Selling Peatland for the Future: History, Land Management, and the Transformation of Common Land in Rantau Baru

Abstract

Rantau Baru, an old fishing village on the bank of the Kampar River in Indonesia, is surrounded by peat hinterlands. The village territory has been recognized by previous local states for hundreds of years, and the villagers have managed it as ancestral common space based on a matrilineal system and headmanship. However, since the 1990s, acacia and oil palm companies have encroached on the peatlands of the traditional territory. In this situation, many villagers have either sold or plan to sell peat hinterlands in the village territory. How has their ancestral territory transformed into tradable land, and why have they chosen to sell it? What is the relationship between the traditional values of customary space and the adoption of the perspective of land as a commodity? Based on historical research on local land governance and a present-day household survey of land use and attitudes toward peat space, this chapter argues that the privatization of peatlands has transformed a once-common space into a commodity. Villagers sell peatland to actualize its potential amid anxiety and economic difficulty to contribute to the stable future of their descendants.

3.1 Introduction

Chaps. 3–10 focus on the administrative village (desa) of Rantau Baru (Pangkalan Kerinci Sub-district, Pelalawan District) and examine its peatland governance using an inter/transdisciplinary approach. This chapter provides an overview of the history and present situation of Rantau Baru and analyzes the relationship between people and land from the perspective of social and cultural anthropology.

Since the 1990s, the Indonesian government has implemented policies to regulate or mitigate the expansion of oil palm and acacia industries in peat environments to prevent peatland degradation and fire. In 2011, it imposed a moratorium on the issuance of new licenses for acacia and oil palm plantations in dryland forests and peatlands under the international framework of “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the role of conservation sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries” (REDD+) (Murdiyarso et al. 2011; Sloan et al. 2012). The types of large-scale concessions granted during the previous few decades were halted for an initial period of two years with the hope of slowing deforestation and the subsequent degradation of peatland. This policy was amended and extended repeatedly and became permanent in 2019. In 2016, the government established the Indonesian Peatland Restoration Agency (Badan Restorasi Gambut, BRG). The BRG adopted the strategies of rewetting, revegetation, and revitalization (3R), paying special attention to locals’ lives.

However, in Riau, the oil palm industry continued to encroach on peatland because moratorium policies contain many loopholes (Jong 2019). First, such policies do not protect all forests and peatlands, and second, a protected area may be amended through lobbying by local authorities (Jong 2019). Furthermore, at the village level, peat hinterlands continue to be bought and sold, and oil palms continue to be planted on peatlands. Changes in the regulation of the oil palm industry in the 2000s made it possible for small landholders to either work on oil palm plantations as worker-cum-owners or receive revenues from plantations as unearned income (Kawai 2021, pp. 40–41), which facilitated the speculative hoarding and selling of land. For example, in this manner, the Ngaju Dayaks in Kapuas District of Central Kalimantan have sold peat hinterlands from which they used to collect forest products, such as rattan, to buyers related to the oil palm industry (Lubis 2013, pp. 48–50; see also Jong 2021). Capital continues to define the borders and conditions of peatlands that the local community once used. Similarly, Rantau Baru villagers have sold peat hinterland in the village territory to buyers since the mid-2000s.

However, in Rantau Baru, where village lands have been inherited from the villagers’ ancestors over at least several centuries, and villagers have managed the land, river, and resources in the village territory as a common space based on a matrilineal system and headmanship. The boundaries of the village were determined in the precolonial era and recognized by the Pelalawan kingdom, which ruled the region between the 18th and mid-20th centuries. The village territory can thus be considered an inalienable ancestral territory (Chou 2010). Despite this, even Rantau Baru villagers have sold peat hinterland. How has their ancestral territory transformed into a tradable commodity, and why have they chosen to sell the hinterland? What is the relationship between the traditional values of customary space and the adoption of the perspective of land as a commodity?

In describing the formation of the Rantau Baru village and its history of land use, this chapter examines how and why village peatlands have been divided, privatized, and sold. First, we summarize the history of the Kampar River Basin based on past records and previous historical studies and analyze the position of people in history and explain that their territories were recognized by previous states. Second, based on the results of unstructured interviews and questionnaire surveys, we provide an overview of the ethnicity of villagers, the village matrilineal system and headmanship, and the environment in the territory. Finally, we examine the processes through which the village’s customary space (particularly peatland) was divided, documented, and eventually sold to outsiders.

Although the villagers aspire to own oil palm gardens, this is difficult for them to accomplish due to environmental and economic reasons. Selling peatland is an alternative means that enables them to actualize the potentiality of peatland space, which contributes to the stable future of their descendants. A deeper understanding of such behaviors and ways of thinking among local residents is necessary to prevent peatland degradation, drying, and fires in a bottom-up fashion.

3.2 Historical Background: The 29 Pebatinan Under the Malay Kingdoms

3.2.1 Brief History of the Pelalawan Area

Although the history of Rantau Baru stretches back centuries, the story of how the village began has not been passed down through generations in a clear manner.¹ However, it is well known that the village was one of the 29 pebatinan, or administrative districts, designated by the Pelalawan kingdom in the precolonial era. The old name of the village, Bokol Bokol, is also mentioned in a colonial record written in the 1860s (Faes 1882, p. 518). In this section, we provide an overview of the history of the Kampar River Basin, examine the process through which the territory was formulated, and elucidate the status of local people vis-à-vis the state before and after the proclamation of Indonesian independence in 1945. To this end, we largely depend on the works written and edited by Tenas Effendy et al. (Effendy 1997a, 1997b, 2002; Effendy et al. 2005). Tenas Effendy was a leader of traditional culture (tokoh adat) in Riau and had a profound influence on cultural policies from the 1990s to the early 2010s. After the 1960s, he traveled to villages in the area, collecting and recording cultural practices and oral histories.² He also wrote and edited many historical articles on Pelalawan District. However, his descriptions often do not mention any sources, and in some cases, he would present his own views without credible sources (see also Masuda 2012, p. 241). In presenting the following historical overview, we recognize the limits of these materials.

Settlements and states in eastern Sumatra were typically established and developed along several large rivers and their tributaries. Historically, eastern Sumatra, including the Kampar Basin, was influenced by the Malay kingdoms of Srivijaya, Malacca, and Johor, which depended on maritime trade overseas. Several local kingdoms established centers on the shores of the estuaries of large rivers that contain headwaters from the Barisan Mountains and pour into the Malacca Strait. These kingdoms locally controlled their basins by following or allying with the Malay maritime kingdoms. Settlements relied on large rivers and their tributaries as trading routes for crops, spices, minerals, and forest products produced and harvested in the upstream and midstream regions (Bronson 1978; Kathirithamby-Wells 1993). These regions were also a destination of out-migration (merantau) of the Minangkabau, who lived in the highland areas of the Barisan Mountains. Since ancient times, people of eastern Sumatra have continuously migrated to lowland areas along the rivers. The resulting settlements and states that developed on the riverbanks enabled communication among the Malays from coastal areas, the Minangkabau from the highlands, and the indigenous people who lived in the forest areas (Andaya 2008, pp. 81–100; Barnard 2003; see also Osawa 2022). The population of this region can thus be characterized by its mixed nature (or kacuness) (Barnard 2003, pp. 2–3). Hamidy (1987, p. 22), a local anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in several settlements of the 29 pebatinan, notes that while the people seem to have various origins, their status and identity have been formulated through the everyday interactions among the communities.

