Hairani and Toraji have always lived in the forest. They are two nomadic elders but their home is among those trees that, like their ancestors, they respect as much as human beings. Both live on the island of Halmahera, in the northern Moluccas, and belong to the Hongana Manyawa community, which literally means “forest people” in their language.
“We’ve always lived here. There are palm trees and fruits that we often pick,” explains Hairani, sitting on the ground in front of a plate of vegetables taken from Survival International’s Tribal Voice project. “This land has been ours since the dawn of time,” echoes Toraji. “Try to take a look at their houses,” adds the man, referring to the encampments of the local Weda Bay Nickel mining company. “That’s where they deliberately took the land.” “Our gardens were there!” Hairani recalls. “We don’t want to give our forest away. Don’t exploit our land.” Their people have in fact been forced to flee their ancestral lands in front of the bulldozers of the mining companies engaged in the extraction of nickel, a fundamental material for electric cars and the ecological transition. At the cost of devastating the environment and threatening one of Indonesia’s last nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes.
Keepers of the trees
All in all, the Hongana Manyawa are a small community. The total population is estimated to not exceed three thousand people, including no less than 300 and no more than 500 “uncontacted” individuals, i.e. those who avoid contact with the rest of the world and live in the forest. The Hongana Manyawa people are however divided, according to biologists BJ Coates and KD Bishop, into 21 different groups, of which only six still follow the traditional nomadic costume. But they are far from backward. Theirs is a subsistence economy but – according to the sociologist of North Maluku Muhammadiyah University, Syaiful Madjid, who has studied their culture for years – their customs are linked to a deep system of beliefs and values. First of all, the deep respect for the forest.
In order to build their houses, in fact, as the NGO Survival International explains, they do not cut down trees, which according to their traditions have a soul and feelings like human beings, but “they only use leaves and branches”. Furthermore, “when a child is born, the family plants a tree in gratitude and buries the umbilical cord in its roots.” Yet for many, the tribe could greatly benefit from integration with the rest of Indonesian society. An opinion that however clashes with the reality of the facts.
Forced outside contact with the Hongana Manyawa proved a disaster. Suffice it to say that the period between the seventies and nineties of the last century, characterized by waves of epidemics that followed one after the other, is remembered by the community as the “pestilence”. Despite this, for the past 50 years, the Indonesian government has tried to resettle the indigenous group outside the forest, forcing people to adopt a settled lifestyle. This is why today many members of the tribe live in villages built by the state and for the same reason many others have returned to the forest.
The encounter with the outside world has in fact led to serious episodes of discrimination, as shown by the case of Bokum and Nuhu. The two men were arrested in March 2014 on murder charges. According to the Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (Aman), the main representative organization of the indigenous peoples of Indonesia, the evidence presented at the trial was “insufficient”. For Professor Syaiful Madjid, who knew both defendants, “the trial took place in the Indonesian language”, a language that Bokum and Nuhu did not know.
Furthermore, the two were accused of having committed the murder in an area of the forest very far from the one they inhabited. Despite everything, however, the two were sentenced to 15 years in prison. Only in January 2022, after eight years in prison, was Bokum released, while Nuhu died in prison in 2019. “It is a case of pure discrimination, a phenomenon that has been going on for many years”, commented Munadi Kilkoda at the time, the regional director of the NGO Aman. According to Survival International, the tribe’s members “also serve as convenient scapegoats for the police, who often accuse them of crimes they have nothing to do with.” And it is in this climate that the community must fight – as well as against poverty and racism – also to defend their land, rich in precious minerals for the ecological transition.
Chinese, French and Germans
In the area reclaimed from the forest where the Hongana Manyawa live since 2018, the PT Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park was developed, one of the two colossal projects under construction in the Asian country for the extraction and processing of nickel. A plant which, thanks to the ban imposed by Jakarta on exporting raw ore abroad, aims to become the first vertical production complex in the world – from the mine to finished products – of integrated batteries for electric cars. A billionaire deal given that, so far, the investment amounts to 5 billion dollars, a figure that will reach 11 billion in the next few years.
The project, which opened in 2020, has three phases: an initial $2.5 billion iron-nickel smelter development, a second $1.5 billion nickel and cobalt hydroxide production lines, and finally at least another billion for the production of electric car batteries.
The subjects, directly or indirectly, involved come from all over the world. According to the Indonesian environmental association Aeer which also fights for indigenous rights, the company responsible for the PT IWIP park is a joint venture between three Chinese companies: the Tsingshan Group, which holds a 40 percent stake through its subsidiary Perlux Technology ; the Huayou Group, which owns 30 percent of the company; and the Zhenshi Group, which also owns 30 percent of the shares. And it’s not over.
Among the various mining companies active in the area, the main one is PT Weda Bay Nickel, controlled 10 percent by the Indonesian state-owned mining company PT ANTAM and 90 percent by a Chinese-French joint venture, Strands Mineral, based in Singapore . France’s Eramet, which oversees mining operations at the mine, owns 43 percent of Strands Mineral, the remaining 57 percent of which is also held by the Tsingshan Group, responsible for infrastructure at the site.
But where will all this nickel go? Mostly in our electric cars. Tesla, for example, the world’s largest manufacturer of these vehicles, has already signed a series of contracts worth billions of dollars to buy nickel and cobalt from Indonesia to use in its batteries. Elon Musk’s company – which is in no way involved in the mining activities in Halmahera – has also reached a series of agreements with the Chinese companies Huayou Cobalt and CNGR Advanced Material, both linked to the extraction of nickel from the Indonesian island, increasing the risk that the metals extracted from the lands of the Hongana Manyawa could end up in the electric cars of the US brand.
In the meantime, however, the Germans are also arriving on the island: according to what was announced by the transalpine company itself, Eramet is developing «a hydrometallurgical plant in Halmahera» with the German chemical giant Basf «with the aim of producing nickel and cobalt, essential materials for the production batteries for electric cars. The latter plant, according to Survival International, “could be located in the territory of the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa”, paradoxically threatened by activities that should favor the ecological transition and therefore environmental protection.
Environmental disaster
Another paradox is the use of coal-fired plants to feed the energy of the industrial park built on the lands taken from the tribe. According to information released by the Global Energy Monitor, the total coal-fired power generation capacity in operation or under development at Weda Bay is 3,400 megawatts. Which, according to the NGO Aeer, could be linked to reports of health problems by the local population. In particular, the inhabitants of three villages complained of breathing difficulties due to air pollution.
Not only that: according to the NGO Aman, the storage of minerals also affects local fishing activities, due to the presumed contamination of the waters. Residents also complain of limited access to clean water sources, due to a river being diverted to build a smelter and other waterways being polluted. For the tribe, it is a desolate landscape, as the old woman Tupa explained to Aman: “The trees have disappeared, replaced by a large road, where giant cars go in and out making noise and dispersing the animals.” For the Hongana Manyawa, the forest is not only a home but also a “bridge” that connects them to the spiritual world. “It’s our land,” Toraji repeats. “Since the dawn of time.”
