The relational state and local struggles in the mapping of land in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

The article investigates how state-initiated participatory mapping, with the aim of legalizing Indigenous land, has implications for peasants' and Indigenous people’s struggles for control over land and resources. Empirically, the paper refers to a study of participatory mapping in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, initiated by the local government. We suggest that this practice of mapping can be seen as a new form of state territorialization that, in complex ways, mobilizes a range of actors across space under the framework of a participatory approach. However, participatory mapping also creates a new foundation for mobilizing resistance to states’ efforts to gain territorial control.

KEYWORDS:

• Local struggles
• participatory mapping
• state territorialization
• governance
• Indonesia
• indigenous people
• legalization
• land use conflicts

Introduction

State mapping has played a central role in consolidating state power and facilitating geographical expansion of social systems (Harley 2008; Radcliffe 2001; Scott 1999). It has also been essential in the development of capitalism by creating conditions for capital accumulation through production of new forms of knowledge and representations of the land and its resources (Pickles 2012; St. Martin 2009). Through modern cartography, the state maps its territory and divides the territories into economic and political zones to legitimize the creation of land boundaries, the allocation of rights to private actors, and the designation of resource uses by state and private actors (Vandergeest and Peluso 1995).

In the current context of increased global competition for lands and natural resources driven by rising demand for food, energy, conservation, and urgent needs to address climate change (Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones 2012; Harvey and Pilgrim 2011) the practice of state mapping has intensified in various resource-rich countries. It is not only aimed to justify state political and administrative powers but also to reconfigure and reinvent ‘empty’, ‘ungoverned’, or ‘uninhabited’ areas as new resource frontiers (Kurniawan, Wardhani, and Djindan 2023; Rasmussen and Lund 2018). Through state mapping the state designates these areas as zones of economic opportunity and connects them to the national economy and the capitalist world system (Cons and Eilenberg 2019; Wong et al. 2022).

Indonesia is one of the countries that has currently intensified mapping processes. Recently, the Indonesian government carried out One Map project, a government-controlled digital spatial data platform, with the aim of developing a single official reference map to minimize overlapping and conflicting land claims to land (Faxon et al. 2022). This project, which was initiated in 2010 and meant to be completed by 2023,¹ is to be used as a reference to clarify administrative boundaries, resolve land use conflicts, improve conservation and disaster management, as well as help the government improve spatial planning for economic development.

In addition to this national One Map policy, different forms of state mapping initiatives have been carried out by local governments in Indonesia. In 2008, the provincial government of Central Kalimantan initiated a policy on the legalization of Dayak² customary rights to land that involved identification, mapping, and marking of Dayak customary lands. The normative objective of this program was to protect, recognize, and respect Dayak Indigenous rights to land while also reducing land conflicts. This program adopted a participatory mapping strategy and was supported directly and indirectly by various domestic and international nonstate actors. The provincial government views the importance of mapping Indigenous lands and legalizing their status primarily as a response to increasing land competition in rural areas and Dayak customary or adat³ territories.

According to Badan Registrasi Wilayah Adat (BRWA) or Indigenous Territory Registration Body, a civil society initiative to map Indigenous lands in Indonesia, Indigenous lands in Central Kalimantan cover about 973,527 hectares, or 16 percent of total land in the province⁴ (Guevarrato and Ridwan 2019). These areas are important for Dayak peasants, who use the lands mostly for agricultural activities. However, the government also sees these areas as strategic for national economic development. Lands that fall under Dayak customary law have emerged as targets for global commodity production owing to the presence of resources and the availability of accessible ‘empty’ lands (Bakker 2023). This situation has led to customary land dispossession through issuance of various licenses to companies, which has led to land conflicts and Dayak peasants’ resistances.

Since the mid-1990s, community mapping has played an important role for the marginalized groups in Indonesia, particularly peasants and Indigenous communities, for control over and access to lands. Facilitated by civil society organizations, community mapping has become a tool of resistance to land expropriation by both the state and corporations (Peluso 1995; Radjawali, Pye, and Flitner 2017; Warren 2005; Warren and McCarthy 2002). It is a counterstrategy to the expansion of centralized development projects under the authoritarian New Order regime (1967-1998), which was legitimized through legal regulations and official maps (Peluso 1995).

Political reform in 1998 shifted the political climate in Indonesia, where decentralization and democratization have emerged as vital forces. This change created opportunities for citizens to demand that the state offer wider participation in decision-making processes. International organizations, multilateral donors, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have also been active in promoting neoliberal reforms and democratic participation within the framework of ‘global governance’ (see Mosse 2005). However, this situation also allowed the state to advance its territorial project, which placed more emphasis on local involvement, including initiatives such as participatory state mapping (Radjawali, Pye, and Flitner 2017; Rye and Kurniawan 2017; Setyowati 2020). The legalization of Dayak customary land by the provincial government of Central Kalimantan is an example of the state incorporating societal counterstrategy into its territorialization project under the guise of participation.

The effort to link participation with a state territorialization project raises some fundamental questions about the logic of state territorial control over resources and the possibility for marginalized communities to control the territory where they live (Diprose, Kurniawan, and Macdonald 2019; Goldstein 2016; Nel 2015; Pichler 2015). The literature on participation and state territorial power has elaborated the ‘state effects’ within the practice of resource governance, particularly in institutionalizing formalized control and legitimizing state authority (Gurung 2023; Nightingale 2018; Shatkin, Braswell, and Martinus 2023). Despite its contributions, this research has paid little attention to the networked and relational processes of participation through which state territorial power is reconstituted by contested strategies on multiple spatial scales. This article contributes to the literature by analyzing how the provincial government of Central Kalimantan adopted the strategy of participatory mapping in the legalization of Dayak customary lands. It investigates how state territorialization not only reshapes the legitimacy and authority of the state but also creates a strategic politically charged arena for marginalized actors to continuously negotiate their interests in land and resources.

