“‘We, the Twins of the Dragons’:
Indigenous Multispecies Politics and Ecotourism Political Economy in
Komodo National Park, Indonesia”
Dr. Cypri Jehan Paju Dale
Affiliated Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin Madison
In Komodo National Park, Eastern Indonesia, the natural home of the largest living lizard on earth known as Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), local communities have articulated their indigenous cosmologies of an intimate relationship with the dragon to oppose the exclusionary conservation and tourism model and to claim active participation in the new tourism economy. Identified in vernacular as Sebae (meaning the other half), the dragons have been believed as the twins of the human, born from the same human mother of the Indigenous Komodo residents. Analyzing the articulation of this indigenous cosmology against the backdrop of the emerging tourism industry, this presentation shows how this Indigenous multispecies identity politics takes place in the context of new economic opportunities created by the incorporation and exploitation of wildlife and indigenous space. Through a nuanced description of Komodo’s multi-species politics and their political and economic conjuncture, this presentation shows how marginalized communities reshape their identity and pursue economic interests in an entangled capitalist world.
Cypri Jehan Paju Dale is a social anthropologist with research and social engagement in West Papua and Flores, Eastern Indonesia. He obtained his PhD from the Institute of Social Anthropology, Bern University, Switzerland in 2018 with a dissertation on Christianity and Indigenous Politics of Self-determination in West Papua. He worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University, Japan in 2020-2022. Affiliated as an honorary Research Fellow at the Anthropology Department of University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is currently working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation and a research project on Conservation, Ecotourism, and Interspecies Companionship in Protected Areas. The latter project draws from a fieldwork in Komodo National Park, the home of world’s largest surviving lizard Varanus komodoensis (Komodo dragon) and the indigenous people of Ata Modo. He co-founded Sunspirit for Justice and Peace, a research based, community empowerment and advocacy oriented NGO working in Eastern Indonesia in 2005, worked as its director in 2007-2013 and currently serves as head of its Board of Advisors.
This event is free and open to the public. A recording will be available on the CSEAS YouTube channel following the event.