At the end of the 14th century, one of the local kingdoms, the Pekantua kingdom, was established and began to exert power over the Kampar Basin (Effendy et al. 2005, p. 67). Malay merchants from Malacca and the eastern coast of Sumatra, who traveled to the kingdom’s center, and the people of the kingdom came into contact with Islam (Masuda 2012, p. 242). Around the turn of the 16th century, the Malacca kingdom, aiming to extend its influence into the Kampar basin, attacked and occupied Pekantua. By accepting the royal family of Malacca as its ruler, the Pekantua kingdom was permitted to continue. As the Malacca kingdom had adopted Islam in the 15th century, the Pekantua king was named a Sultan (Effendy et al. 2005) and Islam gradually spread throughout the basin. During the next two hundred years, the center was moved several times around the Kampar estuary before finally settling in the mid-18th century in Sungai Rasau, or present-day Pelalawan. It was then that the kingdom was named Pelalawan (Effendy et al. 2005, pp. 73–75). Around the turn of the 19th century, Pelalawan was invaded by the Siak kingdom. However, the polity of the Pelalawan kingdom was maintained by accepting the brother of the Siak king as a ruler (van Anrooij 1885, pp. 268–269; Barnard 2003, p. 139, 160; Effendy et al. 2005, pp. 77–79).

In the mid-19th century, when the Dutch government extended its direct control over the Indonesian archipelago, both the Indoragiri and Siak kingdoms were subsumed under Dutch control. In 1879, the Pelalawan kingdom was incorporated into the colonial government structure (Effendy et al. 2005, p. 88). Although Pelalawan was placed under its suzerainty, the Dutch colonial government recognized that in the “Outer Islands,” such as Sumatra and Kalimantan, local authorities had continuously ruled their territories based on their customary laws, or hukum adat. Therefore, Pelalawan remained a regional self-governing kingdom (Zelfbesturende Landschappen) (Masuda 2012, p. 247). During the Japanese occupation (1942–1945), although the Pelalawan kingdom was organized as a district (gun) of Eastern Sumatra Province (shu), the Japanese military government maintained the Dutch administrative organization, allowing the kingdom’s structure and governance to continue. In 1945, the Pelalawan king officially handed sovereignty of the kingdom to the Republic of Indonesia (Effendy 1997a, p. 633, Effendy et al. 2005, pp. 91–92; Masuda 2012, pp. 246–249).

Throughout the Pekantua and Pelalawan eras, kings controlled the Kampar Basin by appointing the heads of each area in the region. According to Masuda (2012, p. 399, quoting an unpublished manuscript written by Effendy and Jaafar³), Sultan Alauddin Riayat Syah II, who ruled the Pekantua kingdom between 1528 and 1530, formulated the rights and obligations of each customary law (adat) of local communities. Additionally, he decided that each adat would be managed by batin, or the heads of pebatinan, and designated areas to each batin as the customary land (tanah wilayat) (see Masuda 2012, pp. 242–243). At the turn of the 19th century, these customary areas were organized into 29 pebatinan that still exist today (Effendy et al. 2005, p. 42, 82). Syarif Jaafar, who ruled Pelalawan from 1866 to 1872, divided the kingdom into four regions and dispatched a head (orang besar) to each region, which comprised several pebatinan. He confirmed the right of the customary land of each pebatinan by issuing land certificates (Gran Sultan/ Selat Keterangan Hutan Tanah). Following this example, his successors also issued land certificates to each local area in the kingdom’s territory in compliance with the wishes of local heads until the kingdom became part of the Republic of Indonesia (Effendy 1997a, pp. 632–633; Effendy et al. 2005, pp. 86–87, 120–121). Effendy (1997a, p. 632) describes village governance under the Pelalawan kingdom in the following manner: “given the freedom to organize their law and custom as well as having rights to ownership, management, use and care of the land, the Petalangan people [the people of the 29 pebatinan] were able to lead their way of life unhindered, adhering to the model and the values laid down by the adat.”

In a map depicting the names and boundaries of the 29 pebatinan made by the Dutch colonial government (Fig. 3.1), Rantau Baru is named Kebatinan Rantaubaroe and is in almost the same location as the present-day village. Masuda (2012, p. 248, 286–297) deduces that this map was created between 1916 and 1938 based on the division of colonial administrative areas.

Fig. 3.1

A map of the 29 pebatinan created during the Dutch colonial era and preserved in Tenas Effendy’s house (Reprinted from Masuda 2012 with the permission of the author)

Following Indonesian independence, the Pelalawan kingdom was reorganized as an administrative district, or wilayah kewedanaan, and the king became its head (wedana). The four regional heads of the kingdom, or orang besar, became sub-district heads (camat), and the batin were appointed as village heads (penghulu) (Effendy 1997a, p. 633, 2002, p. 368).⁴ In 1947, land certificates from all 29 pebatinan were gathered to determine the boundaries of the administrative villages. However, when the Dutch military reinvaded the Indonesian archipelago, soldiers stationed in Pelalawan and the surrounding area experienced fighting and damage. In the ensuing disorder, the certificates were lost and remain missing today (Effendy 1997b, p. 58; Masuda 2012, pp. 254–255).

From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, a village was called a kepenghuluan. If the territory of a kepenghuluan became too unwieldy, it was divided into several new kepenghuluan, and new penghulu were appointed as heads of the new villages (Masuda 2012, p. 263). In 1965, when the central government integrated local administrative systems,⁵ these kepenghuluan were reorganized as desa. In these processes, the village heads were gradually replaced by people from outside the village because most existing heads did not fulfill the education qualifications that were newly required by the central government. As a result, the authority of the batin was separated from the official administration (Effendy 1997a, p. 633, 2002, pp. 366–369).

3.2.2 The Position of the People under the State

While Effendy’s works describe the Pelalawan kingdom’s rule as being void of any major problems for the people, colonial records describe a slightly different relationship between the kingdom and communities. According to a record written by a Dutch person who visited Pelalawan (Faes 1882) in the late 19th century, the people that he met (probably rulers and officials at the center of Pelalawan) identified themselves as the descendants of the Johor kingdom, while he found that they were influenced by Minangkabau culture (1882, p. 496).⁶ In Pelalawan, the cultivated land was owned privately, and the king only had the right to tax crops and forest products. However, the king levied fines upon the people as he wished, and if the fines were not paid, the offenders were tortured (Faes 1882, p. 500).⁷ In the face of such harsh conditions, the people of several pebatinan fled and the overall number of pebatinan in the kingdom gradually decreased. Although Dutch colonial officials acknowledged 29 pebatinan in 1811, the number decreased to 22 by 1865, and only 11 remained at the end of the 19th century (Faes 1882, pp. 518–519). Faes (1882, p. 496, 519) does not explain the details of this decline, noting that it was caused by the population reduction as a result of heavy taxation and corvée imposed by the Pelalawan kingdom after usurpation by the Siak kingdom. Masuda (2012, p. 243) supposes that the reduction of pebatinan in the mid-19th century was caused by their temporary move upstream to hinterland forests to avoid taxation. As the 29 pebatinan have been maintained to date, Masuda’s supposition seems plausible.

Other colonial records indicate that the people of the 29 pebatinan occupied a marginal position in the state system. The main people of the pebatinan were once called the Talang (Orang/Suku Talang) or the Petalanagan, and these names remain in their adat (mentioned later). They were regarded as different from the Malays from the coasts of eastern Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, that is, coastal Malays (Melayu Pasisir, see also Kasori, Chapter 11), who comprised the majority of eastern Sumatra.⁸ Nieuwenhuijzen (1858), who visited the capital of the Siak kingdom, distinguished the Suku Talang (Talang tribes), non-Muslims living in forest areas, from the king’s subjects (hamba raja), who were Muslims living in settlements controlled by the kingdom. Indeed, the king’s subjects, or ordinary citizens of the kingdom, were typically coastal Malays.⁹ However, the categorization of the people during this era was ambiguous. For example, Nieuwenhuijzen (1858) classified as Suku Talang not only tribal groups living in the forest areas of the Kampar Basin, but also those living along the tributaries of the Siak River (present-day Sakai).

