From subjugation to local sovereignty

The dynamics of frontierisation and defrontierisation in Lindu, Central Sulawesi (Indonesia)

Abstract

Endeavouring to highlight the temporal dimension in the conceptualisation of frontiers, this paper presents a case study of processes of frontierisation and defrontierisation in the highland Lindu valley of Central Sulawesi (Indonesia). After reviewing the literature on frontiers and establishing the rationale for a more processual framework for their analysis, it traces these processes within the history of the Lindu plain along four dimensions of frontierisation – control, extraction, settlement and conservation – from the precolonial era to the contemporary period of reform in Indonesia. Further refining previous anthropological theorisation of the frontier, the article also reconceptualises the closing of frontiers by moving away from the criteria of demographic and economic thresholds of occupation to focus instead on the exercise of agency by marginalised local peoples whose lands have been occupied by settlers, thus allowing them to reverse, if only incipiently, the relations of inequality between settlers and indigenes that have constituted frontiers. This process of defrontierisation is exemplified by how indigenous To Lindu have reasserted control over their own territory through alliances with both the Indonesian indigenous people’s movement and with transnational conservation, having been subordinated first by colonial incursions and then in the immediate postcolonial period through domination by entrepreneurial migrants whose own position was enhanced by synergies with governmental forces for modernisation and development.