Indonesia’s female ‘indiana jones’ butet fights for her jungle tribe

Butet is a graduate of anthropology and is known for her commitment in becoming a voice for tribal children in inland Jambi.

Butet Manurung can be widely known in both Indonesia in addition to on the international arena for her SOKOLA initiative, otherwise known as the Jungle School.

In Butet received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for her dedication as a pioneer and activist for alternative education for the inland community in Indonesia. Many have written about Butet, and her experiences of fighting for the rights of tribal children were featured in Inside Indonesia in Here Butet updates Yulia Indri Sari on the changes that have happened at the Jungle School since and provides some insight into her views of Indonesia as well as her own life.

Have there been any changes at the Jungle School since , and why have those changes occurred? There have been many changes at the Jungle School. The Jungle School previously focused on teaching skills to overcome issues affecting local communities who could not obtain those skills themselves. For example, there were issues with illegal logging and blast fishing, and the ways in which communities worked against these issues.

The Jungle School had originally attempted to solve all of these problems. But then we realised that the school did not have the resources to solve them all. We realised that it was of most importance to help indigenous peoples manage their own issues, and to support them in organising their own communities to fight for their rights.

We now support communities to self-identify problems, and we work to establish a network so that they can overcome the issues as a community.

Deep in a remote forest in Indonesia, a school for tribal children and elders thrives under the tutelage of Australian National University (ANU) anthropology Masters graduate and .

We understand of course that the indigenous communities cannot do all of this themselves, but with the new programs at the Jungle School, they now know where they may find assistance. The Jungle School is now focused on literacy and advocacy education. In order to increase the impact of the school we are now developing more type of training so that our literacy and education programs can be utilised by a wider range of indigenous community groups.

Can you tell us about the training that has been developed by the Jungle School?