Paper short abstract:

The establishment of the Lore Lindu National Park has provided an arena of opportunities for Indigenous To Lindu to reassert and governmentalise their local authority based on mobilising their local custom (adat) to counter a series of livelihood expansions among migrants to the Lindu plain.

Paper long abstract:

This paper traces the circuitous course of contestations, alliances and identity assertions in the reactions of local peoples in the Lindu plain to their encompassment within the Lore Lindu National Park. Beginning with the initial impacts of the park upon people’s livelihoods when it was first declared a candidate park in 1982, it analyses how, once the park was fully established a decade later, the Indigenous To Lindu used the opportunities offered by a community conservation agreement to revitalise their local custom (adat) as an instrument to reassert their authority over resources uses in the Lindu plain and thus limit the opening of land and intensification of fishing by migrant communities in the plain. Institutions such as village conservation organisations have recast alliances among communities in the Lindu plain, pitting formerly opposed longer-term residents, including earlier Bugis and Kulawi migrants, against more recent migrants from Tana Toraja who have been opening gardens beyond park enclave boundaries. The establishment of Lindu as a conservation subdistrict in 2007, along with the codification of Lindu adat in written form and the elevation of the local customary council to official status within the new subdistrict government, has solidified To Lindu dominance and governmentalized their control of local resources as a commons rather than open access system. The paper ends by considering how this dominance has affected the current efforts to obtain recognition of customary forest (hutan adat) and to prevent the initiation of gold mining in the plain by migrants.