This is a story how the North Sulawesi Indigenous Youth redefining food sovereignty
Part 1: A Story from an Island
Ekaristi Montoh just turned 17 years old last year and left the island in July. She graduated from senior high school and was relocating to Manado, the capital city of the province where she now lives. The new place is located 441 km in the south, and it took her three nights and four days to ride the government-funded ship from Ginimbale, her home island.
“Last year’s harvest was my last one before moved to Manado,” Eka said. “We organised a farewell dinner for the members who were leaving for university. All foods were taken from our harvest.”
Eka is a female youth from Ginimbale Island of the Watunapatto tribes, the northernmost Indigenous group in Indonesia. Situated at the border between the country and the Philippines. Watunapatto is a small tribe consisting of nine islands, where only four of them are inhabited. The other five are conservation areas where no farming and clearing land for settlement is allowed. Hunting is permitted with several conditions.
Ginimbale is registered as Karatung in the official paper of the Indonesian government, and Watunapatto is known as Nanusa — a Sanskrit word given by an old Spanish conquistador who once roamed the western part of the Pacific Ocean. Karatung — which has only an area of 7,4 km2 — is the sub-district capital of the administrative region of Talaud Islands District. Traveling by boat or ship is the only way to access this group of tiny islands. No internet or phone signal here.
“The government shutdown the ship route service to our islands during the pandemic,” Eka said. “It isolated us from the rest of the country. The schools and government facilities were closed. No more rice delivery from the city. The grocery stalls that were selling goods struggled to meet the demands at the beginning of the pandemic. Within two months, all the shops ran out of rice.”
In Indonesia, the Covid pandemic is hitting hard starting from March 2020. However, within the Watunapatto tribe, life went normal until the shutdown in September that year.
“It caught many of us by surprise. No one ever thought that we would not be able to go anywhere.” Eka remembered. “Yes, people were panicking. We’ve been heavily reliant on rice delivery from Manado over the last couple of decades. When the ship stops coming, it seems that we run out of options. Some even thought that the government is leaving us behind so we can starve to death,” she said while laughing sarcastically.
During the first couple of months of the pandemic, Eka spent her days like other teenagers on her island. Playing, gossiping about boys, spending time on the beach, and playing hide and seek with her mother who tried to get her to help with domestic work at home.
“I don’t like washing dishes. What I love is spending time with my friends,” she explained.
Eka admitted that the time she spent with her friends led to their decision to start collective farming. Apart from other normal topics, each of them can see that the people around them are struggling with food and uncertainty. At that time, no one knew when the pandemic would end, or when the ship would start visiting the islands again.
“One afternoon, I came home and found my Mother was crying in silence in the kitchen,” she said. “She quickly wiped her tears when realized that I was standing behind her. At that moment, the only thing I did was to hug her tight.”
For days, Eka tried to figure out how to help her family only to find out that her peers were also facing similar problems. So she started with what she loved the most.
“Banana. I love bananas so much,” she smiled from ear to ear while saying it. “So, I shared the plan with Tesa, and she agreed to join me. After all, you can do both at the same time: hanging out with your friends while making something positive for the community.”
Tesalonika Gahansa is one year older but has been friends with Eka since their childhood. They are neighbours and still blood-related.
“No one can say no to Eka if she asks you to join her cause. Also, I can feel her sincerity. She wanted to do something and it was a good thing. So why not?” Tesa said.
Together, with the other five girls, Eka and Tesa started banana farming in a coconut plot behind the village. The land is owned by Eka’s family from her father’s side, and she knows that planting bananas will not require advanced skills or expensive tools.
“Every kid on this island knows how to do basic fishing and farming. So, the question is who is willing to start? It’s not easy because it requires confidence and charm to make others follow you. Eka possessed both,” Tesa explained her reason for joining the cause.
They started in mid-November 2020, and by early March 2022, they grew both in farming size, the type of food grown, and group members.
