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| A book that jolts, startles, and opens the eyes of many readers. |
By Apai Deraman
Eksploitasi Dayak Masa ke Masa is a book born from the authors’ provocative national seminar presentations by two Dayak scholars, presentations that shocked audiences, disrupted complacency, and awakened many to realities long ignored.
At 274 pages, Eksploitasi Dayak Masa ke Masa (Dayak Exploitation Through the Ages) arrives not merely as a book, but as a historical intervention. Issued in both hardcover and paperback editions and currently being printed by PT Gramedia, one of Southeast Asia’s most respected presses, the volume signals durability not only in form but in argument.
Written by Cornelis and Masri Sareb Putra, the book insists that Borneo is not an empty frontier of resources but an archive of silenced histories, long overwritten by colonial and postcolonial narratives of progress.
Writing about the Dayak people and Borneo’s forests, the authors argue, is never a neutral academic exercise. It is an act of repair. This book assembles a fractured mosaic of erased origins, muted voices, and local knowledge systematically excluded from official histories. What emerges is a counternarrative in which Indigenous memory challenges state sanctioned forgetting.
Indigenous Ecology, Sustainability, and the Politics of Survival
One of the book’s most compelling contributions lies in its treatment of Dayak ecological knowledge. Practices often dismissed as backward, such as shifting cultivation, Tana’ Ulen, and customary forest governance, are reinterpreted as sophisticated adaptive systems. These are not romantic traditions frozen in time, but living strategies refined through centuries of interaction with a complex tropical ecosystem.
The irony is sharp. Borneo is rich in timber, oil, minerals, and fertile land, yet the Dayak, who have long protected its forests, are repeatedly portrayed as obstacles to development. The book dismantles this inversion. Dayak communities appear here as skilled forest managers, careful readers of rivers, soil, and seasons, whose ecological intelligence far exceeds the logic of monoculture plantations and extractive concessions.
From Colonial Extraction to Centralized Development
Colonial history, particularly under Dutch rule, provides the foundation for what follows. Forests once governed through customary law were redefined as state domain and economic assets. Administrative borders ignored sub ethnic realities, military posts followed river systems, and formal regulations weakened Indigenous land rights. Independence, the book argues, did not dismantle these structures.
Instead, the New Order absorbed and intensified them. Large scale concessions, transmigration programs, and centralized economic planning transformed Borneo into an internal colony serving national growth elsewhere. Development was framed as inevitable and benevolent, even as local communities lost control over land and resources. The language changed, but the extractive logic remained.
The book’s critique is sharpened by its attention to bureaucratic absurdity. Regulations meant to protect Indigenous peoples often entangle them in complex procedures, while corporations armed with permits clear forests freely. On paper, the system appears orderly. On the ground, it is incoherent and profoundly unjust.
Why the Dayak Struggle Matters Beyond Borneo
What ultimately elevates Eksploitasi Dayak Masa ke Masa beyond a regional study is its insistence that the Dayak struggle is globally relevant. From Krayan’s declaration that customary land is not state land to community resistance against oil palm expansion, these are not isolated acts of protest. They are assertions of historical rights, moral courage, and political agency in the face of oligarchic power.
The book invites readers to rethink development itself. Forests are not merely commodities. They are living spaces, cultural archives, and ethical teachers. The Dayak struggle, as presented here, is not nostalgic or reactionary. It is strategic, future oriented, and deeply political.
For international readers, this volume offers a mirror. It asks uncomfortable questions about whose knowledge counts, whose land is sacrificed, and whose voices are heard in the name of progress. If Borneo’s survival has become a global responsibility, as the authors contend, it is because the answers found here extend far beyond the island itself.
Eksploitasi Dayak Masa ke Masa is a 274 page volume published in both hardcover and paperback editions. It is currently in the printing process at PT Gramedia, widely regarded as one of Southeast Asia’s leading printing houses. The book carries the ISBN 978-634-7331-22-9.
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