TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Indigenous youths use digital tech to fight rural brain drain, empower kampungs
Indigenous youths are empowering their communities while preserving their cultures through digital adaptation and integration.
Change Size
Three generations of the Kanayatn Dayak indigenous people dance a traditional dance in this file photo taken in June 2017 in West Kalimantan. Indigenous youths are increasingly returning home to preserve their culture and develop their communities through the use of digital technology. (JP/Syofiardi Bachyul Jb)
F
or many young people, particularly those who originally hail from the country’s rural areas, the dream of moving to a city is often viewed as a chance at attaining greater wealth.
This does not apply to Modesta Wisa, however, who moved from West Kalimantan to Jakarta in 2014 to teach traditional dance. While volunteering with the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) in the nation’s capital, she became aware of the issue of land grabbing that was plaguing indigenous communities across the country.
“While I was volunteering at AMAN, I learned a lot of things, particularly on the land grabbing that was occurring in kampungs, and it turned out that my own kampung had also faced this issue,” Modesta said at a recent AMAN webinar.
“After a year volunteering with AMAN, I thought that if I stayed longer in Jakarta, I would not be able to take care of my kampung,” she said.
Modesta has since returned to Menjalin district in West Kalimantan, where she was born and raised. She began to notice the identity crisis brewing in Menjalin, because formal education had estranged the youth from their indigenous Dayak culture. She said that not many parents were keen to teach their children the Dayak language, while the use of Indonesian, the national language, was compulsory in formal schools.
The realization eventually led her and a group of her peers in 2016 to establish Sekolah Adat Samabue (Samabue Traditional School) in Menjalin. The school provides a space for the village elders to hand down their knowledge of the local Dayak culture, particularly languages and customs, to the younger generation.
Read also: Samabue traditional school to preserve local culture