“I was surprised that so many others joined us,” Eka told me. “Some are older than me, making me a bit uncomfortable if they come and ask for advice. It makes me feel like an old lady,” she laughed hard.
Currently, the group has 42 members girls and boys who run seven different plots of collective farming. They planted bananas, cassava, sweet potatoes, and taro.
In early 2022, they are stepping further by trying to revive the Annuwun, a local name for Polynesian arrowroot. The tubers of Polynesian arrowroot contain starch, making it an important food source for many Pacific Island cultures, primarily for the inhabitants of low islands and atolls.
Polynesian arrowroot was prepared into flour to make a variety of puddings. The tubers were first grated and then allowed to soak in fresh water. The settled starch was rinsed repeatedly to remove the bitterness and then dried. The flour was mixed with mashed taro, breadfruit, or Pandanus fruit extract and mixed with coconut cream to prepare puddings.
Annuwun should not be eaten by simply boiling it because it contains poison which can result in death. It is hard and potato-like, with brown skin and a white interior. The starch was additionally used to stiffen fabrics, and the stem’s bast fibers were woven into mats.
It was a staple crop for Watunapatto until the late 1980s when the government introduced rice through BULOG (Indonesian Bureau of Logistics) — founded in 1967 by Soeharto, then the President of Indonesia.
However, for many Indigenous groups in Indonesia, BULOG played a major role in converting the country to food uniformity. It is also responsible for replacing local seeds with government-approved seeds, as well as promoting rice as the main staple and sign of civilized people.
The massive campaign of turning the whole country into a rice-eating people was partly due to the global recognition received by Indonesia during the 23rd Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) held in Rome, Italy, on November 14, 1985.
Then the Director General of FAO, Dr. Eduard Saoma invited Soeharto to deliver a speech at the forum due to the country’s achievement of food self-sufficiency in the previous year. FAO assessed that Suharto was instrumental in formulating policies so that Indonesia succeeded in achieving self-sufficiency in 1984 and maintaining the stability of food security.
It followed with his visit to Indonesia in 1986 where Saoma on behalf of FAO presented an award in the form of a gold medal with a picture of Suharto embossed on one side and a picture of a farmer planting rice along with the words “From Rice Importer to Self Sufficiency” on the other side.
Since then, the meaning of food security in Indonesia has been limited to rice.
According to C.P. Timmer and W.P. Falcon in “Food Security in Indonesia” (1991), an indicator of food security was interpreted narrowly by the New Order government which only referred to the stability of rice prices. Food security is considered safe as long as the rice price is affordable. Therefore, since the mid-1970s, the Soeharto regime has implemented a “twin strategy” covering the short and long term. The short term is in the form of stabilising rice prices at an affordable level, while the long term is setting an absolute self-sufficiency target.
However, the food security under the New Order turned out to be glass fragile. The proud self-sufficiency, according to Pantjar Simatupang and I Wayan Rusastra in the Rice Agribusiness Development Policy (2004), only lasted for five years. The government miscalculated for the reason that it focused too much on rice price stability while hoping that equity would emerge by itself.
In Watunapatto, rice was introduced in the mid-1980s. Its first two deliveries were free and each household received one sack of rice weighing 50 kilos. Then followed by subsidised rice by BULOG at half price.
“I was born when our people had left behind our ‘earth food’ and switched fully to rice,” Eka explained.
‘Earth food’ is how she addressed cassava, sweet potatoes, bananas, and tubers. These are the types of food crops that are grown and can be grown on the islands of Watunapatto. No rice grows here due to the unsuitable soil characteristics and Watunapatto is low islands and atolls. These kinds of crops were also the type of crops they cultivated when Eka and her friends started their farming collective. In early 2021, they started to plant Annuwun.
“Growing the Annuwun is part of our cultural revival,” Eka said. “I quoted it from my uncle who repeated it almost a thousand times when sharing his time about the Mawale Movement,” she laughed. “But yes, I do believe his words.”
In May 2022, the group finally harvested its first batch of Annuwun.
