The Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) was founded in Jakarta, 17th March 1999. The date also marked the first Indigenous Peoples Awakening Day which now being commemorated annually. My tribe is member of this organisation. I have walked the dirt paths of many Indigenous villages in Indonesia. I have sat cross-legged inside the…
Centering Indigenous Rights in the Energy Transition
This is the speech I delivered during the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Global Assembly 2025 in Jakarta, Indonesia, 17-21 February 2025. When I received the invitation couple months back, I realised that this event could be a platform for me to echo the elephant in the room: uncomfortable topics which many has been avoiding….
Consent Denied: The Hidden Cost of Geothermal Dreams
The air around Poco Leok carries an unsettling silence. The kind that echoes between the slopes of hills where ancestral spirits are said to roam, where rituals of planting and harvest are not just seasonal but cosmological cycles anchoring life to the land. This silence now stretches not from tranquillity but from tension — an…