Notably, our primary interest in state territorialization is to understand not the foundation of the state as such but rather the interplay of participatory noncoercive state-making processes with local struggles over land, resources, and territory. We use Jessop’s (2008) strategic relational state and Grandin and Haarstad’s (2020) relational mobilization theories to develop an understanding of the state as a relational construct that gains power through the mobilization of nonstate actors within and beyond its geographical borders. We also discuss how local communities, Indigenous people and peasants use the same networks to resist state power. The result, we argue, is a new foundation for these communities to repoliticize their struggle for access to and control over land and resources. In the next section, we start with a theoretically based elaboration of the relations among state-making, mapping and local struggles. The discussion then continues with empirical data from field research on a state-initiated participatory mapping program in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. We end the paper with a concluding discussion.

State territorialization, local struggles and participatory mapping

State power is, according to Scott (1999), constructed and maintained through the state’s endeavors to homogenize space by rendering population and natural resources within its territory known and legible. Also referred to as state territorialization, it is a spatial project that can be recognized through distinctive strategies and technologies used by the state to regulate sociospatial relations within a particular space (Dodge 2020; Radcliffe 2001; Vela-Almeida 2018; Vandergeest and Peluso 1995; Peluso and Lund 2011). This process includes territorial strategies for planning, partitioning, and classifying space. Maps and mapping have traditionally held a central position in state territorialization. Vandergeest and Peluso’s (1995) noted that territories are created by mapping, through which states divide their territory ‘ … into complex and overlapping political and economic zones, rearrange people and resources within these units, and create regulations delineating how and by whom these areas can be used’ (Vandergeest and Peluso 1995, 387).

This perspective on mapping and state power is based on the argument that transformative power does not stem from the map itself but lies in the hands of the dominant power holders who use a particular map. Although valuable for understanding the continuous efforts of the state to consolidate and expand its power over a territory, these scholars see state mapping as a state-centric, linear and geographically bounded project. This perspective overlooks the reciprocal reconstructions of state authority and the agency of those over whom new forms of state power are exerted (Agrawal 2001; Li 1999; Li 2002). Asher and Ojeda’s (2009) challenge of the state-centric approach is interesting because it shows how the dynamics of local social struggle shape capital accumulation and state formation and how state power is simultaneously asserted and subverted. They further argue that subversion and resistance should not be seen as ‘outside’ or a result of the process of state-making because social struggles are fundamental elements of the reconfiguration of a state’s role and functions.

Various studies on mapping and social resistance have been important for understanding the reciprocal consolidation of state power. For instance, Peluso’s (1995) work on countermapping by Dayak Indigenous communities in Kalimantan, Indonesia, shows how forestland mapping has been used to twist maps as a technology of the dominant power into a medium of resistance against the processes of capital accumulation and state territorialization. She argues that countermapping organized by communities themselves provides alternative tools that can help challenge the homogenization of space. Other researchers working in different geographical contexts have also produced interesting insights into how bottom-up mapping can elucidate counterhegemonic or alternative knowledge of space for resisting the state-controlled classification of land and resources (de Vos 2018; Fox et al. 2006; Radjawali, Pye, and Flitner 2017; Sletto 2002; Sletto 2015; Wainwright and Bryan 2009).

Recently, however, the conventional approach to countermapping has been challenged, as community-based bottom-up mapping is being increasingly incorporated into state’s practices of reterritorialization under the rhetoric of participation (Kurniawan 2016; Oslender 2021; Rye and Kurniawan 2017; Setyowati 2020; Warren 2005). Community-based mapping, particularly in indigenous territories, has also been integrated to neoliberal multicultural strategies driven by international organizations such as the World Bank to regularize property rights, decentralize political authority, and maintain capitalist space (Bryan 2011; 2012; Hale 2005). Diepart et al. (2023, 223) finds that formalization of indigenous lands through community mapping, which is intended for strengthening the recognition and protection of customary tenure, potentially strengthens state territorial power and ‘… embroils communities into new networks and social relations of production to serve the market.’ Mapping as a political strategy has thus gradually moved from focusing on control and resistance to centering participation and collaboration.

Under the banner of participation, community-based mapping operates within the domain of governance in which various actors, often referred as ‘stakeholders’, are brought together to work toward the resolution of some social and environmental concerns (Brosius 1999). This form of governance, which operates through association, allow actors across scales to influence local struggles over land and resources (see, for instance, Tsing 2011). For instance, Radjawali, Pye, and Flitner (2017) shows how participatory mapping in Indonesia since the end of 1990s has connected local and national government, civil society organizations, peasants and indigenous communities, and international donor agencies in mapping indigenous lands in Indonesia under the framework of neoliberal good governance. Participatory mapping has become a collaborative and non-coercive tool for state and non-state actors across scales, all with different interests, to work toward the legitimation of state territorial power. This new development of community-based land mapping underlines Bernstein’s (2007) argument that instead of expressing the interests of unified and clear-cut class subjects, popular struggles over land in the Global South are likely to embody shifting and contradictory alliances of diverse class elements.

To understand the recent participatory orientation of state territorialization in Indonesia and elsewhere and to critically address its possible implications for local struggles over land, we propose moving beyond the understanding of the state and state power as a territorial fix that may be challenged by local struggles (McGregor et al. 2019; Roth 2008; Setyowati 2020). Instead, we suggest a strategic relational approach wherein the state and state power are viewed as being constituted by social relations among various political forces, mediated through the instrumentality of ‘things’ (Jessop 2008). In this approach, participatory mapping may be viewed as one of these instruments.

