Mapping and Defending Indigenous Customary Forests in Indonesia

AMAN (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara), founded in 1999, is Indonesia's national alliance of Indigenous peoples, representing thousands of member communities across the archipelago in the fight for legal recognition of customary land. Through the Indigenous-led Ancestral Domain Registration Agency (BRWA), which AMAN helped found, communities have independently mapped 26.9 million hectares of ancestral territory as of 2023, using participatory GPS surveys to document boundaries the government has been slow to recognize. Despite this mapping effort, Indonesia's central and local governments had formally recognized only about 3.73 million hectares of that land, roughly 14%, leaving most communities still without legal title. AMAN combines this mapping work with national advocacy, pushing for passage of a long-stalled Indigenous Peoples' Rights Bill and holding local governments to a 2013 Constitutional Court ruling that customary forests belong to Indigenous communities, not the state.