their identity and the symbols of this identity.
While these organizing principles might be similar, their content often goes against formal
interpretation. For example, ownership and access might be communal with private rights
and be more inclusive or communal and very exclusive. Neither of these are provided for
in the formal laws.
Law 5/1979 on Village Governance issued by the New Order government in 1979,
established a parallel system through which the state formally interacted with villages,
thus marginalizing the adat system.
Constrained within the overall structure of the central government dominated
system, where diversity and culture were defined by the state, adat communities were
only able to express themselves freely through social practices shaped through adat and
expressed mainly through dance and dress. With the changes brought by reform and
regional autonomy since the late-1990s, local communities now have the opportunity to
reassert practical aspects of adat.
A fundamental change occurred when Law 22/1999 (which abolished Law 5/1979)
was issued, as it stipulated that villages are no longer the smallest administrative unit of the
government hierarchy, but rather are now autonomous units (Soemardjan 2000). According
to Law 22/1999, communities are legal bodies with the authority to govern and administer
the local community based on origins, local customs and traditions acknowledged in the
national governance system and located within a district. For instance, in West Sumatra
this has led to the re-establishment of the traditional governance structure known locally as
nagari. In most places, however, the unit of village governance remains known as desa, and
the New Order governance structure has been retained. This is due partly to the fact that
few people today know how the old systems worked, because adat authority was already
on the wane at the time the New Order state imposed the village governance structure. It
is also partly due to Government Regulation on Village Government (PP 76/2001) , which
set down a uniform structure and basic prerequisites of villages, and is not much different
from the earlier law. Before local communities were able to adjust to these changes and
exert their autonomy fully, the revised decentralization law of 2004 significantly reduced
village autonomy.
The experience in Malinau (East Kalimantan) provides an example of how this
process has played out in one district. In Malinau, the district government copied regulation
Regulation 76/2001 almost verbatim to administer villages within the district. At the same
time, however, many of the existing villages do not fulfill the legal requirements stipulated
by the new regulation on village governance. Both as a consequence of this and because
district governments are also required to improve basic services, an overall movement
to merge villages is now underway. This process has already led to conflict as it implies
the merging of adat territories. Among all the confusion about adat, there also exists a
possibility that the district government will decree that village territories are adat territories.
Lacking resources to conduct a comprehensive survey and impatient with the multitude of