Indonesia’s ancient cave art at risk: how colonial land policies and climate crises collide with Indigenous stewardship
Original framing: “The world's oldest cave paintings in Indonesia under threat of wildfires - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The cave paintings in **Leang Tedongnge** and other sites are not relics of a distant past but living repositories of Dayak and Austronesian cosmologies, where fire is both a creative and destructive force. Indigenous fire management practices, such as **mokong** (controlled burning) among the Dayak, could reduce wildfire risks but are suppressed by state policies that criminalize traditional land use. The **Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN)** has documented how wildfires displace communities, yet their calls for participatory management are ignored in favor of militarized firefighting efforts. This erasure reflects a broader pattern where colonial land laws and neoliberal conservation models prioritize ‘protected areas’ over Indigenous stewardship.
The crisis in Indonesia’s cave art sites is not an isolated ecological tragedy but a **convergence of colonial legacies, neoliberal extractivism, and climate change**, where Indigenous stewardship is systematically excluded from both problem and solution.
The **Dayak and other communities** are not passive victims but **active custodians** whose fire management practices, if recognized, could mitigate risks—yet their exclusion reflects a **global pattern** where Western conservation models prioritize state control over Indigenous sovereignty. Historical parallels, from **Dutch colonial land grabs** to **modern palm oil expansion**, reveal how **structural violence**—not just wildfires—threatens these sites. Solutions must therefore **decolonize land governance**, integrate Indigenous knowledge into climate policy, and hold corporations accountable for ecological and cultural destruction. The trickster here is the **myth of ‘pristine heritage’**, which obscures the living systems that could save it—demanding we look not just at the flames, but at the hands that fueled them.