Paper short abstract:

The presence of protected area undermines Mentawaians' labor and history attached to land and reverses their social values of transforming forest into social space. The reversal compels resistance against conservation, offering a lesson a mutual co-transformation of human and non-human entities.

Paper long abstract:

The presence of Siberut National Park (SNP) (West Sumatra, Indonesia) has been increasingly contested by the indigenous Mentawaians. The park has prevented half of the island's rainforest from large-scale extraction and biodiversity loss but seriously unsettled the relationship between Mentawaians with their forest. For the Mentawaians, the forest is unsociable and undomesticated space and should be transformed. Claiming and contesting forest have been inseparable from Mentawaianns's social histories and identity while altering the undomesticated space into social spaces (sago, taro and fruits gardens, settlement) and extracting animals and plants in it are valued human activities and important criteria in the development of Mentawaians personhood. The park has persuaded people to keep the forest intact and not to use and transform it. It also implies that the Indonesian government claims the land and the forest. This paper argues that establishing a protected area not only undermines local tenurial system but inverses the value of productive activities and the history of human labor attached and invested in the land and forest. The reversal of Mentawaians' social values has compelled the hostility toward the park and other conservation initiatives. This paper offers vital clues in understanding how forest transformation is inseparable from producing humans and discusses how a strict and legal conservation initiative should learn the mutual co-production of human and non-human subject.

Mentawaians, Siberut, protected areas, transforming forest, producing nature,