Essential to the strategic relational approach outlined by Jessop (2008) is the recognition that state power is not only selective but also relational. On the one hand, state power is selective because the state cannot address all interests and must prioritize certain interests over others. Jessop employs the term ‘strategic selectivity’ to illustrate how the state is more accessible to some social forces than others based on the strategies these forces adopt (Jessop 2008). This situation often results in the alignment of state policies with the broader agendas and interests of the dominant class. On the other hand, state power is also relational because it opens possibilities for various social forces to act within and through the state. According to Jessop, the state should also be viewed as a strategic terrain: the site, generator, and product of strategy. This is in line with Nightingale (2018), who views the state as a terrain of struggle in which state power is maintained through relational processes that allow various actors to exercise agency and negotiate their interests within the state.

The strategic relational approach is relevant to understanding how participatory mapping has become a governance strategy that involves both state and nonstate actors across scales, all with different interests, working towards the legitimation of state territorial power. At the macrolevel, participatory mapping potentially strengthens the dominant actor’s agenda of territorialization and capital accumulation, while at the microlevel, it opens space for marginal actors to continuously renegotiate their interests in land and resources. This approach is also helpful for analyzing how, through collaboration and participation, the state governs and maintains its power over territory through strategic associations. Noncoercive political strategies for empowerment, such as participatory mapping, can, in this view, be understood as new subtle and indirect forms of governance in which the target is still controlled by dominant forces.

In addition to the strategic relational approach, we suggest combining the analysis of participatory mapping with the relational mobilization perspective (see Grandin and Haarstad 2020), which views the dynamics of state power as interconnected with ‘multiple elsewheres’. Various studies have highlighted the importance of strategic connections beyond geographic boundaries (Neumann 2009; Sassen 2008; Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003). Swyngedouw (2005), for instance, shows how donor governments, international organizations, and multilateral actors have been involved in reshaping and reorganising state power through various discursive and materialist mechanisms which creates ‘governance beyond the state’. The reorganization of state power covers a range institutional collaboration and legal instruments between state and nonstate actors (Corson 2011). State-initiated participatory mapping therefore should not be understood only at the national or local level but rather should be viewed as establishing and mobilizing multiple relations across space and at various levels within and beyond the borders of the state (Grandin and Haarstad 2020).

The combination of strategic relational state and relational mobilization approaches to state territorialization allows us to view participatory mapping as more than a process through which the state absorbs local resistance into its own territorial control efforts and in which the interests of marginalized groups are subordinated to others’ interests. As suggested by Demirović (2011), the emerging new relational configuration of the state is not merely about whatever territory the state is losing or gaining control over through engagement in participatory practices; it is rather about how the state and resistance to the state itself are reshaped through engagement in local struggles over land (se also McCreary and Lamb 2014). To explain the function of the transnational and networked state, Demirović (2011) suggests examining how the state governs through innovations in noncoercive technologies of governance. Accordingly, we approach state-initiated participatory mapping as one such technology.

Data and methodological approach

To further understand the interplay of participatory and noncoercive state-making processes with local struggles over land, resources, and territory, we consider the case of a state-initiated participatory mapping project under the policy to legalize customary lands in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, between 2008 and 2015. Using a relational approach, we collected and analyzed data on the processes of participatory state territorialization in Central Kalimantan. We needed three categories of information to achieve this objective. First was the involvement and mobilization of various actors on multiple spatial scales in the legalization of customary land policy. Second was the impact of the policy to legalize customary lands, with its participatory mapping approach, on state authority and control over land and resources in Central Kalimantan. Third was the agency of Dayak Indigenous communities in renegotiating their interests in land and resources within the framework of partnership in territorial development.

Empirical data on these three dimensions of participatory state territorialization were collected during several fieldwork visits to Central Kalimantan between May 2011 and May 2018 and through semiethnographic field research conducted between April 2012 and May 2013. The data collection methods were interviews, focus group discussions, participatory observation, and documentary research.

The data were collected from a wide range of sources. Primary sources were 94 interviews with local people, NGO activists, local government officials, and international grant-making organizations. Participatory observation of a local NGO in Central Kalimantan, Kelompok Kerja Sistem Hutan Kerakyatan (POKKER SHK), was performed between May 2012 and December 2012, and participatory mapping activities were observed in three villages – Bawan, Galinggang, and Jahanjang. During this period, two focus group discussions were organized in Bawan and Galinggang with local people who had participated in the participatory mapping program. In addition, three focus group discussions were conducted with local communities and participatory mapping activists in Palangkaraya. Documentary research was also an important method for collecting information on various regulations and official reports on forest and land use in Central Kalimantan. Furthermore, data were obtained from both traditional and online media to map public discourse on participatory mapping, land use and related issues.

In the analyses of empirical sources, we focused on data relevant to the legalization program and on how participatory mapping practices within the framework of this program illustrated the relationship between state-making and local struggles over territory. When analyzing these data, it was important to consider that participatory mapping is political by nature and that mapping practices are an inherent part of ongoing political processes (Reyes-García 2012; Harley 1988). The following discussion thus concerns the political aspects of mapping more than mapping itself.

Mapping Central Kalimantan: making the state and re-enforcing local struggles

Kalimantan is a natural resource rich island and the home of the Dayak Indigenous people, who traditionally rely on the land for agriculture as well as hunting and gathering. Since the fourteen century, and most likely earlier, land and forest in Kalimantan have been a source of commodities for the international market (Dove 2011; Jessup and Vayda 1988). Following the establishment of colonial rule by the Dutch, industrial-scale land uses in Kalimantan, including timber, mining, and plantation, began to expand in the nineteenth century (Lindblad 1988). The Dutch colonial state gradually strengthened its control over the Dayak indigenous areas in the interior parts of Kalimantan through the expansion of administration and investment. This process continued after the Indonesian independence in 1945, as the state recognized the economic development potential of Kalimantan’s land and resources.

