Forgotten Islands of Indonesia-The Art & Culture of the Southeast Moluccas
Forgotten Islands of Indonesia-The Art & Culture of the Southeast Moluccas
By Nico de jonge & Toos van Dijk.
Editors: Martijn de Rooi, Thomas
G. Oey, Berenice B. Oey. Publisher:
Periplus Editions. 160pp.
ISBN 962-593-015-9.
In the afterword to this book, the authors state their intention: to demonstrate the richness and uniqueness of the material culture of the Southeast Moluccas. It was a laudable aim and, by any measure, they have succeeded admirably.
It was a big task. To put it in perspective, Maluku Tenggara-the Southeast Moluccas-is a remote chain of islands between Timor and New Guinea almost a thousand kilometres long. The region’s 300,000 or so inhabitants see relatively few visitors because it is so far off the tourist trail.
The book is in three parts. The first deals comprehensively but briefly with the past. Between colonists, missionaries and art collectors, it was not always a happy history.
The second section deals very largely with boat symbolism. Our understanding of this is critical to our comprehension of a seafaring people.
Many homes resemble boats and the analogy is carried further, to the point where whole villages are considered to be boats with passengers. The village leaders consider themselves to be a symbolic ship’s crew. This is satisfying anthropological investigation yet the writing is far from dry.
The third section concerns gold, cloth, pottery and plaited objects. Once again, we learn not to underestimate the power of adat in Indonesia-traditional local morals, beliefs and customs. The association of pottery with woman is so strong on Aru island that a woman’s “life breath” is believed to reside in her pot; if she accidentally causes the pot to break, her death will follow.
Beliefs like this abound. In an interesting variation on the’Western expression “throwing in the towel”, in former days on Aru a woman would throw her plaited sitting mat between two belligerent parties in order to cool down combat. By doing so the fight was ended. On other islands women would use cloths for the same purpose.
The book has an excellent glossary; good notes pointing out where the work of previous scholars is referred to; a full bibliography; but, surprisingly, a skimpy index of less than one page.
Finally, for travellers who may hope to pick up objets d’art from the region, there is a warning: many pieces available in Indonesia today are crude copies that discredit the splendid traditional culture of Maluku Tenggara.
This is a book scholars and general public alike will enjoy-those, anyway, who wish to scratch beneath the surface of a fascinating culture and gain considerable understanding of it in the process.
Aesthetically, too, it’s a delight, with good clean typography that makes reading easy. Forgotten Islands of Indonesia very intelligently puts in place another piece of the jigsaw of Indonesian culture.
