Preserving intangible cultural heritage in Indonesia1 A pilot project on oral tradition and language preservation

This paper describes approaches to cultural heritage conservation and protection that emphasize local community participation and give greater attention to “Indigenous Knowledge ” (IK). The paper explores ways that indigenous people can preserve their cultural heritage, including their IK, so that it remains a vibrant and self-identified part of community life. IK is a holistic concept, structured and transmitted through indigenous languages. IK cannot be preserved outside the local and linguistic context in which it makes sense. Giving full recognition to the close bond between culture, IK and indigenous languages, and acknowledging the function of language as an irreplaceable resource of IK, UNESCO Jakarta, working with SIL Jakarta, supports programs to safeguard endangered languages and to integrate IK and indigenous languages into education. The programs that UNESCO Jakarta is developing stress that indigenous languages are valuable resources for IK so that preserving languages should go further than just documenting their structure. Rather, the preservation of indigenous languages should be closely linked with language development. For UNESCO Jakarta, working with and for indigenous languages is a new field. But considering tha