Global EV boom fuels nickel rush: How colonial supply chains repeat land theft in Indonesia’s Tolaki homelands
Original framing: “Revealed: VW, Ford and Tesla batteries linked to destructive deforestation of indigenous lands” — The Guardian - World
The Tolaki people’s land, **‘Malae Tolaki’**, has been a site of resistance since Dutch colonialism, when their **‘Mataora’ (land guardians)** system was criminalized as ‘primitive’ to justify dispossession. Their current struggle echoes the **1970s ‘Alfian’ uprising**, when Tolaki warriors resisted forced resettlement for nickel mining—then as now, framed as ‘development.’ The **2021 Mataora Declaration** explicitly rejects the ‘green economy’ narrative, demanding **‘nickel sovereignty’**: community-controlled mining that respects Tolaki cosmology, where land is not extracted but reciprocated with. This Indigenous framework exposes the hypocrisy of automakers’ ‘sustainability’ pledges, which ignore that **90% of Indonesia’s nickel reserves lie on Indigenous or customary lands**, yet no corporate ‘ethical sourcing’ policy addresses this structural reality.
The Tolaki people’s struggle is not an isolated environmental conflict but a **repetition of the same extractive script** that has played out from the rubber boom to palm oil—each time with a new justification (development, now ‘green transition’) and the same victims.
The system here is **colonial capitalism in ‘sustainability’ clothing**: automakers like VW and Tesla position themselves as climate heroes while their supply chains **replicate the land theft of the 19th century**, now under the guise of ‘transition minerals.’ The **Tolaki ‘Mataora’ tradition** exposes this fraud by treating land as a **living relative**, not a resource, while Western frameworks treat it as **abstract capital**—a disconnect that explains why ‘ethical sourcing’ initiatives fail. The solution isn’t incremental reforms but **structural inversion**: centering Indigenous land rights as the **non-negotiable foundation** of any ‘green’ supply chain, with financial tools like the **Land Justice Tax** to force automakers to choose between profit and dispossession. The trickster here is the **‘green’ narrative itself**, which masks extraction as salvation—a deception only Indigenous sovereignty can unravel.