Indigenous Resource Management Practices and the Local Social-Cultural Context : An Insight towards Self-Directed Resource Management by People who ‘Coexist’ with Supernatural Agents

In recent arguments in the governance of natural resource management, effectiveness and desirability of collaborative management among various stakeholder including indigenous people has been recognized. In the context of Indonesia, the reformation movement has stimulated the growth of a new perception of indigenous people’s rights to their land in the country. This recent transition presents a growing opportunity for indigenous people who live in nature-rich areas (national parks, etc.) to collaborate with ‘outside stakeholders’ such as governmental agencies, scholars and environmental NGOs in natural resource management. In such situations, it is necessary to deeply understand the value of indigenous resource management (IRM) practices to promote self-directed and effective resource management. This chapter focuses on local forest resource management and its suitability in the local social-cultural context in central Seram, east Indonesia. First, I describe how the well-structured forest resource use is constructed and maintained through the indigenous resource management practices based on ‘supernatural enforce mechanism’. After that, I investigate what social-ecological roles the IRM in Amanioho has, and how IRM practices relate to the social-cultural context of an upland community in central Seram. Then, I discuss the possible future applications for achieving self-directed resource management by people who‘coexist’ with supernatural agents