Van Anrooij (1885), a Dutch official who visited the Siak kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century, distinguished the people living in the Siak-Pelalawan border area from other tribal groups. According to his record, the boundaries were called “pertalangan,” and the people who lived in this area were the Talang (Orang Talang) (van Anrooij 1885, pp. 294–295).¹⁰ These people were nominal Muslims who lived in the forest, depended on swidden cultivation (van Anrooij 1885, p. 295), and were categorized as “king’s folk,” or rakyat raja, a class beneath the king’s subjects (hamba raja).¹¹ While food sharing and marriage between the Talang and the king’s subjects had previously been avoided, inter-class marriages increased at the end of the 19th century (Van Anrooij 1885, p. 324). Although van Anrooij acknowledges that he is not aware of the system through which people were classified into these two different classes, he infers that the degree of their belief in Islam was the essential criterion (1885, p. 324). According to Wilkinson’s dictionary (1959), “Orang Talang” refers to the people living on the eastern coast of Sumatra, who had “have become Moslems and [followed] the Adat Minangkabau but [retained] many of their primitive customs and beliefs” (1959, p. 1154).

The “backward” or “tribal” image of the Talang visible in the Dutch records seems to reflect the perspective of the coastal Malays, who originated in the coastal areas and were the majorities and/or rulers in the region. As the people of the 29 pebatinan lived in relatively upstream forest areas and depended on swidden cultivation, the coastal Malays would have considered them “backward” or “tribal” minorities in the peripheral areas of the state. However, the actual relationship between these people and coastal Malays must have been heterogeneous in each local community. Indeed, some communities would have accepted the obligations of taxation and the services of the state.¹² In this process, as they converted to Islam and married coastal Malays, they came to be regarded as “Malays of the Pelalawan kingdom.” However, while communicating with the kingdom and other communities, some would have lived in the upstream forests of the tributaries. When their relationship with the kingdom deteriorated, they moved to more upstream forests around the boundaries of the kingdom and lived there. As Hamidy (1987, p. 22) notes, the culture and people of this region can be characterized by its mixed nature, and their identity and positions were formulated through everyday interactions in history. In this situation, their territories were recognized by the Pelalawan kingdom based on the pebatinan system, while the communities maintained their autonomy to a large extent.

3.3 Rantau Baru Village and Land Management Based on Adat

3.3.1 Rantau Baru Village and its People

Rantau Baru was one of the 11 pebatinan that continued throughout the 19th century (Faes 1882). The present-day main settlement of Rantau Baru village is located on the northern banks of the Kampar River, a few kilometers downstream of the confluence with the Bokol Bokol River, a narrow tributary that flows from the northern hinterland to the Kampar. “Rantau Baru” can be translated as “new frontier,” and the present-day main settlement is rather new. The old settlement, called Malako Kocik (small Malacca), was situated on the south bank of the Kampar and faced confluence. Although the villagers do not know the exact year, several generations ago, a plague spread through the old settlement and its people moved to the new one. Currently, the site of Malako Kocik is used as a public cemetery for the village, and the name is used for a sub-village of the present-day main settlement. Several other old names, such as “Kampung Tolok” and “Kampung Tuo,” have also been handed down; however, the places and periods from which they originate are unknown, as the site of the settlement would have repeatedly moved around the confluence. While many pebatinan were divided into several administrative villages after the independence of Indonesia, Rantau Baru was not divided. It is unclear when the villagers adopted Islam.

There are two settlements in the administrative village of Rantau Baru. The main settlement is composed of the administrative sub-villages (or dusun) of Sepenjung (Dusun 1) and Malako Kocik (Dusun 2). These sub-villages have no clear boundaries and are typically referred to collectively as Rantau Baru. This chapter refers to this collective settlement as “the main/traditional settlement.” According to the village census in 2020, the population of this settlement was 581. The other settlement is the Sei. Pebadaran (or Dusun 3), which is eight kilometers north of the main settlement. This settlement was formed in 2004 with district government support (mentioned later) and had a population of 206 in 2020.

The main language in Rantau Baru is a Malay dialect that is understood by other Riau Malay and Indonesian speakers. Villagers call their language “rural Malay” (bahasa Melayu kampong), as opposed to Riau Malay or Indonesian. According to historical records, people in this area were called Talang (as mentioned above), while academic papers written after the 1990s often refer to them as Petalangan. There are several hypotheses regarding the meaning of talang. In Dutch records describing the history of the Pelalawan kingdom, talang means “district” (distriten) (Faes 1882, p. 500). Effendy (2002, p. 364; see also Wilkinson 1959, p. 1154) implies that the term talang is related to “middleman” or “trader”. In another article, however, he suggests that the name is derived from the local use of bamboo (talang) to mark settlements and obtain water (Effendy et al. 2005, p. 115). Hamidy (1987, pp. 22–23) and Masuda (2012, p. 60, 285) assert that talang refers to a settlement or space in the forest.

Although the villagers know that they have been referred to as Talang in the past, they never identified themselves as Talang or Petalangan during the duration of our study.¹³ One middle-aged villager explained that Talang/Petalangan implies “primitive” or “living in the forest with no clothes.” His parents’ generation is particularly reluctant to be called these names and always identify themselves as Malays (Orang Melayu) or inland Malays (Melayu Daratan) when they want to differentiate themselves from coastal Malays.

Such discrepancies between self-identification and identification by others are common in eastern Sumatra. This is a result of the process of state expansion between the 18th and 19th centuries, during which the state designated ethnic names for the people living in peripheral areas (Osawa 2022). For example, indigenous people living in the upstream areas of the Mandau River are referred to as the Sakai in colonial records and Indonesian government documents (e.g., van Anrooij 1885), but they called themselves the Batin (Orang Batin) in the past and only adopted the government’s categorization and began calling themselves Sakai in the 1960s (Porath 2003, p. 4). Indigenous people living in the Bengkalis Island are referred to as the Utan (Orang Utan) in colonial records and Indonesian government documents. Reluctant to be called this name, they negotiated with the district government to recognize them with their preferred name, the Suku Asli (Osawa 2022). “Talang” seems to have been a name used by the Pelalawan administration to collectively refer to various peoples in the kingdom. While it is uncertain whether local people accepted this name during the Pelalawan era, given that they never call themselves the Talang today, we can assume that the name was a given one, not one of self-identification.

In contrast to Talang, the name “Petalangan” has been found in academic works since the 1990s. The use of this term would be associated with a rise in support for indigenous communities facing large-scale deforestation in Sumatra caused by the development of oil palm and acacia industries during this period (see Okamoto et al., Chap. 2). Land grabbing threatened the lives of indigenous communities living around the forest, such as the Orang Rimba in Jambi province. In the 1990s, NGOs like WARSI tried to support the Orang Rimba, but it was extremely risky to claim their land rights under Suharto’s authoritarian regime (Li 2001, pp. 666–672). Therefore, they linked their support to nature conservationism, which was a popular cause among national and international donors, critics, and academics (Li 2001, pp. 656–658). Instead of demonstrating land rights, they emphasized the importance of natural conservation. In this process, they differentiated the Orang Rimba from “ordinary” rural communities, emphasized their way of life as harmonious and symbiotic with the nature, and urged the government to conserve the rainforest and their lives (Li 2001). In Riau, Tenas Effendy and his networks were the main agents of this approach. They established an NGO, received support from donors, and claimed the need to protect the rainforests and the lives of people living in the forest environment in Pelalawan (Masuda 2009). It is highly probable that during this process, Effendy and his network began calling local people ethnic “Petalangan.” While emphasizing their position as a version of the Malays, they underlined their position of having lived harmoniously with the forest environment. In this context, many studies have explored local traditions and the use of resources in a manner that is harmonious with natural surroundings (e.g., Effendy 1997a, 2002; Hamidy 1987; Turner 1997).¹⁴

While neither the term Talang nor Petalangan is used by Rantau Baru villagers to describe their ethnicity, these terms are used to refer to their adat (traditions, customs, and customary law). Their adat handed down by the people living in the 29 pebatinan is called “Adat Melayu Petalangan” (Petalangan Malay Adat). This is regarded as distinct from “Adat Melayu Pasisir” (Coastal Malay Adat), which was passed down by Malays living in downstream areas. In this context, Rantau Baru villagers may identify themselves as “inland Malays” (Orang Melayu Darat) to distinguish themselves from coastal Malays. While adat generally involves practices and rules, such as ceremonies, rules of inheritance, management of forest and river resources, and magic, the Adat Melayu Petalangan is distinctly characterized by its matrilineal social system, in contrast with the non-lineal, or bilateral, system of Adat Melayu Pasisir. In Adat Melayu Petalangan, houses, gardens, and other properties are inherited via maternal lines, and the lands in the village territories are managed by exogamous matrilineages or suku.¹⁵ There are generally several suku in each settlement. The total number of suku in the 29 pebatinan is unknown (Masuda 2012, p. 92).