“It was pure joy. Seeing the elders surprised and touched when we deliver the starch to each of them.” Eka’s eyes sparkled. “We also shared the bananas, the cassava, and sweet potatoes,” she added.
“Do you know those sweet potatoes have different colours? White, orange, purple, and red. Imagine you put it all together on your plate. You are eating a rainbow,” she smiled big again.
The Annuwun harvest comes at the right time. Eka and the other two just graduated from high school. They will be leaving to pursue a university education in the city. So it means, those who stay will be shouldering the responsibility to carry on the farming.
“For sure we will keep going,” Tesa said. “Yes, we started this because of the pandemic. But it won’t stop now. Many good things are going on right now.”
Since the group has no formal leader or structure, many of the members see Tesa as the one who will lift the torch. “She’s wiser than me,” Eka said while laughing.
“We are in constant discussion with the elders and our parents about what is best and how we move forward with the activity,” Tesa said. “Though many still see our farming as simply ‘a youth hysteria’ that won’t last for long.”
“We love our community. So farming is our sincere gesture to tell our parents and family that we can rely on each other in difficult times,” Tesa said. “Being far away from everywhere, teaching you that the only one that could help you is your own people.”
This is why the harvest is always being distributed freely to everyone within the community with particular priority to elderly widows and widowers. “Giving out food is allowing yourself to feel the joy spiraling into your blood. It’s addictive,” Eka said.
Part 2: A Story from the Mountain
Omega Pantow is unique in many ways. “Many of my friends said that I can’t sit still,” she said.
In January 2021, Mega as many called her, was elected as the Council member representing the Sulawesi region during the fourth national jamboree of the Indigenous Youth Alliance of Archipelago (BPAN). She is just 23 years old.
“I was surprised that my colleagues recommended me to be a Council member. It is such an honour and huge responsibility,” Mega explained. Being elected means she is no longer responsible for the BPAN members in North Sulawesi only. Her responsibility is now extended to all the organisation members from the region. “From the islands at the border with the Philippines to the southern tip of Sulawesi,” she said. “That’s a big territory to cover, but I am excited.”
If one closely observes the Indigenous youth movement in Indonesia, seeing Mega rise to be a council member is not a surprise. For years, she’s been actively organising her peers in her homeland: Tontemboan. Visiting different villages and communities to share experiences and information, as well as learning from each other.
Tontemboan is one of nine ethnic groups within Minahasa, an ethnic group native to North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The name Minahasa literally can be translated as “united” since before the nineteenth century, the Minahasa region was in no way unified. Instead, several independent communities known as Walak existed together, often in a permanent state of conflict.
“There are many different sources of the origin of the name Minahasa,” Denni Pinontoan explained. He is a lecturer of Minahasa Studies at the Christian State Institute of Manado and one of the co-founders of the Mawale Movement. “But one can say that the name originated from the general meeting of different Walak leaders at the sacred stone known as Watu Pinawetengan and agreed to form a broad coalition that will fight and protect each other from the outside enemies.” Since then, the name Minahasa has been used as a sign of unification and to identify themselves to outsiders.
“First was Mawale Movement, then AMAN, and now BPAN. It taught me so many things, including what I am doing right now.” Mega explained how she got involved with the Indigenous youth movement.
Mawale Movement is a cultural movement that started in early 2007. It was initiated by a group of former student activists and young artists from different Indigenous backgrounds who were once part of the Malay Manado Literature Movement in 2005.
They organised group discussions, debating a wide range of topics from politics, economy, social justice, and culture. The group also initiated a so-called “cultural journey” where they visited different Indigenous sites to teach history lessons. While at the same time, expanding their followers to the youth, particularly targeting those who were at the senior high school.
Mega was exposed to Mawale Movement in 2017 when she attended one of the discussions on feminism and has been attracted since then. Later she volunteered for the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) regional branch in North Sulawesi. In 2019, she started to actively engage with Indigenous youth activities.
