Kynan Tegar wants ‘a future that exists’ for Indonesia’s Indigenous communities

Indigenous activist and filmmaker Kynan Tegar joins the Mongabay Newscast this week to discuss the impacts of the fires devastating Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. Some 48,000 hectares (about 119,000 acres) of land have burned so far this year; Kynan says these fires are intentional on the part of agricultural corporations.

“The process that has gotten us to this point right now, where fires are raging through the island, it’s a process that started maybe you can draw the line up to the 1970s, which was around the time where the Indonesian New Order period regime of Suharto was leasing out a lot of lands as concessions to companies,” she says.

“A lot of times it’s logging, it’s palm oil concessions, it’s also gold mines.”

Corporations have drained more than 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of peatland, she says. But the impact, she says, that isn’t receiving as much attention is the decreased access to freshwater for Indigenous and local communities, which both climate change and El Niño are making worse.

“It’s quite an ironic thing. Like, it’s one of the world's biggest rainforest[s], and a lot of the people there are struggling for water. So that, on top of the conditions created by the massive wildfires that has been happening since July … has put a lot of the people there in strain,” she says.

Kynan released a spoken-word music video in 2024 to dramatize and tell the story of her community, Sungai Utik, and the people who have defended the land for more than 100 years. She explains the filmmaking process behind the video, Earth Defender, and how she created the narrative, which states that  every 48 hours, an Earth defender loses their life protecting their land, protecting their forests, protecting their ecosystems, their families

Kynan is also a transgender woman. In light of the Indonesian president’s decision to designate the “dissemination of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) culture” as a nonmilitary state threat, she explains how this impacts her advocacy.

“How free we can really be in this country? It made me second-guess on how much I … can actually speak up on the kinds of issues that I have always spoken up for.”

She further reflects on what she feels is a lack of solidarity.

“Being queer and being Indigenous, it’s not that far removed. It’s a lot of the same, layers of oppression culturally, economically, socially. And I suppose that’s where I really had hoped for there to be more solidarity between these movements because of all of those similarities. But I think that’s still something that we collectively need to work on.”

Kynan also shares her thoughts on the long-delayed Indigenous People’s Bill, which promises to grant legal recognition to customary lands, but has hung in parliamentary limbo for 16 years.

“I don’t see elements within it that will redress the historic inequality that we have faced. I think that’s still a massive problem that needs more than just a legal solution.”

When asked what she hopes to see for the future of Indonesia’s Indigenous population, she says, “I don’t think I can accurately represent all Indigenous youths of Indonesia. But for me personally, the kind of future that I want to imagine is a future that exists.”

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Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Basten Gokkon is a Jakarta-based staff writer for Mongabay with interests in wildlife conservation, renewable energy, and Indigenous communities. Follow him on Twitter to see his latest thoughts via @bgokkon.

Image: A customary longhouse in Sungai Utik. The community elders make sure everyone complies strictly with the law, as this serves as a model for the young generation to follow in their footsteps and lead the path to community conservation. Image by Indai Apai Darah, Kynan Tegar / Wayfinders Circle.

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Timestamps

(00:00) Opening

(03:26) Fires in Kalimantan

(10:13) Sungai Utik and Imagined Futures

(18:10) Earth Defenders

(22:49) Indigenous Peoples Bill & Identity

(28:34) Gender, Environment & 'A Day on Earth'