3.3.2 Traditional Local Governance: Roles of the Suku and Adat Leaders

Three exogamous suku exist in Rantau Baru: Suku Melayu Datok Tuo (or Melayu Tuo), Suku Meliling, and Suku Melayu Datok Mudo (or Melayu Mudo).¹⁶ According to the villagers, the ancestors of Melayu Tuo and Meliling were the first to settle in the area, and the ancestors of Melayu Mudo later joined the settlement. Melayu Tuo and Meliling possessed the most land, while Melayu Mudo possessed a section. The traditional title of the head, Datok Sati, called Batin Bokol Bokol in the past, is bequeathed to a male of the Melayu Tuo, while the title of Datok Sari Koto and Datok Mangku, which are regarded as the deputy headman, are bequeathed to the males of the Meliling. Nowadays, Datok Sati lives in the town of Sorek, which is dozens of kilometers away from Rantau Baru, and Datok Sari Koto and Datok Mangku manage the ceremonies and procedures related to adat on his behalf. In the main settlement, the three suku each possess land for homesteads. Although the boundaries are quite vague, many Meliling women have homesteads in the southeast part of the village, while the Melayu Mudo have homesteads in the northwest and Melayu Tuo in the area between the two. According to our questionnaire survey, although several Javanese and Malays from outside the village live in the main settlement, in every case, either the respondent or their spouse belongs to one of the three suku.

Effendy (1997b) notes that following independence, many batin from the pebatinan were replaced by village heads from outside of the villages. However, Batin Bokol Bokol maintained his role as the administrative village head. After Independence, the Batin Bokol Bokol became the penghulu, and his successor also took the role of penghulu. When the national law of village governance was implemented in 1965, the title of the administrative village head changed from penghulu to kepala desa. After the introduction of village head elections in the 1980s, one of the two adat leaders described above (Datok Sati, Datok Sari Koto, and Datok Mangku) was chosen as the kepala desa by the villagers. In 1998, a villager who did not play the role of the adat head was selected as the kepala desa.

In addition to the three aforementioned adat leaders, the three suku have their own heads. These six heads are called ninik mamak.¹⁷ The three ninik mamak of the suku are positioned under Datok Sati, Datok Sari Koto and Datok Mangku; they settle disputes within their own suku and act as representatives for all members of their suku. Each suku head is assisted by (1) two men (called ketuo anak jantan) who represent the male children of the suku, (2) two women (called ketuo anak betino) who represent the female children of the suku, and (3) two males belonging to other suku (called ketuo semondo, or “head of one hut”). As marriage between members of different suku is regarded as a marriage between the suku, suku heads and their assistants manage the engagement and wedding ceremony procedures in the village. These people also play important roles in the management of natural resources such as rivers, forests, and land. Each year, ninik mamak hold a bid meeting to establish fishing rights for that year in dozens of Kampar tributaries and oxbow lakes, with ninik mamak and ketuo semondo constituting a committee to manage the meeting. The funds from bid sales are used for various welfare initiatives, such as managing and repairing mosques and providing grants to children who have lost either of their parents.

The bid meeting represents villagers’ attempts to manage the space and resources in the river. This is a typical fishing village in this region; its villagers largely depend on fishing in the Kampar River and its tributaries for their livelihoods (see also Nakagawa and Nofrizal et al., Chaps 4 and 5). According to Masuda (2012, pp. 213–223), in the village of Betung at the midstream of the Nilo River, commercial fishing using raft huts was developed after the 1970s. In Rantau Baru, raft huts have not been used at all, and it is unclear when the bid meeting began or when commercial fishing became the main livelihood. According to the villagers, while fishing has been an important source of their livelihood, they depended more on swidden cultivation twenty years ago (mentioned later) and fished only during agricultural off-time and off-season. The hauls were both consumed in houses, processed, and sold to the cities of Kerinci and Pekanbaru via buyers who visited the village (see Nofrizal et al., Chap. 5). Commercial fishing in Rantau Baru would have been developed earlier than in Betung, as access from the cities to Rantau Baru was much easier than Betung through the mainstream of the Kampar. After swidden cultivation declined around twenty years ago, commercial fishing became the main livelihood in the village.

3.3.3 Management of Sialang Areas and Swidden Cultivation

The suku manage the sialang trees and the surrounding forests. Sialang trees are often especially big and can be regarded as landmarks. Bees build their hives in these trees, which are protected alongside the surrounding forests as sialang areas (kepung sialang). It is prohibited to cut down the trees in these areas. In Rantau Baru, sialang areas are concentrated on the bank of the Kampar with mineral soils, and each suku possesses one sialang area and manages many sialang trees. During our visit to the village, a man living in a neighboring village cut down a sialang tree possessed by Melayu Mudo. The ninik mamak, ketuo anak jantan, and ketuo anak betino of Melayu Mudo repeatedly held meetings as representatives of the suku. After negotiations, it was decided that the man had to pay compensation. It is said that sialang trees and the surrounding forests are possessed and inherited by suku, and the yields of honey and beeswax should be shared among the suku members. While such sialang trees still exist, trees that are protected and grown by individuals may be possessed by individuals and inherited by their close kin. In these cases, the yields are shared between the owner and the honey collectors rather than by the suku. Such sialang trees have become more common in recent years. Nevertheless, the trees and the surrounding forests are associated with identity and cosmological order for the people around the midstream Kampar, in which sialang trees are identified with human beings (Effendy 2002). In 2021, the umbrella organization of Malay communities across Riau that conducts the activities for the protection and prosperity of Malay tradition and culture, the Association of Malay Adat (Lembaga Adat Melayu Riau), required the district head (bupati) of Pelalawan to properly protect sialang forests from deforestation by industries around the regions of the midstream Kampar based on the local adat.

In terms of land management, the suku managed the plots for the slash-and-burn cultivation of rice on mineral soil, which was conducted on the south bank of the Kampar until approximately twenty years ago. During the dry season, which begins in March and April, villagers would open the forests and burn them, build a hut to live in for four or five months, and cultivate rice and several types of vegetables (such as cucumbers) for their own consumption in the dry field. They continuously cultivated a plot for two or three years before leaving it and opening a new plot. Some families planted rubber and oil palm trees at the corner of the plot and carried the yields to the town of Kerinci. They were allowed to use the land until the trees were blasted. The villagers could open any forests with the agreement of ninik mamak and suku members, with the exception of sialang areas and the plots in which other villagers had already planted trees. However, as an important adat, the lands around a plot that had been opened by the members of a suku were meant to be cultivated by those of the same suku. It was prohibited to cultivate plots next to the plots of different suku in a mosaic-like manner. While slash-and-burn cultivation sustained their livelihood together with fishing until approximately twenty years ago, it suddenly declined. This is because while villagers had been able to predict the seasonal floods of the Kampar in the past, irregular floods increased and the crops were repeatedly spoiled.¹⁸ At present, most of the land for the field has become a secondary forest, while a part is used for rubber and oil palm gardens.

The river, land, and forests in the realm of the pebatinan in the past and the administrative village of Rantau Baru in post-independence Indonesia were controlled by the three matri-lineages of the suku. This means that the space in the village was possessed not by individuals but by suku as a common space. According to the villagers, although ninik mamak have the authority to control the space as representatives of their suku to a certain extent, it is necessary for them to agree with suku members if they want to yield or sell the space in the village territory to outsiders.