In the last fifty years, lands and forests in Dayak Indigenous areas in Kalimantan have been increasingly targeted for economic development and capital accumulation. During the New Order era (1967-1998) the national government granted various mining, forestry, plantation, and agricultural estate concessions to companies and carried out development projects such as infrastructure and transmigration schemes in areas claimed by Dayak people as customary lands. Capital accumulation projects in Central Kalimantan, and in Indonesia in general, intensified after 1998 owing to political reform, during which both provincial and district governments, under decentralization policies, gained broader authority to issue land-based investments (Lund 2018; Astuti and McGregor 2017; Eilenberg 2014).

Official maps have played a role in justifying the state’s claim to these lands under Dayak customary areas. Ignorance and lack of understanding of Dayak customary land use and practices have caused official maps and mapping projects to facilitate state territorialization and capital accumulation in Central Kalimantan. The official maps have been detrimental to the rights and livelihood of Dayak people and created exclusion through land dispossession by legal definition (see Colchester 1995; Kurniawan 2016; Lund 2023).

This process of state territorialization in Indonesia prompted resistance among peasants and Indigenous communities, leading them to protect and reclaim their lands (Gilbert 2020). The efforts to counter the state’s monopoly in producing maps and to defend Dayak customary lands from land dispossession through counter mapping began to emerge in Kalimantan in early 1990s (Pramono 2001). During this period, a network of local NGOs concerned with forestry issues and the empowerment of Dayak peasants initiated community mapping practices in Kalimantan, particularly in West Kalimantan. With technical supports from international experts and financial support from international organizations, such as the Ford Foundation, these NGOs facilitated Dayak Indigenous communities to produce their own maps through a participatory approach (Kurniawan 2016). These initiatives were made possible by the strong interconnection of national and local NGO activists, who shared knowledge and practices regarding advocacy for forest and Indigenous people in Indonesia (Moniaga 1998). The activists also learned from participatory mapping developed by international organizations and conservation NGOs in East Kalimantan as part of a joint forest management strategy and viewed it as an important instrument for the Indigenous people’s rights movement (Kurniawan 2016; Pramono, Natalia, and Janting 2006).

During this period, NGOs activists viewed participatory mapping not merely as a technical process but rather as a political process framed within the context of a social movement. It was then widely spread in Kalimantan, and Indonesia in general, and was used by Indigenous communities to counter state territorialization and create the basis for rights to land. Through participatory mapping, the NGOs assist local communities in making Indigenous territories visible to the state and other actors (Toumbourou and Dressler 2023). This process has enabled them to produce evidence supporting their claims to legitimate access and control over Indigenous land and resources.

In this empirical section, we explore how these practices of community mapping practices took a new path in recent years when the state, under the guise of participation, incorporated community mapping into the local government’s policy to legalize Dayak Indigenous lands. We also discuss how this legalization policy, with its participatory mapping strategy, become an arena with a wide range of multiscalar actors, both within and outside the state, involved in reshaping state territorial power. The case of state-initiated participatory mapping in Central Kalimantan has created, to borrow Nightingale’s (2018) term, ‘relational inclusions and exclusions’.

Integrating participatory mapping and the legalization of customary land

In 2008, the Central Kalimantan provincial government introduced a legal reform to customary rights to land and resources by passing Local Government Regulation No. 16 of 2008 on the Dayak Customary Institution in Central Kalimantan. This regulation was formulated in an effort ‘to promote the preservation, development, and empowerment of Dayak customs, and enforcement of adat law in the community’ (article 2). The regulation also underlined the important roles of Dayak customary institutions in supporting the administration of government, economic development, and national resilience (article 2). The traditional Dayak institution known as Kedamangan was integrated into local government functions and delegated authority over matters related to the ownership, management, use, and transfer of Dayak customary lands.

While this regulation in part accommodated the demands of Dayak peasants and adat communities for economic and cultural rights to lands in the context of increasing land dispossession, it also revealed the local state’s effort to increase its control over Dayak customary institutions. The provincial government argued that Dayak culture and institutions are part of the identity of the people of Central Kalimantan and should be protected and supported by the government. However, the regulation reasserted state power by underlining that Dayak adat laws and institutions are recognized only as long as they legitimate and do not conflict with national interests. The regulation represented state territorialization through the combination of recognizing and incorporating Indigenous institutions and identities to control Indigenous space. This process resembled what Zimmerer (2015) describes as ‘speaking like an Indigenous state,’ a form of statecraft through which the state uses Indigenous language concepts to establish and consolidate its governing power, political legitimacy, and moral authority.

The governor of Central Kalimantan, Agustin Teras Narang, followed this regulation with Governor’s Decree No. 13 of 2009 on Customary Land and Customary Rights to Land in Central Kalimantan. The decree provided a technical framework for legalizing Dayak customary lands and territories. It was used as the basis for the provincial government’s Inventory of Dayak Customary Lands policy, which included the identification, mapping, and marking of adat lands. Three kinds of adat rights were recognized in this decree: communal lands, individual lands, and customary land use rights. The main output of this policy was expected to be a letter about customary proofs of landownership and customary legal rights to land, also known as Surat Keterangan Tanah Adat (SKTA), which is issued by the head of Kedamangan. The provincial government targeted this policy to be finished within six years, from 2009 to 2015.

