(TEDx Talk) HOW CAN MODERN TECHNOLOGIES KEEP INDIGENOUS CUTURE ALIVE?

Have you ever walked inside the 140 million years old rainforest? You can hear clearly the sounds of gibbon and hornbill, calling you like this. The smell of the forest, the fresh water from the river beneath your feet. That’s a paradise and that’s where I live. Kalimantan, the part of the Borneo that belongs to Indonesia.

Do you like dance? Have you ever seen a unique dance like this?

That’s the traditional dance of my tribe. Dancer usually wears a beautiful traditional custom with beautiful crown made from coconut leaves, sometimes decorated with bird feather. There’s a singing in every storytelling “erang hila aku manyiangan lengan”.  Imagine you wake up in the morning and there is a coffee and traditional cake made with love by the lady of the house. The kindness and smile that warm your heart. You don’t need to worry about what you’re going to eat because there is always someone in the village that will give you fruits, vegetables and fish. That’s the experience that you will have if you meet my people, The Dayak, the first people of the land.

I have been always a proud Dayak, but not before my seventeenth birthday. As a common young teenager who was struggling with identity and trying many ways to find the place that fit, I had to deal with what most indigenous people face; discrimination, misconception, stigma.  I still remember those old days in high school whenever I talked in my mother tongue (Woi, salamat kaayat, inun habar duwari?), other students would say, “Nah, the alien language start to intervene!”. It continued till I grew up as an adult. When I got in the taxy in big city like Jakarta, the driver would start the conversation and ask where I came from. When they heard that I came from Kalimantan, a Dayak, they would ask, “Is it true that people there still eat human flesh? And still wear bark skin as cloth?

Of course, the blame should not be fully on me. In this modern age, we always classify people into the frame that we already prepare; both in society and in our own mind. We think that people who live in the city are well educated, and those who live in the villages are less educated. We assume that those who wear fancy clothes and branded bag are rich, while those who wear bark skin and carry waved basket are poor. We believe that someone who holds the electronic stuffs as modern, and one who wrap a Mandau, traditional Dayak sword, around his waist as a primitive. 

It is real that most people in the world think the modernism and custom tradition are the opposite to each other. People often don’t believe when I say I am a Dayak, because I wear some jeans, dye my hair and put make up on my face. There is a belief that ‘an indigenous person should stay in the forest’, forever. That’s a big misconception on the definition of indigenous people and our traditional way of life. 

And yes, that first seventeen years of my life was wasted. I always wondered why I have to be born in Kalimantan, as an Indigenous Dayak girl?

With the expansion of modern technology, standing your ground as an indigenous becomes more challenging. Many works are done in Indigenous communities’ territorial under the name of the development. 15 years ago, there was no phone signal in my village. If we wanted to send a short message, we needed to climb the tree. But nowadays with the technology you can live in the most remote area and still be able to contact people.  In reality, young people are more interested in checking their Instagram rather than sitting on the wooden chair listening to the folk stories from their grandma. I was scared. I was afraid of the future. What if one day we are forgotten? What if one day people no more recognize us? The modern technology considered as a poison that drifts us away from where we’re from, an opium that make us forget who we are. My imagination gets worse when our president announce that we are in the season of industrial revolution 4.0 , and those who are not able to adapt will not survive. Crazy things keep happening around me and my community. More violation on the indigenous rights. More palm oil, more mining and logging expansion. More trees being cut down and more rivers being polluted. More forest fires, more floods. More displacement and more conflicts. It’s hard to be a proud Dayak when the world seems against you and your people. All these things suffocated me and made me feel hopeless.

Yet I realize that my biggest mistakes were not in questioning life, but in ignoring it. After years of struggling, I finally learn that we cannot change the reality, but we can change the way we associate with that. A modern technology can never replace the indigenous wisdoms, but it can be used as a tool to enhance our fights in defending our rights, protecting the nature and preserving the culture. And that’s how my journey began.

I started to make films. Together with my team, we record the stories from the indigenous people. We document the traditional and sustainable way of life in Dayak community. We capture every wisdom and teaching from the elders about life and nature, and use it to educate not only youth in our community but also people outside. We bring the voices from the ground up to the surface, and advocate for the policy making of land management. Camera, laptop and internet have become my new routine. We make use of our knowledge and skills that we obtain from schools and from our exposure to the modern life to protect what we have to protect; our indigenous identity. And that’s the very moment when the narrative starts to change for us. 

Until now we are still doing the work and making impact. I am happy that now the world starts to know about Borneo. I am grateful now people around the globe start to pay attention to their consumption after watching our videos about environmental disasters caused by the companies. I am excited that little children can learn their mother tongue and listen to the wisdoms of the elders while watching YouTube. I am in total awe seeing young people are not ashamed anymore of their identity but proudly saying “I am a Dayak.” I laugh whenever I hear someone says, “poor me, I never know Kalimantan and Dayak people have such beautiful culture.” It is satisfying, but the most important thing above all things, I have learned this: what you think against you maybe actually for you and your opposition can be your best friend.

Indigenous cultures are not overcome by modern technology. Instead, it is being enhanced when being used by the right hands in the right way and the right moment. This is our meeting point, the indigenous and non-indigenous, those with privilege and without privilege, you and me, because the true winner is not the one who overthrows the enemy but the one who accepts, embraces, and despite all the difference, commit to walk together toward the victory.  

TEDx Kassel, October 25th 2020