3.3.4 Floods and Resettlement Programs

A large part of the village area is situated in the floodplain of the Kampar, and the land suffers from seasonal floods during the flood season between November and March. The scale varies from year to year, but the relatively low land, including most of the main settlement, is covered in water every year. Therefore, the houses in the settlement are built on piles that are approximately two meters high. During the floods, the villagers use boats for transportation, the primary school in the village is closed, and youths who travel to junior high or high schools in Kerinci by motorcycle or omnibus during the dry season must board outside the village. The people here live in this environment because, according to the villagers, the haul from fishing in the Kampar tributaries increases just after the rainy season. However, because of the seasonal isolation and difficulty regarding sedentary cultivation, the village’s population has been in flux and many people have migrated to other places. Many people who were born in the village moved to the town of Sorek to ensure a stable livelihood (untuk cari makan) and engaged in trade and other labor. Most of them have maintained a kin relationship with the villagers and often return to the village. We were told that when a mosque in the village needs to be repaired, the people who live in different places significantly contributed to its repair through donations.

Both the government and the villagers regard floods as the main reason for the village’s delayed development. During the last three decades, two large-scale resettlement programs have been implemented in Rantau Baru. The first program involved resettlement to present-day Kiyap Jaya Village, which is upstream of the Bokol Bokol River. This program was led not by the government, but by a network of batin headmen. The upstream hinterland of the Bokol Bokol River was the realm of Pebatinan Sekijang Mati (one of the 29 pebatinan) and became an administrative village of Kijang in post-independence Indonesia. At the beginning of the 1990s, a man with the title of Datuk Sekijang who had spent his childhood in Rantau Baru sympathized with the village’s situation of flooding every year. Therefore, he decided to cede 500 hectares of unused forest land in his kebatinan to Rantau Baru after making agreements with the ninik mamak of Rantau Baru and his communities. As a result, 100 households, which were selected by drawing lots, moved to a new place, received five hectares of land each, and began cultivating oil palms. At first, the new settlement was called “Rantau Baru Atas” (or Upstream Rantau Baru; the old settlement was called “Rantau Baru Bawah” or Downstream Rantau Baru). In 2005, the settlement became a new administrative village of Kiyap Jaya alongside several settlements that belonged to the village of Kijang. While the settlement is considered under the control of Datok Sati in terms of adat, the suku heads are different from those of Rantau Baru. Almost all villagers in present-day Rantau Baru have relatives in the village of Kiyap Jaya.

The district government led the second resettlement program in the early half of the 2000s. In this project, the district government built 100 houses made of brick and concrete and prepared gardens of 500 square meters for each house in the hinterland, where the influence of the floods was minimal. These homesteads were provided to villagers in the main settlement. The village office was also built in this area, which was called Dusun 3. However, the program was unsuccessful. First, as Dusun 3 was far away from the Kampar, which many people depended on for their livelihood, many families who received a new homestead returned to the main settlement just after they moved. Second, the soft ground of peat soil was unsuitable for the houses, and in many houses, the floor was tilted and the whole structure was distorted. These houses were dismantled. Third, although some houses could be used, the settlement was still influenced by floods. Consequently, many people returned to their old houses in the main settlement, which resulted in many empty houses. Therefore, the village office is implementing a policy to lend empty houses to migrants who have moved to the village to work in oil palm plantations. In our questionnaire survey, we obtained 45 responses from 49 houses in the Dusun 3. We found that 29 respondents and their spouses did not have any kinship with the suku. Their ethnic backgrounds were Javanese, Bataks, Nias, and Malays born outside of Rantau Baru.

One villager who was born and brought up in Rantau Baru and worked in the village office stated that “Rantau Baru is the eldest, but the most undeveloped village in Pelalawan District.” While it is uncertain whether this village is the oldest in the region, it is certain that people have lived around the confluence of the Kampar and Bokol Bokol for several centuries and controlled the land, river, and resources based on their matrilineal social system. However, the underdevelopment of this village in relation to other villages in Pelalawan should be given attention. Based on the questionnaire survey, Prasetyawan (Chap. 9) notes that the expenditure per capita of this village undergoes the poverty line in Riau. The marshy peatland and floodplains that cover most of the village area have prevented them from changing their livelihood from fishing to being owners of oil palm gardens that usually provide better incomes and have been the main livelihood in neighboring villages. In such a situation, the relationship between the villagers and their ancestral land has transformed.

3.4 Development of Peatlands and Change in the Relationship

3.4.1 Construction of a Road and Plantations and Change in the Peat Environment

While the people in Rantau Baru have maintained the village territory based on their matrilineal system, the space that they manage only comprises the Kampar River, its tributaries, and the mineral banks along the river. The main stream of the Kampar, an oxbow lake, and the Bokol Bokol River are common fishing grounds among the villagers. The tributaries and creeks, which are only two-three meters in width, are managed at a bid meeting once a year. Mineral banks are used for the sialang areas, which are owned by the suku, and fields, which are opened on the bank with an agreement among the ninik mamak and suku members. However, peat hinterlands, which are regarded as the historical and administrative territories of the village, have not been managed by suku in a concrete manner. Until the mid-1980s, the peatland was covered by a thick rainforest and a swampy and marshy area, which prevented people from entering the area and using its resources. The peat swamp forests were only used for the occasional logging of timber and harvesting of honey and beeswax, as the village only possessed a few sialang trees (not suku, according to the villagers) in the swampy forest (see also Osawa, Chap. 6). The peat swamp forests were only used during the flood season because the flood water provided access to the inside of the forest via boats. The main settlement was surrounded by swampy forests, and there were no paths that connected the settlement to other places. Therefore, transportation was completely dependent on the waterlines. However, this situation changed at the end of the 1980s when the acacia and oil palm industries were introduced to the village.

The first turning point occurred in the mid-1980s when Asia Pulp and Paper, a large acacia company, obtained a concession of the vast land in Kampar District (present-day Pelalawan District was a part of Kampar District) and constructed a large industrial road, Jl. Korridor Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper (Jl. RAPP), which crosses the northern hinterland of Rantau Baru. Following this, a path connecting the main settlement with the road was constructed, which connected Rantau Baru with the town of Kerinci and other villages by land routes. In the 1990s, two vast oil palm plantations, operated by the companies of Pusaka Megah Bumi Nusantara and Langgam Inti Hibrindo, were constructed in the peat areas northwest and southeast of the village (see Binawan and Osawa, Chap. 10). They constructed canals and water gates in the swamp forests, controlled water, and created grounds that were suitable for growing oil palms. Although the areas of the oil palm plantations partly overlapped with the village territory, the villagers did not take action against it or negotiate.

The construction of industrial roads and oil palm plantations changed the landscape of the peat hinterland. Since approximately 1995, peat swamp forests have suffered from fires during the dry season and transformed into grasslands. Due to these fires, a few sialang trees and their forests were burned. According to the villagers, while there were occasional small-scale fires in the peatlands before the 1990s, both the scale and frequency dramatically increased after the mid-1990s. The villagers believe that the main reason for this is the increase in the number of outsiders entering the peatlands. After the construction of Jl. RAPP, many anglers living in Pekanbaru and Kerinci began to fish the tributaries and canals. They fished throughout the night and built fires to avoid mosquitoes. Carelessness with these fires or cigarettes is believed to have been the cause of peatland fires. However, the villagers rarely criticized road construction or oil palm plantations as the causes of fires.

We asked some villagers why they had not taken actions against the construction of the road and the oil palm plantations that encroached on the village territory. According to a male village official, these projects were impelled by the district governments, so they had no choice in the matter. Moreover, the village has opened to the outside world because of the road and the villagers who work in the company. Therefore, they do not have the courage (tidak berani) to complain or criticize the work of the companies or the government, regardless of whether they cause fires.

