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Interview with Sandrayati Moniaga: Legal pluralism and the struggle for recognition of customary rights in Indonesia

In this conversation with Sandrayati Moniaga I aim to get a better picture of the ways in which knowledge of the scientific concept and debates about legal pluralism are given a place in more practically and policy-oriented forms of engagement in Indonesia. Throughout her career, Sandrayati Moniaga (Jakarta, 1961) has combined these two dimensions—command of the concept of legal pluralism and more practical engagement with the political and policy worlds in which legal pluralism plays a role. She has an academic background in law, having studied Law in Bandung (West Java). During this period, she also had the opportunity, as an extra-curricular activity, to visit various minority groups in Indonesia. During such field visits she became keenly aware of the often marginalized position of indigenous groups and the important and problematic role of legal pluralism in their relationships with the Indonesian state. After graduating, Sandra became active in various Indonesian NGOs, such as WALHI (Indonesian Forum for the Environment), ELSAM (The Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy), Lembaga Bela Banua Talino (LBBT, a Kalimantan-based indigenous peoples’ legal resources development facilitator) and HuMa (Association for Community and Ecology-Based Law Reform). In her career she built an extensive working experience in leading positions and as an advisor of various NGOs. Currently she is a Commissioner for Assessment and Research of the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission (KOMNAS HAM). She has published scientific articles on, among others, the emergence of the indigenous peoples’ movement in the 1990s and on issues of ethnic identity and legal pluralism in relation to land and forest tenure and conflicts. Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands with a current total population of around 270 million, is a country of great ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. It has a turbulent history of ruthless exploitation under Dutch colonial rule, a long independence struggle (1945–1949) against the Dutch, and a post-colonial era marked by extended periods of social conflict, political struggle and mass violence. Indonesia’s ethnic minority groups, in particular, have suffered from growing exploitation and related social, cultural, economic and political marginalization from colonial times onwards. Exploitation of land, forest and other resources caused