By Devira Sari
When the bulldozers came for Dijah’s land, she was not home to stop them. Dijah, a member of the indigenous Dayak people of West Kalimantan, returned from work to find her family’s ancestral forest being cleared for a palm oil plantation. The expansion has stripped communities of their forests, their traditional medicine, and a matrilineal way of life passed down through generations. When Dijah organized her community to resist the land clearing, she was met with state repression. Members of BRIMOB (The Mobile Brigade Corps) detained her, aiming to silence her defense of the communal lands. Dijah’s experience reflects the broader structural violence that underpins Indonesia’s palm oil industry where state-corporate collusion, gendered marginalization, and environmental destruction intersect. Yet despite intimidation, Dayak women continue to resist, embodying both ecological and cultural resilience against an economy that prioritizes profit over justice. Dijah’s story is not an isolated tragedy, it is a repeated experience of Dayak women who have long been the stewards and custodians of Indonesia’s forests.
For centuries, Dayak Benawan women have lived by a simple but profound philosophy: Sesukup Belumbah Adat meaning “where the Earth is stepped, the sky is upheld.” In their culture, the forest is a home, not a resource. Women, especially mothers, hold the vital dual role of teaching respect for the environment and securing their families’ food. They teach how to farm without exhausting the land, how to nurture diversity, and how to live in balance with nature. As one elder put it, “men do not touch the kitchen”. Kitchen here is interpreted as the care of land and family. With this wisdom alone, Dayak women have successfully sustained communities through generations.
However, this practice is now under threat. Driven by global demand for palm oil, vast tracts of Kalimantan’s forests have been converted into monoculture plantations. Government policies that treat forests as state property have erased indigenous land rights, enabling large-scale corporations to seize territory with impunity. For Dayak women, this means the loss of their role as environmental stewards, the silencing of their voices, and rendering their ecological labor. Women who were once central community survival are now invisible under modern frameworks that prioritize industrial productivity over local stewardship. The loss of women’s knowledge is not accidental. It is the byproduct of structural gender and environmental injustice that treats indigenous livelihoods as obstacles to economic growth.
What makes this loss so profound is that Dayak women’s practices hold keys to climate resilience. Their rational farming methods enrich soil and prevent wildfires. Their deep, generational understanding of local biodiversity offers sustainable alternatives to industrial agriculture. Yet in national climate planning, indigenous methods are often overlooked in favor of top-down approach, expensive technologies, and modern fixes. This results in a broken system. Policies that aim to protect forests end up displacing the very people who have protected them for centuries.
Indonesia’s long-term climate resilience will depend not only on carbon accounting or green investments but on its ability to integrate indigenous ecological knowledge into national policy frameworks. Dayak women like Dijah are more than victims of environmental injustice, they are leaders of ecological resistance. Therefore, integrating indigenous knowledge is key to adopting a culturally sensitive model of sustainability that aligns with the principles of climate adaptation and just transition – as emphasized in Indonesia’s National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN). This translates into better wildlife management, healthier soils, and stronger food security. It would mean recognizing that climate action is not only a science or economic challenge, but it is also a matter of justice.
The path forward must begin with creating space for indigenous voices to be heard. Indonesia has committed to global climate and development goals, but these promises will ring hollow if the wisdom of its indigenous women remains sidelined. Protecting forests means protecting the people who understand them best. It means upholding not just the Earth, but those who have always held up the sky.