The construction of Jl. RAPP stimulated the dramatic transformation of the natural and social landscape of the peat hinterland. It introduced oil palm industries to the peat hinterland of the village territory, which the villagers rarely used. Then, fires frequently occurred, and the landscape of swampy forests was lost. It is noteworthy here that Rantau Baru is one of the villages targeted by BRG’s Peatland Care Village (Desa Peduli Gambut, DPG) program. Although a program facilitator visited the village in 2019, they did not actively educate the villagers or conduct any collaborative projects. Additionally, the district government has not conducted any particular programs in the village for restoring degraded and dried peatland. The impact of the government’s peatland restoration policies has been minimal in Rantau Baru (see also Osawa, Chap. 6).

3.4.2 Expansion of Oil Palm Plantations and the Spread of Land and Compensation Letters

At the end of the 1980s, a path (Jl. Lama, mentioned later) connected the main settlement and Jl. RAPP. While it connected the village with the outside world via a land route, it also enabled the villagers to access the peat hinterland more easily. As a result, since the mid-2000s, peat hinterland in the traditional village territory of the tanah wilayat began to be documented and commodified.

In Indonesia, oil palm industries were typically developed after the mid-1970s under collaboration schemes between large-scale companies and their contracted farmers (Perusahaan Inti Rakyat, PIR scheme). The PIR scheme was modified several times, and in the latter half of the 1990s (around the collapse of Suharto’s regime), it became possible for small- to medium-sized enterprises to bring in oil palm industries (Kawai 2021; Nagata 2021, p. 80). In the 1990s, for various reasons (such as the rise of cultivation technology and the increase in support from local governments other than the PIR scheme) the area of oil palm plantations that was owned by local farmers began to rapidly increase across Indonesia (Kawai 2021, pp. 37–38; Nagata and Arai 2013). The PIR scheme was revised again in the mid-2000s, which enabled the small landholders to choose to either work on their land as worker-cum-owners or receive the revenues of their plantations as unearned incomes (Kawai 2021, pp. 40–41). In accordance with the relaxation of regulations and the expansion of the oil palm industry, the demand for land rapidly increased, and land in rural areas has become the target of dealings in Riau.

In Riau, deals with land after the 1980s were often made by producing a set of two letters—land letters (Surat Keterangan Tanah, SKTs) and compensation letters (Surat Keterangan Ganti Rugi, SKGRs)—which are issued by administrative village offices and signed by the sub-district head (Dethia et al. 2020; Mujiburohman et al. 2015). As a large part of Riau was categorized as state forest (hutan negara) based on the Basic Forestry Law in 1967¹⁹ and its successor, the Forest Law in 1999²⁰ (see Okamoto et al., Chap. 2), the basic title of the land is attributed to the Indonesian state (Dethia et al. 2020, pp. 425–426; Gusliana et al. 2019; Fitzpatrick 2007, p. 138). Therefore, when people want to claim their right to land use in such areas, they need to obtain permission from the government. In the 1970s, the right was recognized by obtaining slashing permission (izin tebas tebang).²¹ If the objective area was less than two hectares, the head of the sub-district had the authority to issue permission by considering the opinion of the village head (Mujiburohman et al. 2015, pp. 170–171). However, the permit did not issue a right over the land that people once had slashed and cultivated but did not use at the time of applying for permission (Mujiburohman et al. 2015, pp. 172–173, 180–181). Therefore, village offices began to issue SKTs, explaining that the letter holder could open and use the land. In the 1980s, oil palm companies began encroaching on land close to settlements, and the issuing of SKTs rapidly prevailed across Riau as a countermeasure (Mujiburohman et al. 2015, pp. 179–180). An SKT explains that the land has been cultivated by the letter holder; it is acknowledged by land users around the land concerned, the heads of neighborhood associations (Rukun Tetangga/Rukun Warga, RT/RW), and the village head; and reported to the sub-district head (Mujiburohman et al. 2015, pp. 183–184). Thus, SKTs became a general document showing the right to use land in Riau.

In contrast, the SKGR is a proof of the transfer of land use in state forest areas (Dethia et al. 2020; Mujiburohman et al. 2015). This transfer means that the transferee must produce the new SKT and pay “compensation” (ganti rugi) to the transferor to use the land for their own purposes (Dethia et al. 2020, p. 426). Additionally, the letter is used to mortgage land (Dethia et al. 2020). The letter form is issued by village offices, filled in by both the transferor and transferee, acknowledged by the heads of neighborhood associations, and signed by the heads of the village and sub-district, which is similar to the SKT (Dethia et al. 2020, p. 427). The detailed legal standings of SKTs and SKGRs are incomplete and controversial; Dethia et al. (2020, p. 427) states that SKGRs in Riau are not related to the legal control of the land (cf. Mujiburohman et al. 2015). Nevertheless, land is transferred through the SKT and SKGR, and people understand this procedure as selling and buying land (Dethia et al. 2020, p. 429). The latter has enabled Rantau Baru villagers to sell the right of land use in the village territory, which is situated in the state forest area.

3.4.3 Compartmentation of the Land

It is unclear where Rantau Baru villagers obtained the slashing permissions before the introduction of SKTs or when the village office first issued SKTs. However, some households asked the village office to issue one and held an SKT before 2000. At first, these letters were issued for the land that the households continuously used for several years, such as their homesteads and the gardens on the Kampar bank, where they planted rubber trees and oil palms. While these lands were owned by the suku, they could obtain the letters for the lands that they controlled when the ninik mamak agreed.

The village office of Rantau Baru began to sell peat hinterlands in the village territory after the mid-2000s. During this period, vast peatlands south of Dusun 3 and the southern hinterland of the Kampar were sold to oil palm companies via brokers. As these deals were conducted at the village head’s discretion without the agreement of the village community. Thus, the details of the processes are unknown. However, these were unused peatlands far from the main settlement, and the villagers did not complain to the head or resist their decisions. Similarly, a neighboring village, Pangkalan Kerinci Barat, sold land southwestward of Dusun 3 to brokers by issuing a SKT and SKGR, even though some of the land overlapped with the traditional territory of Rantau Baru. The overlapped area remains disputed between Rantau Baru and Pangkalan Kerinci Barat (see also Banawan and Osawa, Chap. 10). The new landholders are companies or urban residents who have planted or will plant oil palm trees on the land. For their plantations, they employ Javanese and Batak migrants who have experience in cultivating oil palm and offer relatively low salaries. According to a villager, Malays in Rantau Baru do not want to be employed in these plantations, as the salary is much lower than the income obtained through fishing.

In addition, the village office comparted other areas of peatland and distributed them to the villagers. The path connecting the main settlement and Jl. RAPP is called the Jl. Lama, and the office provided land along Jl. Lama to villagers in 2004. Under this policy, each household received one hectare (40 × 250 m) of land. In addition, in the mid-2000s, the village office launched a project to construct a new 8 km long path, Jl. Baru, between the main settlement and Dusun 3. Although the construction is still ongoing, the constructed part has already made it possible for people to access peat hinterlands. In 2012, the village office comparted land along Jl. Baru and provided two hectares (60 × 333 m) of land for each household. In these processes, the households that did not have land in the village and wanted to possess it could receive the lands with priority. The villagers who had land around the Kampar bank or who did not want to have it did not receive the land. In both cases, the village office issued SKTs when the villagers asked for them. If the villagers obtained the SKTs, they could sell or mortgage the land. While almost all land is covered by thick peat, some parts contain mineral soils. As many villagers wanted to receive mineral land, the locations of the land were determined via a lottery. Much of the land distributed by the village office has been sold to urban residents, including Chinese, Javanese, and Batak people in Pekanbaru. According to the villagers, if they obtain the land letters, they do not require the agreement of the suku to sell the land.

In this way, peatland in the hinterland that had not been used productively and had no clear boundaries was comparted and sold to outsiders or distributed to the villagers. Some people planted oil palm seedlings on the land. However, little was produced, mainly because of floods and fires. In the years in which large floods occurred, most of the land was submerged, destroying the plantations. In the late 2010s, for example, a Batak in Pekanbaru bought ten hectares of land along Jl. Lama and planted several thousand oil palm seedlings. Due to a large flood in 2018, however, all except for three seedlings of the thousands withered and died. In addition, frequent fires have burned oil palm seedlings and peat soils. The fires in 2016 and 2019 were on such a large scale that they burned a wide area of hinterland, and many oil palm trees (including adult trees) were damaged or died. If excavators are used to dig deep ditches or canals to manage the water and soil properly, it would be possible to produce oil nuts, even on peatlands in the floodplains. However, a sizable investment is needed, and the villagers do not have enough capital to modify the land.