Of the interest of this paper is how the provincial government adopted the strategy of participatory mapping in the legalization of Dayak customary lands. Through this participatory strategy, the provincial government invited Dayak communities to be involved in the inventory processes organized by Dayak customary institutions. This process was carried out through community meetings or workshops and site verification, not only to collect Indigenous spatial knowledge and oral history of land uses and claims but also to record local dynamics of current land and resource uses. The information was then visualized into sketch maps combined with Global Positioning System coordinates (Kurniawan 2016). The participatory strategy was expected to strengthen the legitimacy of the legalization processes.

Yet, the process of participatory mapping requires modern cartographic skills. To conduct the mapping, the provincial government involved civil society organizations with previous experience in mapping Indigenous territories. In 2012, the provincial government established a Taskforce for the Inventory, Identification, Mapping, Marking, and Issuance of SKTA. This task force was a quasi-state-run team which involved representatives of local governmental, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) activists, and local communities. It was established under Secretary of the Provincial Government’s Decree No. 595/031/III-2/Kesra/2012 and was supported by grant-making organizations with connections to national and international donors and NGOs. The task force collaborated with SLP2KT, a network of NGOs in Central Kalimantan that had been actively involved in participatory mapping movement in Central Kalimantan. An interview with a staff member of the Bureau of Public Welfare of the provincial government revealed that the task force was assigned to conduct pilot projects of participatory mapping in 14 villages in Central Kalimantan, with SLP2KT assisting the technical implementation and facilitation of customary land mapping (Palangkaraya, 25 September 2012).

A legal foundation for state territorialization and capital accumulation

The legalization of Dayak customary rights to lands under the Inventory of Dayak Customary Lands policy is an administrative effort to create, in Scott’s (1999) term, ‘maps of legibility’ to integrate Indigenous space into state space. The policy was intended not only to legalize Dayak customary lands but also to make Dayak space in Central Kalimantan visible and legible to officials.

The legalization policy was connected to Governor Agustin Teras Narang’s vision of Opening the Isolation, or Membuka Isolasi. The idea behind this vision was to make the interior regions of the province more accessible, to promote more effective government and to foster economic development. The problems of underdevelopment in Central Kalimantan, from the provincial government’s point of view, could be solved by developing these regions through infrastructure development and investment. For local governments in Central Kalimantan, Opening the Isolation requires the status of lands in the interior regions of the province to be legalized. One official in the Local Development Planning Agency of Palangkaraya city expressed this concern:

There are numerous areas in Central Kalimantan which have economic potentials but they cannot be developed due to the difficult access to these isolated areas. We (the local government) also face the issues related to the legal status of land, particularly in Dayak customary territories. As a result, development programs and investments face difficulties. In my opinion the Provincial Government’s Inventory program is important for accelerating development in the interior [parts of the province]. Local government can also use this program for development planning. (Palangkaraya, 22 August 2012)

This statement shows that local governments saw economic development as one of the most important elements of the legalization of Dayak customary lands. This policy was viewed as a strategic tool for restructuring and reordering the land tenure system in Central Kalimantan to justify access to ‘unproductive’ lands. Our discussions with respondents from both the provincial government and district/city government as well as various reports revealed that the legalization of customary lands was also intended to reduce land conflicts and create a climate conducive to economic development in the province. The governor underlined this issue: ⁵

There are many cases that show how land uses for the purposes of governmental programs and investments Central Kalimantan especially in forestry, mining, and plantation have been coincided with lands under customary law. This has sparked land conflicts. … Most of those lands under customary law do not have legal document as legal proofs.

In addition to the problem of lack of legal rights, land conflicts in rural areas and Indigenous territories had been exacerbated by unclear village boundaries, rent seeking practices among local elites, and growing competition between villages (Earth Innovation Institute 2015; Simarmata 2015). The village system in Indonesia, which allows village governments to generate income based on their potential resources, has not been accompanied by clear delineation of village boundaries, particularly in interior regions.

As the competition to secure economic benefits from land-based investments has increased, neighboring villages have become embroiled in potential conflicts over area lands that each claims as part of its administration. In this context, legalization of Dayak customary land with an extended participatory mapping approach was also used by the provincial government to clarify village boundaries and strengthen government administration in rural areas. A staff member of the Bureau of Public Welfare, Secretariat of Central Kalimantan Provincial Government, claimed that in in 2012 there were around 800 villages in the province that faced potential land conflicts due to the rapid expansion of land use for investment. He also noted:

We expect that the Inventory of Dayak Customary Land program will also help the provincial government delineate village administrative boundaries in Central Kalimantan. Most villages in this province have no clear administrative boundaries. As you may already know, there are many villages that are located in the forest area. Of course, that makes it difficult for development planning. This is not to mention neighboring conflicts as a result of palm oil plantations. (Palangkaraya, 16 October 2012)

The Inventory of Dayak Customary Lands would also allow the government to transform the property system in Dayak communities from culturally sanctioned patterns of land use and occupation. These rights could then be redefined for the purpose of state legibility by integrating them into the national formal property system (Kurniawan 2016). Siun Jarias, the secretary of the provincial government, who was in charge of the inventory program, stated that the provincial government would assist the communities who had received statement letters of customary proof of land ownership and customary rights to land, or SKTA, to convert the letters into certified titles registered with the National Land Agency. He said that this process would provide legal certainty and protection to Dayak Indigenous communities and strengthen national land administration (see Suwarno 2013).

The designation of Central Kalimantan as a pilot province for the global project of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in 2010 provided the provincial government with an opportunity to link the legalization of Dayak customary land with national land and resources projects. In 2014, the Regional Commission on REDD of Central Kalimantan Province, which was led by the governor of Central Kalimantan, established a team to formulate a guide for mapping customary forests and territories (Migo and Meilantina 2014). This guide would be used to accelerate the mapping and legalization of customary land and territory in the province. The implementation of the pilot project also opened new spaces for various actors, including local governments, civil society organizations and grant-making organizations, to discuss the possibility of integrating customary land mapping into the One Map initiative.

