INTRODUCTION

While the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is implementing a multimillion dollar project on the island of Siberut to protect its biodiversity and its unique traditional culture, provincial officials are preparing proposals to convert a large part of the island into an oil-palm plantation. If these plans will be implemented it will no doubt be necessary to import a substantial workforce. This will most probably mean transmigration which, until now, has not affected the island.

These two views and their corresponding plans of action regarding Siberut's future and the destination of its people and resources are worlds apart. They represent an idea of maintaining a kind of wilderness condition including a traditional people versus another idea of converting “unproductive” forest land to a more profitable form of land use. In the latter view, no detailed thoughts are given to the local people.

These contradictions cannot simply be related to attitudes of government versus national or international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). They refer largely to contradictions within the government itself. This is also not a new phenomenon. Over the last few decades heated debates have taken place within the bureaucracy itself with, in some cases, strong support from the international environmental and tribal peoples’ movement.

It is mainly the provincial government of West Sumatra that plays a central role regarding Siberut. As this province is the homeland of the Minangkabau people, and the provincial government is heavily dominated by this ethnic group, it is also the Minangkabau version of centrally issued policies that has become a crucial element in the process of change on Siberut in addition to more locally conceived policies and decisions.

In this chapter I want to discuss the views of the Minangkabau regarding the natural wilderness and cultural “wildness” of Siberut both in their official positions as governmental employees as well as in their non-official positions, that is as ordinary members of the dominant ethnic group with regard to Siberut. In peasant views in general, as well as in perceptions of governmental officials, wilderness and wildness are often closely connected. People living in an undomesticated nature are almost by definition “wild” and uncivilized people. They are supposed to eat wild foods and wild animals; they live in modest huts, and their general life style is devoid of any refinement. The forest-dwelling people are supposed to live off nature.