3.4.4 Land Registration and the Commodification of Land

Peatlands along Jl. Lama and Jl. Baru possessed by the villagers or sold to outsiders have not been used productively.

Table 3.1 compares the land types and uses in homesteads along Jl. Lama and Baru, on the Kampar Riverbank, and in other places (including outside Rantau Baru), according to responses to our questionnaire survey.²² The amount of peatland along Jl. Lama (81%) and Jl. Baru was very high (92%). Moreover, 45% of the land along Jl. Lama and 34% along Jl. Baru had already been sold at the time of the survey. Furthermore, 29% (Jl. Lama) and 49% (Jl. Baru) of people had not used land productively.²³ Although we confirmed with several respondents that oil palm was cultivated, they noted that, “The trees are still growing before producing the nuts” and “the trees were heated by the fires and are almost dying.” According to one villager, few villagers (and outsiders) can continuously harvest fresh fruit bunches using the land around Jl. Lama and Jl. Baru. However, the land on the bank that was previously used for slash-and-burn cultivation and the land in other places, including outside the village, is typically productive, with part of this land comprising peatlands.

Table 3.1 Land type and land use in Rantau Baru (Source of data: Based on responses from questionnaire survey)

Here it is worth noting the gender listed on the SKTs. According to the adat, the land and houses are owned by women, as previously mentioned. However, it is more common to register land under a man’s name on the SKT. Table 3.1 shows that even for the homesteads of the traditional settlement (Dusun 1 and 2), only around half of the respondents (54%) registered these under a woman’s name. Of the land distributed along Jl. Lama in 2004 and Jl. Baru in 2012, little is registered under a woman’s name (29% and 18%, respectively). The percentages of land on the Kampar riverbank and other places registered to women were also relatively low (30% and 24%, respectively).

Even though the villagers emphasized that the houses and land should be possessed by women in this village, in recent years the tendency is to register land under male names. When asked about the reason why male names are registered on SKTs, respondents answered that “the registration is only nominal” (“Itu nama saja”) and emphasized that the land and houses are still possessed by women. They then pointed to the Indonesian national custom of registering the husband of a nuclear family as the “head of the household” (kepala keluarga) on the family register. This is the same in Rantau Baru, where the husband’s name is registered as kepala keluarga, unless the husband is deceased or the couple has divorced. While anyone can be registered on an SKT, if the husband is registered, trust in the SKT rises and it can be used to borrow money and mortgage the land more easily than an SKT with the names of other family members. In addition, SKTs under the husband’s name are said to be easier in terms of procedures when selling land.

This demonstrates that new attitudes toward the relationship between individuals and land more or less differ from that of their adat. According to the adat, land in the village territory should be managed and inherited by the suku and women, and even now, some land (such as sialang areas) is managed as common spaces that are inalienable and inherited from ancestors. However, some of the space is comparted and distributed to households by land registration and sold to outsiders. This tendency emerged not only in Rantau Baru, but also in other places in the “decentralized” era of Indonesia. When describing land reform in Bali in the same era, MacRae (2003) noted that ancestral land can become a commodity by obtaining the legal title and documents to the land. The government title casts off the land from customary restrains, which opens “the door to its inevitable commodification” (2003, p. 159). In Rantau Baru, the issuance of SKTs and SKGRs by the village office has reduced the significance of suku’s common land, and land is dealt with as though it is the property of an individual or household, rather than an inalienable property inherited from ancestors.

This tendency is especially prominent in peatlands. While peatlands are a part of the village territory inherited from the ancestors, it was typically an unmanaged area. Osawa (Chap. 6) points out that the villager’s recognition of peatland is characterized by its externality from the settlement. Peatlands have neither been used for their livelihood nor for rituals. For Rantau Baru villagers, they depended on water transportation in the past, and the peatland did not constitute an essential landscape. This contrasts with the Orang Suku Laut in Riau Islands province, who regarded the sea route as inherited from their ancestors (Chou 2010). Although there were some sialang trees in this area, they were burned by fire. As a result of the fires and documentation, peatland came to be something completely alienable in their landscape. This tendency is clearly seen in the contrast between the peatland and riverbanks. While the peatland has been sold by the village office and villagers, the land on the riverbanks has been regarded as an inherited area and has not been sold to outsiders. Peatland thus came to be less important for the villagers than the riverbanks, which remain an essential space.

3.4.5 Selling Peatland as an Alternative to Being Farmers

Today, the area of the land owned by village individuals, suku, and the village office amounts to approximately three thousand of the eight thousand hectares of the total village area (see Banawan and Osawa, Chap. 10). Most of the remaining five thousand hectares was ceded to oil palm companies through industrial concessions or sold to outsiders by the village office. However, part of the land was distributed to the villagers along Jl. Lama and Jl. Baru and sold to urban residents by individuals. Why do individuals sell peatland to outsiders through this process? According to unstructured interviews with villagers regarding their attitudes toward selling land,²⁴ reasons for selling land are related to their economic situation and uneasiness about and aspirations for their livelihoods.

The first case is that of a woman (in her forties) who works everyday as a fisher in the Kampar River. Her family received peatlands along Jl. Baru in 2012 and sold it to a policeman living in Pekanbaru in 2013. When asked what the money was used for, she replied, “For my daughter.” This daughter had graduated from a high school in Kerinci and the money was used to pay for her wedding ceremony. The cost of the ceremony was approximately Rp40,000,000. The bridegroom had paid the Rp20,000,000 toward the ceremony as the bride wealth (antaran), the bride, and her family needed to pay the remainder. Therefore, they sold the land. She stated that the cost of weddings and bride wealth has increased significantly, and it is now more expensive than before. We asked her whether she knew how the neighbors had used the money they obtained from selling their land. She answered, “It varies from house to house. For example, it may be used to send children to schools in Kerinci.” In the face of rising prices and the necessity to educate children, villagers often need a significant amount of money. Selling peatland is a feasible way to obtain money in a relatively short period.

However, peatlands are sold not only because of villagers’ short-term need for cash, but also because of their long-term anxiety about and aspirations for their future livelihood. Rantau Baru villagers feel uneasy about the uncertainty of fishing. According to our questionnaire survey, which included questions about recent fish catches, 120 out of 148 respondents answered that the total catch has been decreasing (81%). Through unstructured interviews with villagers, Dewi (Chap. 7) describes a woman who hopes that her daughters will earn a living through agriculture, using the knowledge they acquire in university. Such aspirations are common among the villagers. By engaging in agriculture, they can diversify their livelihoods from an exclusive dependence on fishing to a combination of fishing and agriculture, making them more adaptable in the future.

“Agriculture” here means possessing an oil palm garden. It is a general view among villagers that their village is undeveloped, and this underdevelopment is often emphasized vis-à-vis the situation of Kiyap Jaya. A man in his forties states that the people who migrated to Kiyap Jaya about thirty years ago are now more well-off. They own several hectares of oil palm gardens, live in large houses made of bricks, and have cars that only a few Rantau Baru villagers possess. Well-off villages that succeeded in the oil palm business surround Rantau Baru. Thus, Rantau Baru villagers also aspire to own oil palm gardens.

This is so with the second case, a family that has come to own oil palm gardens around the main settlement in recent years. We interviewed the head of the family, who was a man in his sixties. His primary occupation is boatbuilding; he also lends his boats to anglers who come to the village from cities every weekend. His family was relatively well off in the village. In 2000, he and his wife bought three hectares of land on the southern bank from other villagers. In 2010, they bought 0.4 hectares of land around his house, which had been another villager’s homestead. They planted oil palm seedlings on these lands and harvested the yields. He stated that he bought the land “because we want to keep land for our children and grandchildren.” He stated that as the broad area of village land was occupied by oil palm companies and sold to outsiders, the land available for villagers’ livelihoods became narrower. His daughter lives in the village and has a child. The land on which they planted oil palms has the potential to provide a stable livelihood for his children and grandchildren.