Governance through partnerships

The emergence and implementation of Dayak customary land legalization and its participatory mapping components, as part of local state territorialization strategies, were the result of various factors. At the domestic level, the wave of democratization and decentralization that followed the 1998 political reforms created an opportunity structure for nonstate actors to become more involved in decision-making processes and made the state more open to societal demands (Antlov, Brinkerhoff, and Rapp 2008). This process also created conditions for the strengthening of ethnic and regional identities, including Indigenous rights, which local elites often mobilize to consolidate their political power (Davidson and Henley 2007; van Klinken and Nordholt 2007). At the global level, climate change-related projects such as REDD + have also expanded the advocacy networks that connect a diverse range of local, national, and transnational actors promoting Indigenous rights. The combination of these factors has intensified the engagement of NGOs, Dayak peasant activists, and grant-making organizations with state actors in Central Kalimantan to address the dispossession of Indigenous lands and negotiate the legalization of Indigenous rights.

In this new context of struggles over land and resources in Central Kalimantan, which involves networks of actors and interests, we observed the growing involvement of local elites from Indigenous backgrounds who used their Indigenous identity in their political maneuvering. They secured their position by being associated with a variety of agents – the central government, the provincial government, the network of NGOs, donor agencies, and local communities – in ways that gave them control, on behalf of the state, over much of the land in Central Kalimantan. These actors have become key factors in the territorial ordering of Central Kalimantan.

An interview with the Director of POKKER SHK, or the Working Group on Community Forestry System, a Central Kalimantan-based NGO involved in the legalization program, revealed the long process of formal and informal discussions on the legalization of Dayak customary land between NGO activists, provincial government representatives and politicians. He mentioned that the increased number of Dayak elites in the local bureaucracy and parliament after the 1998 political reform has helped NGO activists and Dayak communities negotiate with the local state on policies related to the Dayak people (Palangkaraya, 3 May 2012). These actors were more open to this issue not only due to growing demand for reform, but also because they considered themselves as part of the marginalized Dayak people.

In addition to the role of Dayak elites, the passage and the implementation of the Dayak customary land legalization policy were possible because of the active role of donor agencies and grant-making organizations that linked local NGOs, directly or indirectly, to the provincial government. The director of POKKER SHK (Palangkaraya, 3 May 2012) said that grant-making organizations such as Kemitraan, or The Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia⁶, and the Samdhana Institute⁷ provided financial support, connections, knowledge, and capacity building to support local NGOs in Central Kalimantan in negotiating with policy makers. POKKER SHK itself had several collaborations with these two grant-making organizations particularly to support participatory mapping activities and promote forest governance. In addition, this NGO cooperated with and gained support from international NGOs working on the issue of rainforest protection, such as the Norwegian-based Rainforest Foundation and Clinton Climate Initiative.

The networks of legalization of Dayak customary lands and the practice of state-initiated mapping under the Inventory policy represent governance beyond the state, through which discursive and materialist mechanisms operate within and beyond the geographical borders. The involvement of grant-making organizations, Kemitraan and Samdhana Institute, in mobilizing nonstate actors for the implementation of the Inventory policy highlights this process. In 2009, Kemitraan, through the Forest Governance Program funded by the Norwegian government, established an institutional partnership with the provincial government to enhance land and forest governance. The partnership was embedded in the Norwegian government’s commitment to REDD + and stemmed from the need for territorial ordering as a precondition for implementing the policy (Astuti and McGregor 2015; Sanders et al. 2017). Through partnerships such as the Forest Governance Program, Kemitraan aims to develop a model of tenure rights and land conflict prevention in Central Kalimantan (NORAD 2010). Under this partnership, several pilot projects involving the inventory, identification, and mapping of customary land with Kemitraan support were carried out in five districts: Katingan, Kapuas, Pulang Pisau, Seruyan, and Barito Selatan. These pilot inventory projects resulted in the issuance of 600 SKTA for individual tracts and 387 SKTA for communal land (Kemitraan 2012, 29).

The Samdhana Institute, though it took a different approach, also supported customary participatory mapping and the legalization of customary lands in Central Kalimantan and elsewhere in Indonesia. Generally, the Samdhana Institute’s support of participatory mapping took two forms (Sanmukri 2013). First, it provided financial support to civil society organizations to promote customary rights to land in relation to climate change issues through the REDD + project. In Central Kalimantan, the Samdhana Institute channeled funds to organizations such as POKKER SHK and the Rubber Peasants Union of Mantangai Village to carry out spatial planning assessment through participatory community mapping and planning. Second, the Samdhana Institute organized its partners to provide technical support for participatory mapping in the field through collaboration with national NGOs such as Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN), or Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago, and Jaringan Kerja Pemetaan Partisipatif (JKPP), or Network for Participatory Mapping. These organizations supported communities in mapping their customary lands and resources. In Central Kalimantan, Dayak peasants in several districts have been trained to develop participatory maps either by being sent to national NGOs to participate in capacity building workshops or by having customary mapping experts sent to the villages.

From the perspective of NGOs and grant-making organizations, the legalization of Dayak customary lands and state-initiated participatory mapping are cartographic-legal strategies for gaining Indigenous rights. Associating local communities within the wider network of indigenous rights advocacy is considered important. In an interview, a Dayak peasant involved in some inventory pilot projects told us about the importance of the connections with local and national NGOs, as well as with donor agencies. He said that his involvement in the supporting team for the Taskforce for the Inventory, Identification, Mapping, Marking, and Issuance of SKTA provided him an opportunity to meet and connect with marginalized adat communities in Indonesia. ‘I know a lot of people because of participatory mapping training. I went to Jakarta and Bogor and met activists and people from various areas in Indonesia. […] I hope it will strengthen the struggle of adat community over land’ (Katingan, 20 September 2012).