During her early encounters with the Mawale Movement, she learned that the Indigenous should take the initiative to ensure food sovereignty within the community. “Food sovereignty is beyond merely food security. It’s not only talking about the food reserve per se but also the ability of a community to produce our food, using our seeds with our farming techniques on our ancestral domain with dignity and justice,” Mega explained.
Mega learned the inspiration from her peers in Wuwuk, Tareran of South Minahasa District where the first Indigenous youth farming collective in the province was founded. She sees collective farming as the “homecoming movement” in practice.
“Homecoming is not only about being present physically in your community but contributing. To do your best and to lead by action. Ensuring your words were built upon a solid ongoing practice,” Pinontoan explained.
Farming is one among many practices. However, when the global pandemic hit the world, Mega realised that it could be a long-term solution. “Covid-19 exposed the evil truth, that many of us are yet to be self-sufficient. We are still far from food sovereignty when you keep relying on government interventions.” Mega said. “It was hard to swallow at first but you can’t bemoan it.”
In November 2020, during the peak of the territorial lockdown, Mega joined forces with other Indigenous youth in Ampreng village in the West Langowan sub-district of Minahasa District. Leading her peers to start eco-farming.
They planted chili as the first choice. “Our people love spicy foods. So, starting from something that is closely related to your culture is a good choice,” she smiled. “The main difference was, our farming is pesticide-free. No chemicals.”
Practicing pesticide-free for Mega is an act of resistance to redefining the agricultural practice within her community. “I want to say that organic farming is possible. However, I need something to back up my beliefs.” She realised that going around and preaching only without setting an example would only feed the doubts and cynicism.
Pesticide-free farming has almost been completely forgotten all over Indonesia since the introduction of the Green Revolution by Soeharto in the mid-1980s. The revolution was implemented in Indonesia through the use of monoculture crops that drove the expansion of farmland by converting forests that were culturally protected.
It led to a reliance on external inputs such as the overuse of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, to intensify agricultural production that brought negative impacts on the environment, including the loss of biodiversity and the pollution of waterways. Fertiliser and pesticides were also expensive and required farmers to take on debt. This increased the vulnerability of the Indigenous farmers who often lacked the resources to cope with price fluctuations or crop failures.
Tontemboan is one of many Indigenous groups in the country that was selected as the pilot project when the Green Revolution started. “In 1985, the government introduced their seeds to replace local seeds, and began the fertiliser and pesticide use on paddy farming,” Pinontoan explained. “Tondano and Tompaso for a long time have been known for their dryland paddy farming with its local seeds. Intentionally, these areas also were selected for the first stage of the Green Revolution in Minahasa.”
The Green Revolution and its spectacular failures later proved to be particularly harmful to Indigenous communities and on the other hand, it also strengthened the view of paddy as a commodity for trade only and no longer seen as a collective fortune.
“Paddy farming was always on Kalakeran land,” Pinontoan said. Kalakeran is collective land ownership either by a community or a clan in Minahasa. “There were two types of Kalakeran. One belonging to the community was called Kalakeran Wanua and Kalakeran Taranak for one that was managed by a clan. This system was replaced by the Dutch colonial agrarian system which only recognized individual ownership.”
According to Pinontoan, until the mid-1980s there were still a small number of Kalakeran in Tontemboan. “The agricultural revolution introduced by Jakarta wiped out this system entirely,” he explained. “Before that, paddy or rice signified cultural importance. We had a Kamberu ritual where all the farming stages from its beginning to the harvest were done with Mapalus.” Mapalus is a term to address collective efforts.
The revolution ultimately had an impact on increasing agricultural yields, particularly rice based on the hysteria of Indonesia’s rice being self-sufficient in 1984. The temporary success of Soeharto was considered a positive impact on the process of agricultural modernization and an achievement that needed to be replicated and expanded. The hype later led to the loss of land due to the expansion of large-scale agriculture and the displacement of Indigenous communities from their traditional lands who were forced to leave their lands.