However, this case was exceptional. The land on the riverbank is rather narrow, and most parts have been controlled, as they are owned by suku. Even if empty lands exist, it is economically difficult for ordinary villagers to buy them. Therefore, they tried to create a garden in the peat area. Although they planted oil palm seedlings on the peatland distributed by the village, almost all of them were damaged by floods and fires. While it might be possible to cultivate by introducing proper land improvement and agricultural techniques, this seems to be extremely difficult for ordinary villagers, because their knowledge of cultivation and the capital and labor that can be invested in peatland are limited.

Although they aspire to own oil palm gardens, it is difficult to accomplish this because of various factors. In this situation, selling peatland can be an alternative means of responding to their uneasiness and aspirations for their uncertain future. Although selling is rather more unstable than possessing oil palm gardens, it provides a temporary infusion of cash to better provide for their families. When money is used to invest in children’s future, such as marriage and education, the children might be able to choose their future by themselves. Selling land allows them to draw out the productive potentiality from the unused lands and respond to the uncertain future. Long (2009) describes a similar case of a Malay family in the Riau Islands. He describes a woman’s decision to sell land significantly below the market rate to Batak tenants, even though it had been inherited from her husband’s ancestors and had legal certificates. Although she wanted to use the land productively, the land was far from her home and had been occupied by many Batak families. As this case also illustrates, although selling land is not ideal, it can be seen as an alternative way to liquidate land productivity. This contributes to her aspiration to overcome economic difficulties and become a mother and grandmother in the future (2009, pp. 73–75).

As an alternative means to possessing oil palm gardens, peatlands can be commodified. However, not all ancestral territories have been commodified equally. Land is essential for villagers’ livelihoods. The land on the Kampar banks has a clear connection with their ancestors, history, and identity, and is difficult to commodify. In contrast, peatland has a less clear connection with ancestors and identity, it is not essential for their lives and livelihoods, and it cannot contribute to their livelihoods within a short period. Peat hinterland has been a part of their territory since the era of the Pelalawan kingdom, and villagers have recognized it as such. However, its importance is relatively low and it is modified based on individual choices. The ancestral territory has been compared, classified, and ranked. This process has been triggered by a combination of the explosive expansion of oil palm industries and increased aspirations, hope, desires, and anxiety for the future among the villagers.

3.5 Analysis: Landscape and Resistance

In Rantau Baru, while peatland was regarded as a part of the pebatinan and as a common space inherited by the members of the three suku, the space did not have boundaries within it, and its use was limited. However, with the introduction of oil palm cultivation, the elimination of sialang trees, land deals by the village office, and the proliferation of individual land registrations, a large portion of the peatland space was divided and distributed. In this process, individuals have classified and ranked the value and meaning of ancestral spaces. Peatland has come to be largely regarded as alienable, and some villagers have sold it for their future prospects. Thus, Rantau Baru demonstrates the transformation of peatland from a “space” to a “place.” According to Filippucci (2016), a landscape is “something constructed by humans in the course of their daily lives and interactions, both physically and also symbolically, by being invested with meaning, memory, and value.” “Place” emerges from everyday life, is subjective, and has a “foreground actuality,” while “space” is separate from everyday life and has a “background potentiality,” although the two cannot be completely detached (Hirsch 1995, p. 4). In other words, although a landscape is not something that carries monolithic meaning and value, it can be transformed into a “space” and “place.” The meaning and value of places and spaces are interchangeable in and through the communication between insiders and outsiders (Hirsch 1995, p. 13). This transformation can be accomplished by new interpretations that are added to the existing imagination (Ingold 2016, p. 3). In Rantau Baru, while the suku space contained a “background potentiality,” the actualization of the potential of peatland to benefit life, livelihoods, and identity was limited. Selling peatland to outsiders activated the “background potentiality” of the peatland into an “actuality” that could contribute to the futures of their children and grandchildren, thus maintaining and reproducing the Rantau Baru community.

Tsing (2005) connected the increased encroachment on the forest and locals’ reactions or resistance to it in Kalimantan to the collapse of Suharto’s regime. Tsing suggested the concept of “friction,” in which the universal and the local create frictions that drive globalization forward. While Rantau Baru’s recent history exhibits this to some extent, it also differs from Tsing’s case. The people of Rantau Baru have not demonstrated against or resisted encroachment on their ancestral peatland, because they already more or less depend on the capital and infrastructure of the oil palm and acacia industries. Moreover, the encroachment is of peripheral peatland, which is less useful for their lives and livelihoods. Rather, the villagers see the “universal” as a means to realize their aspirations, desires, and hopes and to mitigate their anxieties about the future. Here, the values of the universal and the local are not in opposition; instead, they complement each other. The friction here is rather weak and can be found in individual choices.

For more than thirty years, peatland in Riau has been a frontier for acacia and oil palm industries, and many of the forests and peatlands have been transformed into acacia and oil palm plantations. In addition, the moratorium policy that has been implemented prohibits the exploitation of peatland to a certain extent. Nevertheless, the peripheries of the forests and peatlands must be minutely territorialized by industries without salient resistance from the locals. Although Rantau Baru villagers aspire to own oil palm gardens, environmental and economic constraints make this difficult. Selling peatland is a means to actualize the potentiality of peatland space, which contributes to the stable future of their descendants.

3.6 Conclusion

The recent commodification of ancestral common lands in Rantau Baru provides important lessons for peat restoration policies. Despite BRG promotion of community-led restoration and use of peatlands (as described in Chaps. 2 and 6), bottom-up peat restoration activities have limitations. In Rantau Baru, land has been commodified through the land letters issued by the village office. This implies that giving greater discretion to local communities may encourage legal and illegal land sales and the expansion of oil palm plantations, which result in peatland fires. While a bottom-up approach is essential for sustainable peat restoration, appropriate top-down approaches that restricts the expansion of oil palm plantations and provides villagers with benefits through peatland conservation are also needed.

It is significant that these land sales are conducted by villagers who experience changes in local economic and environmental conditions and seriously look to the community’s future. In this chapter, we describe villagers desire to become oil palm farmers and the sale of land as an alternative to this path, both of which seem to be a reflection of their anxiety about the instability of fishing income and decreasing fish resources. In other words, the sale of land and the active introduction of oil palm plantations may be deterred if villagers are able to earn stable incomes and understand the significant risks of converting peatlands into oil palm plantations.

Continuous communication with villagers is necessary to understand the multi-faceted risks of oil palm plantations. Villagers have a deep understanding of their community environment and are concerned for its future. For this reason, the most desirable form of communication is not a one-sided “promotion of understanding,” but rather open discussions among officials, researchers, and villagers about the current situation and the future of the village. While seeking acknowledgment from all parties that the expansion of oil palm plantations will lead to further fires (Binawan and Osawa, Chap. 10) and a decrease in fish stocks (Nakagawa, Chap. 4), it is necessary to support livelihoods that are compatible with the local environment and villager aspirations.

Income stability cannot be achieved solely through the restoration and improved use of peatlands. Livelihoods in Rantau Baru are heavily dependent on fisheries resources; therefore, increasing fish stocks by improving the coastal environment (Nakagawa, Chap. 4) and the introduction of high value-added fishing methods (Nofrizal et al., Chap. 5) should be considered. It is also possible to achieve a future less dependent on oil palm plantations by establishing a peatland management system that contributes to the village economy. A combination of these proposals should be used to effectively improve the livelihoods of Rantau Baru and conserve the peatlands.

In any case, achieving sustainable peatland restoration requires a deep understanding of the history of the community, its economic and cultural situation, and the members’ aspirations for the future. While recognizing the risks of developing peatland, peatland restoration activities should be carried out through continuous communications.