Anthropologist and author of ‘In the Shadow of the Palms’ Dr Sophie Chao: In Her Own Words

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Bio: Dr Sophie Chao

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​Little previous research had been done into how indigenous peoples themselves experience, interpret, and contest oil palm developments.

In particular, there is not much research done into how indigenous peoples relate to vulnerable, non-human beings such as native plants, animals, and elements, with whom many indigenous peoples entertain intimate and ancestral relations of kinship and care.

Pictured: A group of Marind women preparing sago starch that has been freshly rasped from the sago grove. Photo: Dr Sophie Chao

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​Living with Marind transformed how I think about what it means to be “human”

And also what it means to coexist in mutually beneficial ways with other-than-human beings.

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​The Marind think of plants and animals as not simply passive objects of human exploitation

Instead, these other-than-human beings are considered to be agents, persons, relatives, and subjects of justice in their own right.

This was a completely different way of thinking to the anthropocentric and individualistic logic of the Westernised parts of the world where I had lived, studied, and worked.

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​Indigenous Marind enriched my world by inviting me to think beyond nature-culture divides

Humans share the planet with a whole array of different creatures. These creatures matter in the making of more sustainable, collective futures.

​“More-than-human becomings” is in the subtitle of the book because it is an invitation to think beyond the human and also beyond categories. Instead, the reader is invited to think about non-human beings and transforming worlds.

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This includes native plants and animals like cassowaries, birds of paradise, and sago palms, but also introduced – and sometimes dangerous – organisms like industrial oil palm.

“Becomings” was a way of getting readers to think about life beyond the static notion of “being.” To “become” is a constant transformation, unfolding differently across bodies, places, and time. Becoming, in some ways, never really ends.

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This good life is best achieved by immersing oneself in the more-than-human environment. Non-human beings are considered to be participants in the making of shared worlds, and also as subjects of harm and violence.

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​Time for Marind is not linear, it is spiralic

What you do now matters in terms of how you will be remembered. What you do now matters in terms of what you will be able to pass on to human and other-than-human beings to come.

There is a wisdom and responsibility that comes with this sense of time that I think is critical to heed in this age of planetary destruction.

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Many of my Marind companions talk about conservation and capitalism as being “two sides of the same coin”

This is because they now find themselves excluded from both industrial oil palm plantations and from the conservation areas that are intended to off-set deforestation.

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Images: Palm oil plantations and environmental destruction, Getty Images.

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Racism may have something to do with it – but I think geopolitical interests are a big part of the story

West Papua is incredibly rich in natural resources – from gold, copper, and coal, to timber and oil palm. Economic and political interests tend to trump human and environmental rights, in West Papua and elsewhere.

There are pockets of activism and advocacy in Australia, including by West Papuan diaspora and political exiles – but the movement hasn’t caught the public’s attention in the way other political causes have.

Accessing West Papua is difficult for non-Indonesian individuals and organisations. There is heightened militarisation of the region. This contributes to an ongoing invisibilisation of what is happening at the ground level, among Papuan people and across Papuan ecosystems.

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Image: Andrew Gal for Getty Images

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​Indigenous ways of being and thinking (although radically different from neoliberal capitalist and colonialist logics), should be central to decision-making

I would like to see the palm oil industry, together with the Indonesian government, try to understand the views, aspirations, desires, beliefs, and hopes of Papuan peoples themselves instead of entering with pre-conceived notions of what counts as progress, the good life, and wellbeing.

Most importantly, government and corporate actors need to accept that some communities may, following lengthy consultations, still decide to withhold their consent to oil palm projects. This right to say NO to oil palm must imperatively be respected.

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​Violence as a multispecies act: Marind describe oil palm as a colonising, killing and occupying plant beings

Oil palm, they often told me, does not want to share time and space with native plants, people, and animals.

It spreads uniformly across vast swaths of land, yet grows alone in monocrop form

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To think about violence in multispecies terms, brings us to consider situations where humans are not the only culprits, and non-humans not the only victims.

Oil palm’s acts of violence invite us to think about non-human beings as drivers and perpetrators of harm – even as they themselves are also subject to human and technological manipulations and exploitation.

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Paraquat, a deadly herbicide, trickled down from rusty canisters strapped to the women’s backs, the blue-green venom seeping into their exposed skin.

Banned in many countries because of its toxic effects, no antidote exists for this lethal chemical. I thought of babies never to come. The faces of my friends, huddled in the bed of the truck, were caked in dust and watched the landscape unfurl, weeping.

Infants retched from the stench of mill effluents as we jolted down dirt roads without stopping so as to avoid attracting the attention of military men employed by the companies to guard their plantations. Bunches of oil palm fruit lay strewn along roadsides, piles of moldering blood-red and coal-black, shot through with razor-sharp thorns.

Bulldozers and chainsaws ripped through isolated patches of the remaining vegetation. Silhouetted against the bleary sun, pesticide-spraying helicopters zigzagged back and forth above us, spreading a milky veil of hazy toxins.

~ Dr Sophie Chao, excerpt from the prologue of ‘In the Shadow of the Palms.’

