Cautiously Modern

Indonesia's 600-year-old paddy-growing community has embraced modern lifestyle while preserving ancient traditions

- Nadine Freischlad

WITH ITS own hydropower grid, food supplies to last a few decades and a TV channel for entertainment, Indonesia’s Ciptagelar community is in many ways both a model smart village of the future as well as a relic of the past.

The 16,000-strong Ciptagelar community, living in a village inside the Halimun Salak National Park, about 130 km southwest of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, consider themselves adat, a community that has adhered to traditional ways of life. They claim ancestral rights to this land, where they have resided for over 600 years. In accordance with Indonesia’s laws, they are allowed to plant rice and cut trees inside the protected area. Their fields are overflowing with manicured layers of rice paddies.

The Ciptagelar village comprises a cluster of simple, rectangular houses with wooden frames, walls made of bamboo mats and palm-fibre roofs. The large open piazza is flanked by the house of the adat leader and his extended family, an assembly hall, a tiny mosque, and several stages that are used during festivities. A visit to the