Indigenous Indonesians face fresh risks in green climate drive: ‘A new hell for us’
- Driving electric cars may make people in rich nations feel better, but clean energy projects have serious costs and threaten indigenous land, one leader says
- Keeping the communal good at the forefront of decisions is a lesson the world needs to learn from indigenous people, the Aman alliance chief adds
In the indigenous community where Rukka Sombolinggi grew up, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, strict rules governed how a slaughtered buffalo’s meat was divided.
The elderly, the sick and other vulnerable people received choice pieces – the head, the liver and the small intestine, considered a particular delicacy once roasted.
Others, better off, waited their turn for a share, risking condemnation from the community if they took too many of the best bits for themselves.
“People in powerful situations need to be controlled. If we don’t, the powerful will eat everything,” said Sombolinggi, now the general secretary of Aman, an alliance that represents 15 million indigenous people in Indonesia.
That message of managing the powerful – and keeping the communal good at the forefront of decisions – is one the world needs to learn from indigenous people as it struggles to tackle big problems from climate change to pandemics, she said.
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“We believe in the collective,” Sombolinggi said in an interview this week at the Skoll World Forum, an expert gathering focused on solving global problems.