The day that MIFEE came

On August 11th 2010, a delegation of government representatives from Jakarta, led by the then minister of agriculture Ir. H Suswono launched the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE). A $5 billion USD agribusiness scheme to promote the country’s self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs and to make Indonesia a net food-exporting nation. Papuans from across the region were invited to the event including Marind community members from the upper Bian river. Paulus Mahuze, Marind clan leader recalls the arrival of MIFEE and how everything changed dramatically afterwards for his people. 

~ Dr Sophie Chao, excerpt from her book ‘In the Shadow of the Palms.’

“It was a hot day. There was dust (abu) everywhere, raised by the government convoys and military trucks. The dust stung our eyes and made our children cry. The government brought oil palm (sawit) company bosses with them from pusat (‘the centre,’ or Jakarta). They gave us instant noodles, pens, bottles of water. They also gave us cigarettes – the expensive kind. They talked a lot about MIFEE. MIFEE this, MIFEE that…but we didn’t understand what MIFEE was. We did not know what palm oil was because oil palm does not live in our forests. Then, the government officials and the oil palm bosses left. They never returned to the village. 
They promised us money and jobs. They said MIFEE would provide us with food. I thought that they would plant yams, vegetables and fruit trees. Instead they planted oil palm. They planted oil palm everywhere they could. They turned the whole forest into oil palm. They cut down all the sago to plant oil palm. This is what happened. Since then, everything is abu-abu (‘grey’ or ‘uncertain’).  

~ Paulus Mahuze, marind clan leader (as told to dr sophie chao in her book: In the shadow of the palms).

Pictured: Oil palm plantations in Merauke have contributed to unprecedented levels of deforestation, and water/soil contamination. Photo credit: Dr Sophie Chao.

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The concept of abu-abu is one that many of my Marind friends would use to describe the worlds that they inhabit

Abu-abu communicates the sense of ambiguity, opacity, and strangeness that life on the palm oil frontier entails. Greyness manifests in the polluted waters of local rivers, and in the smoke-filled skies following forest burning.

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Greyness also manifests in the dull and irritated skin of malnourished infants, poisoned fish, and pesticide-wielding workers

To live in a world of murk and uncertainty is violent and unsettling – but it is also a way of rejecting the possibility of any kind of radical divide between oneself and that murk. That’s why I approach abu-abu not just as a condition of suffering, but also as a stance of refusal.

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At the same time, abu-abu was a form of resistance in the way it refused fixed classifications, categories, or boundaries between things, ideas, and actions

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​Whether “sustainable” palm oil can be achieved in practice demands a radical rethinking of the capitalist logic – the logic of endless growth

Careless profit-making, and externally imposed “development” and “progress” rhetorics. And that is a huge task. These kinds of rhetorics are deeply entrenched. Their origins are often unquestioned. Their impacts are often silenced.

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​At the end of the day, I think the most important thing to ask ourselves about “sustainability” is – sustainability for whom?

Who gets to have a say over what happens to lands and forests? Who gets to be involved in decision-making processes surrounding oil palm projects? Is there scope to reconsider the scale at which these projects are being developed?

These are questions that have to be crafted and considered together with the Indigenous peoples most directly and indirectly affected by agribusiness expansion.

That, for me, is the beginning of any kind of conversation around sustainability – sustainability for people, plants, animals, and for all the other beings implicated in one way or another in the palm oil nexus.

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The rationale for additional Food Estates in Papua and Indonesia is scrutinised in this 2022 report

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Upcoming online events and publications

Pictured: Dr Sophie Chao researched the life of the Marind-Anim tribe in Merauke for three years. Her doctoral dissertation on the impact of oil palm plantations on the lives of the tribe won the 2019 best thesis award in Australia in the field of Asian Studies. Photo: ABC News Indonesia

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Images: Getty Images, Dr Sophie Chao, Nanang Sujana, Craig Jones Wildlife Photography, ABC News Indonesia.

Words: Dr Sophie Chao

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Further Reading

‘In West Papua, oil palm expansion undermines the relations of indigenous Marind people to forest plants and animals’ by Dr Sophie Chao for The Conversation.

After 75 years of independence, Indigenous Peoples in Indonesia still struggling for equality by Dr Sophie Chao for The Conversation.

‘Kelapa Sawit Membunuh Sagu’: Sophie Chao Meraih Tesis Terbaik di Australia Setelah Meneliti Suku di Papua by Farid M. Ibrahim for ABC Indonesia.

In the plantations there is hunger and loneliness: The cultural dimensions of food insecurity in Papua (commentary)’ by Dr Sophie Chao for Mongabay.

The sky has no corners: My journey to a new understanding of nature, an essay by Dr Sophie Chao for Five Media.

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Read and watch more stories about indigenous justice, land-grabbing and deforestation on Palm Oil Detectives

Image: Marind children in Merauke West Papua by Nanang Sujana

Mama Malind su Hilang (Our Land Has Gone) is a powerful documentary by celebrated and renowned filmmaker and photographer Nanang Sujana. His images and film tells the story of the Malind Anim tribe living in Zanegi village. They were dispossessed from their land which was given over to global palm oil corporations, in its place was Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE).

Image: Rainforest in Sumatra by Craig Jones Wildlife Photography

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