“The harvest abundance in the late 1980s made people think that by expanding their farming field, they could significantly increase their profits. So, many started to take over their neighbors’ farming lands or purchase plots in other villages. Mostly from those who suffered from the loss of harvest and debts,” Pinontoan, a native of Tontemboan said.
Most Indigenous farmers often failed due to the involvement of the adoption of new farming practices and technologies that were unfamiliar and disrupted traditional ways of life. This had negative consequences for the cultural practices and knowledge of Indigenous communities, as they were often pressured to adopt new ways of farming that did not necessarily align with their traditional values and beliefs.
“Before the Green Revolution, for Tontemboan farmers, rice fields were not exclusively for paddy. Many also raise freshwater fish to fight the pest as well as for protein,” Pinontoan said. “Fish was also being used to check the water quality on the rice fields.”
The loss of land had serious consequences for Indigenous communities, as it often meant the loss of their homes, access to resources such as water and forests, and traditional ways of life. Mega learned about these painful stories during her intense encounters with the Mawale Movement. So, she understood that recovering these ways of life is never easy.
“It takes us almost a year, from the preparation, the planting, building the compost facility, to the harvest.”
During this period, Mega watched how people come and go and come again. “To start something and wait for it patiently to be finally fruitful wasn’t as easy as we speak. Priorities changed and some friends need to find time to reassure themselves that we are walking on the right path,” Mega explained optimistically.
In early October 2021, the first harvest was taking place. “It was one of my few happy moments. No words can match the joy and relief when you arrive on the farming field and see the red color everywhere,” she said. “I was stunned and honestly grateful that we were able to enjoy a successful harvest within a year.”
The success story became the stepping stone for Mega to start confidently sharing her experience with other fellow BPAN members. Hoping that it can trigger more people will replicate the project in their community.
“You don’t have to plant chili. It can be veggies or something else that you deem fit with your needs,” Mega explained. “The most important part is to capture the essence that drives us to start organic farming.”
Part 3: The One Tale
Kalfein Wuisan was a first-year senior high school student when the art group Dodoku was founded in 2005 at his home village Wuwuk in the Tareran sub-district of South Minahasa. It means ‘a bridge’, taken from the Tontemboan language. Tontemboan is one of nine sub-groups of Minahasa, the biggest Indigenous group in North Sulawesi province. Minahasans are people who live in mountainous areas and for generations known as one of the best traditional winemakers on the island of Sulawesi.
Dodoku’s members are all youth from Wuwuk who at that time were still senior or junior high school students and the art group was established in the wake of the Mawale Movement. In September 2008, they held a meeting in Talikuran village of Sonder sub-district to evaluate and consolidate the movement as well as plan for further steps to reinforce all the ongoing cultural initiatives.
“I was one of the youngest participants during the meeting. There were three of us who represented Dodoku at that time,” Kalfein said. “While most of my fellows are either fresh graduates or still in college.”
Since then, Mawale Movement has become a creative home and hub for Kalfein to expand his horizon of knowledge and where he found his love for writing. He published poem books and short story collections with the help of the movement’s publication arm. “Writing is a tool of resistance. The fight against forgetting. Forgetting identity, land, and the rights to live as a human being,” Kalfein explained passionately.
Mawale means ‘homecoming’. The word Wale itself is widely spoken in different dialects by Indigenous groups in the north part of Celebes island translates as ‘home’. Centered at the Faculty of Literature of the Sam Ratulangi University in Manado, the group grew unexpectedly from rebellious young artists who once were inspired by European works of literature and critical philosophy.
“Our early discussion topics within 2005–2007 ranged from the social uprising in Europe, anarchism and Marxism, fights against colonialism in Africa and Latin America, including the theology of liberation. Later, while seeking answers regarding what happened around us and in our respective communities, we found out that our Indigenous cultures provide it,” Pinontoan explained. “It wasn’t easy at first. Some of our people, particularly the older generations consider us to be promoting anti-Christianism and communism. While at the same time, we were facing indirect racial profiling from outsiders.”