Emerging local resistance to state territorialization

Even though Dayak Indigenous communities in Central Kalimantan, particularly those who experienced the risks of land dispossession, saw the legalization as an important step in strengthening Indigenous people’s rights to lands, there was suspicion that this policy would be used by local elites to serve their own interests. During our field work, we learned that Dayak peasant activists identified the governor, the head of districts (bupati) and local politicians with a Dayak background as state representatives rather than representatives of Dayak communities. Several informants noticed that while local governments and their elites encouraged the legal protection of customary lands through a participatory approach, they simultaneously supported a large-scale land use program that built up infrastructure and investments in rural areas of the province, including areas claimed as customary lands. In a discussion about the increasing issuance of licenses in the Dayak territories by local governments, a villager of Mantangai Hulu said that ‘Dayak people are now fooled by Dayak people’ (Kapuas, 6 May 2012).

There was also a growing insecurity among the communities that legalization could lead to new forms of land dispossession and major changes to the relationship with the land and resources. These possibilities were inscribed in the state’s regulations on legalization of Dayak customary lands, such as in Governor’s Decree No. 13:2009, which stated that SKTA can be used as a document for carrying out a ‘contract of partnership.’ This should enable the SKTA holder to lease the land to companies or use it as collateral to obtain credit from the bank. This concern was exacerbated by growing cases of SKTA holders in Central Kalimantan starting to sell their lands to individuals or companies (Borneonews 2015). In an interview with the secretary of Bawan village, whose village was one of the pilot areas for the SKTA mapping program, she expressed her worries the following way: ‘SKTA is important for protecting Dayak land but if people are not careful, they will easily loose their land because of SKTA. (Pulangpisau, 2 October 2012).

During the period of the legalization policy between 2009 and 2015, Central Kalimantan experienced the rapid expansion of land-based investment, which came with dispossession of Dayak customary lands through market processes. The practice of leasing or selling customary lands by using SKTAs became easier and more prevalent in the province, leading to what local government described as ‘SKTA flooding’ (Simarmata 2015). This situation was exacerbated by the practice of rent seeking among some actors within the customary institutions that issued the SKTA and sold or rented land to companies without consent from communities (Migo and Meilantina 2014). The policy has resulted in legal dispossession and created conditions that foster exclusion and a model of development which consolidates large-scale capital accumulation (see Pichler 2015).

The growing insecurity and worries over the future, mostly related to a new economy of land acquisition, also formed the grounds for Dayak peasants to continue to struggle. There was a growing perception that with or without the legalization, they were still threatened with being dispossessed of their customary land. They saw that legality gained through participatory methods was not a simple solution for reclaiming and maintaining control over and access to land. They no longer considered legalization with its participatory processes as the main objective in their efforts to control land and resources, as they saw the state as the main target of their struggle over territory. They were continuously involved in open and collective action to protest the seizure of customary land (e.g. demonstrations, collective acts of uprooting palm oil trees, petitions, road blockades) with support from local, national, and global civil society organizations. A Dayak peasant from Mantangai Hulu Village underlined: ‘It is good that the provincial government carried out the SKTA program. But they should not use it as a tool to take our lands. We won’t stay silent. We will push the government to take our rights seriously’ (Kapuas, 4 October 2012).

Even though the legalization program and the participatory mapping practices did not prevent access to land and control over territory from being further reduced we noted that the legalization policy has become a strategic space for repoliticization. Dayak peasants and NGO activists saw the legalization policy as a politically contested arena which could be used to strengthen the agency of Dayak peasants. The participatory mapping process has provided legal discourse, knowledge, and networks of Indigenous rights that have made it possible for Dayak peasants to understand how to use legal frameworks and state language to combat land dispossession and protect their territory (Rye and Kurniawan 2017). Their participation not only developed their own understanding of their own conditions but also equipped them with skills and awareness to gain leverage regarding land use policies (see also Shatkin, Braswell, and Martinus 2023). A villager who was involved in pilot legalization projects organized by SLP2KT commented:

Since I join SLP2KT I learn a lot about maps and GPS. If we have maps, I’m sure the government will think twice or three times about taking our land. The problem now is that most Dayak people often do not have proof of ownership. When I joined [SLP2KT] I had a lot of expectations. At least I can do something for people in my village. (Katingan, 20 September 2012)

Legalization of Dayak customary lands and its participatory mapping approach has also facilitated new political networks and alliances for Dayak peasants in their struggle for land rights. These networks were strengthened through connections with both NGO activists with global networks and elites within local governments. Currently, Indigenous communities and civil society organizations in Central Kalimantan, engaged in legalization policy, are associated with national advocacy networks to demand the that the national government include customary land maps into the One Map project. This indicates that the Dayak Indigenous communities have been able to continue their struggle for Indigenous rights to land and expand it to a wider scale. Together with other actors within these networks, Dayak Indigenous communities in Central Kalimantan engage in ongoing negotiations with local governments to secure their interests in land use policies and to ensure that they also benefit from development projects. The networks have also strengthened their bargaining position, enabling them to demand that local governments incorporate Dayak customary areas in local land use planning and consider knowledge and insights from the Dayak communities in local policies.

Concluding discussion

State mapping as part of a state’s territorial strategy has evolved from instrumental and one-way to a more participatory and relational process. As we have demonstrated, the creation and mapping boundaries under the legalization of Dayak customary lands policy constitutes participatory state territorialization strategies to spatialize political claims and inscribe power relations upon nature (see Dorn and Hafner 2023, Sikor and Lund 2009). State-initiated participatory mapping under the legalization policy plays a pivotal role not only in reinforcing the state’s administrative control but also in reinventing areas deemed ‘marginal’ and ‘idle’ under customary laws as the new frontiers for capital accumulation. Through a noncoercive governance strategy, the legalization of customary lands constitutes an interconnected process of state formation and frontier making.

In this paper, we have approached state territorialization as a strategic relational construct in which the state gains territorial power through practices that establish and mobilize multiple relations across space and at various levels (Grandin and Haarstad 2020). Now, we highlight how this approach, in combination with analyses of the empirical case study, provides relevant insights into what happens in local struggles when participatory mapping becomes a part of state territorialization processes.

First, we show that state territorial power is relational because it opens possibilities for various social forces beyond geographical boundaries to act within and through the state. The state is not merely an actor but also a strategic terrain. The case of the legalization of Dayak customary land shows that state territorialization involves institutional collaboration and legal instruments between state and nonstate actors with different interests. The strategic and relational nature of state territorial power has aligned state-initiated participatory mapping with the broader agendas of dominant actors for political control and capital accumulation. This process underlines Jessop’s (2008) argument that the state is the site, generator, and product of contested strategies of social forces across multiple spatial scales.

Second, state-initiated participatory mapping under the provincial government’s legalization policy has strengthened the political agency of Dayak peasants and Indigenous communities, as it has opened political space for these marginalized groups to continuously renegotiate their interests in land and resources. The empirical case of Central Kalimantan illuminates how state-initiated participatory mapping, despite tending to work in favor of state territorial control, does not necessarily create passive state subjects that neutralize local struggles. Participatory mapping consolidates the state’s territorial control by legitimizing its territorialization project, but such actors also threaten state power by adding new energy to local struggles over land and resources.

Third, legalization of Dayak customary land with its participatory mapping strategy highlights the partnerships between domestic and transnational nonstate actors for territorial development projects. These partnerships influence and operate as diffused and distributed expressions of state power within the context of decentralized and globalized politics as a means of governance (Ioris 2012, Jessop 2008). This empirical case study also reveals how hierarchal and centralized state power work together with noncoercive strategies, for example, through the limits on the possibility of including customary law in formal land recognition systems. Governance through such new partnerships does not replace the hierarchical power of the state, but rather works together in favor of state territorial control as an expression of what Jessop (2008) conceptualizes as metagovernance.

Finally, the most important aspect of participatory mapping in Central Kalimantan is, accordingly, not the legal and technical dimension of participatory mapping but rather how partnerships for territorial development have created a politically charged context for local struggles over territorial control. The incorporation of resistance into state territorialization by means of participatory mapping is hence a question not only how a resistance movement is affected by state territorialization efforts but also how the new conditions for state territoriality change the foundations of resistance (Baletti 2012). State territorialization and local struggles as two sides of the same coin, each of which changes and is changed by the other. This mutual relation is charged by the state’s mobilization of multiple strategic relations across space with agents who have different interests in state territorialization. However, these same relations also create possibilities for local struggles, as associations and partnerships for territorial development are used by Indigenous people and peasants as a source for additional approaches in their struggle over land and resources.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Diana Vela-Almeida and three anonymous reviewers for constructively commenting on previous drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Norwegian Agency for Development Aid and International Cooperation [grant number QZA-21/0159].

Notes on contributors

Nanang Indra Kurniawan

Nanang Indra Kurniawan is a lecturer at the Department of Politics and Government in Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Indonesia. He is the Program Coordinator of Resource Governance in Asia Pacific at the Department of Politics and Government, UGM. His research focuses on natural resource politics, energy transition, and state-making. Currently, he is a researcher at the Department of Geography, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, on a project focusing on mineral extraction and sustainable transition.

Ståle Angen Rye

Ståle Angen Rye is a Professor of Political Geography at the Norwegian University of Technology and Science (NTNU), Department of Geography. His research focuses on citizens’ engagement in natural resource governance and sustainable transitions, emphasising the interaction between global political dynamics and local development. He currently investigates how policies advocating green transitions are used to justify mineral extraction, often with significant implications for communities, particularly in the global south.

Notes

1 The Indonesian Government targeted to get the process of compilation and verification of thematic maps under the One Map finished by the end of 2023 (Badan Informasi Geospasial 2022). In April 2024, the government announced that it had successfully compiled and verified a total of 151 thematic maps and planned to integrate participatory maps of Indigenous lands (Kompas 2024).

2 Dayak is a generic term that refers to non-Moslem, non-Chinese indigenous inhabitants of Kalimantan, most of whom are, or used to be, swidden cultivators residing in the island’s interior (Dove 2006).

3 Adat is a term used in Indonesia to describe complex customary systems, including rights to land and resources. Adat also refers to a wide range of traditional rules, conventions, principles, and beliefs. For more about adat law, see Bedner and Arizona (2019).

4 The size of the area of Indigenous land in Central Kalimantan presented in this article is based on BRWA data from 2019. As the BRWA continuously conducts the process of identifying and mapping Indigenous land in Indonesia, including in Central Kalimantan, the areas of Indigenous land in Central Kalimantan could be higher in 2023.

5 Letter of Governor of Central Kalimantan No. 590/237/III-5/2010 to Head of District/Mayor, Head of Subdistrict, Head of Village, Dayak Adat Council, Damang and Mantir on Inventory of Dayak Adat Land.

6 Kemitraan, or The Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia, is an Indonesia-based multidonor trust fund established in 2000 and was managed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) until 2009.

7 The Samdhana Institute was established in 2003 and is based in Indonesia and the Philippines. The organization works as a grant-giving organization with international links that facilitates and connects organizations working toward local social development.