Paper short abstract:

The introduction of Mozambique tilapia into Lake Lindu initially allowed migrant Bugis fishers to gain socioeconomic dominance at Lindu, but their depletion of the fish allowed the Indigenous Lindu people to reassert control by reformulating their adat as a community resource management system.

Paper long abstract:

Among the development interventions on which the Indonesian government embarked in its first decade of independence was a program of dumping fish spawn of the usually pond-cultivated species Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) into a numerous lakes across Indonesia. This paper traces the chain of consequences across decades of this fish's introduction in Lake Lindu in highland Central Sulawesi. Not only did this invasive species destroy all endemic piscine species, it also did not initially provide enhanced livelihood opportunities to the Indigenous Lindu people nor increased protein to neighbouring montane peoples, as the Fisheries Department had intended. Instead, Bugis migrants, IDPs from sectarian conflict in South and Central Sulawesi in the 1950s, used their gill nets to intensify harvesting of the species and established a fish marketing system to the Palu Valley and beyond by recruiting kin and clients from their homeland through chain migration. However, when the Bugis depleted the stock of tilapia through using gill nets with ever smaller mesh size, the Indigenous Lindu people struck back, once the lake had been reseeded with tilapia, by forcing Bugis to subscribe to customary ombo restrictions on fishing as part of their reassertion of control of the lake. In addition, the Indigenous Lindu customary council has used their newfound role as community resource managers to gain acknowledgement as co-managers of the surrounding national park through community conservation agreements and thereby control in-migration to the Lindu plain and reverse the socioeconomic dominance of the migrants.