North Sulawesi is a Christian predominantly province in the biggest Muslim country in the world. The religion was introduced during the Dutch occupation and for some is often mistaken for signifying the long history of Minahasans’ interactions with European colonists, particularly the Dutch.
“We realised that most of the Indigenous communities and tribes in this province enjoy the privilege of being exposed to the Western style of education brought by the colonialists, and run by churches,” Kalfein said. “However, in Mawale I am also being exposed to the dark side of this type of education. It comes with a price. It transformed the generations to think that our cultural heritage is no more than ancient totems with no meaning.”
Kalfein found that formal education could not answer most of the questions raised in Mawale’s discussions. “For instance, how to combat the climate crisis without sacrificing the people and nature? Or why our rituals are now merely held for tourism purposes?” he said. “So, when you could not find the answer elsewhere, coming home to find the answer is natural.
While participating in Mawale activities, Kalfein also learned to be an actor and later a drama director. During this period Kalfein found himself transformed intellectually and went beyond European knowledge and formal literature available provided by the educational system to seek more from his Indigenous background.
“A significant difference between Indigenous wisdom and European knowledge is how it is preserved. Our elders passed down the knowledge through oral methods such as singing, rituals, daily parables, myths, and tales,” Kalfein said. “Mawale taught me how to navigate myself between these two worlds.”
In his early years as an undergraduate student, Kalfein started to preserve the knowledge he heard, learned, and observed through writing. However, when the smartphone became more accessible, he saw an opportunity.
“Technology in the form of smartphones offered something different and unique. For me, it allows us to have another leverage to level the playing field where we have the opportunity to challenge the mainstream narratives that always placed the Indigenous Peoples behind the start line,” Kalfein said.
This was part of the reason why in 2017 when he bought his very first handphone, Kalfein initiated the Smartphone Movement as a way to digitally preserve the richness of Indigenous wisdom. He also joined as a member of BPAN to scale up the struggle beyond his community and to extend the spirit of the Mawale Movement to other fellow Indigenous youth in Indonesia.
“It’s all about being relevant and contextual. Devising a new strategy for us the Indigenous youth to protect our land, our customs and traditions,” he said. “However, one needs to understand that video documentation is not meant to replace the current line of works introduced by Mawale.”
For Kalfein, the Smartphone Movement is complementing the ongoing community organising, informal discussions and knowledge sharing, written publications and campaigns, research and training, as well as on-field activities such as eco-farming and ritual reviving. “All equally important.”
However, when he was selected to be part of the national leadership of BPAN in 2019, Kalfein realised that the Smartphone Movement needed to find an entry angle to ground the initiatives within tons of issues faced by the Indigenous Peoples across the country.
“Food is a common issue. We all need to eat and each Indigenous community has a long and diverse culinary history,” Kalfein explained. “From Mawale I learned that we could devise and use food as the starting point to start a conversation. For example, why do we all, regardless of our diverse cultural background, end up as rice-eater people?”
From there, Kalfein deepened his understanding of the difference between so-called ‘food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’. He realised that ensuring the availability of food is not enough for an Indigenous community. “The importance of land is beyond the current common understanding that it is just a capital to produce food. The land is more than a territory where a community lives,” he explained passionately. “Land is part of our identity. An integral part of our knowledge system that defines our values and a core of all our rituals and values.”
“Knowing about it was not enough. Groundwork is also important to test the theory into practice,” Kalfein answered when asked the reason behind the foundation of the first eco-farming collective in Wuwuk. “There’s no better place to start something revolutionary but at home.”
In mid-2019, without knowing the world would face the worst-ever global pandemic, Kalfein and other youth braved themselves to ask their parents for a plot of land.
“The best reminder of who we are and how our ancestors feed themselves is by practice. The plot is a real battlefield to show that another way of farming with dignity and full autonomy is possible,” Kalfein said. “It is also a living lab to show other Indigenous youth that we will never be enough with food security because what we need is food sovereignty.”
Share this content: