Indonesia: Country Technical Note on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues

Indonesia is comprised of 13.000 islands with a total area of 7 million km2. It has a total population of 273 million in more than 1.000 various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups with their own cultures and traditions.

Indigenous Peoples in Indonesia live in almost all the provinces in varying numbers. Geographically, Indigenous Peoples live in forests, mountains and coasts. Some are nomadic and some are sedentary, and they are engaged in gathering, rotational swidden farming, agroforestry, fishing, small-scale plantations and mining for their subsistence needs. Many of their cultivation practices have been intervened by government programmes or outsiders which lead to some level of mixed method. Regulation of limitations to rotational farming also prevents the Indigenous Peoples from doing the similar practice which results in the declining of that custom today.

They traditionally live on their ancestral land and water. They depend on nature, as they believe the earth is a common property that has to be protected for its sustainability. They have their own knowledge about how to manage nature.