The Batak Textile Heritage Saujana Conservation and Sustainable Development OR When Batak Textiles were Honey and How They can Change the World

I delivered the webinar 'The Batak Textile Heritage Saujana Conservation and Sustainable Development' on 21 May 2021 as part of the 4th International e-Public Forum on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development. This, in turn, was part of the 2021 INTERNATIONAL ONLINE SUMMER COURSE ON JOGJA WORLD BATIK CITY: Balancing Creative Economy and Heritage Saujana Conservation to Foster Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Why, you might wonder, is a seminar on Batak included in a webinar on batik?

Batak and batik differ by only one letter, but there is a world of difference between the two.
o Batik is a textile decoration technique practised mainly on Java, and
o Batak is an ethnic group in the province of North Sumatra that weaves and does not make batik.

There is certainly difference between Batak textiles and batik textiles, but there is also similarity.
All of the hundreds of textile traditions in the island archipelago of Indonesia have similarities and differences; they relate to each other like variations on a theme.
To my mind, the entire Nusantara textile heritage deserves UNESCO recognition, because all these textile traditions are related to one another and reference each other like a single ‘set’ of material culture. They form a whole.
I applaud the wisdom of the organizers of this forum for including a comparative perspective on batik.


UN Sustainable Development Goals

This seminar focuses on the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. The Sustainable Development Goals represent a remarkable step in the history of global relations. In 2015 the United Nations agreed to a global partnership to improve human lives and at the same time to protect the environment, through sustainable development. The date for achieving the goals was set at 2030. I understand that today’s seminar is one initiative of a member country to explore how to achieve these goals. I applaud this intention.


Detail of a Batak pinunsaan textile

The textile crafts of Indonesia represent an extremely valuable resource in the global attempt to live within planetary ecological boundaries. 

My position is that craft traditions present alternatives to the dominant global systems of production and capitalism, which have brought our planet into a precarious ecological position, with global warming, and over-exploitation of planetary resources and people.

Map of Indonesia

2017 Paris Climate Accord – a UN agreement

After the 2015 SDG agreement came the legally binding 2017 Paris Agreement to stay within 1.5 degrees of global warming, by peaking greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible to achieve a climate neutral world by 2050. This agreement implies and demands rapid and revolutionary economic and social transformation in the Global North, where most of the emission are caused.

Failure to meet the terms of this agreement are predicted to have dire climate consequences that will cost governments, including Indonesia, a great deal of money and will hurt most those who are least responsible for the CO2 emissions. Think of the cyclone earlier this year in Eastern Indonesia which threatened the lives of many weavers and the viability of their textile crafts. Think, too, of the corona pandemic which is believed to be a result of compromised ecosystems.



Degrowth Movement

The Degrowth movement has been building since the 1970s when scientists recognized the ecological limits to growth and it is becoming increasingly recognized and established.

It centres on a complex problem:
1. Capitalism requires growth to function
2. The Exponential growth of capitalism means that the terms of the Paris Agreement will not and cannot be met
3. Sustainable development, when it is based on capitalist growth, might be growth but it is not sustainable. 

Simply put, there is a problem when the SDGs encourage capitalist growth because this, precisely, is what leads to environmental degradation and social inequality.

Hence specialists are proposing degrowth as a way for the world to become more equitable whereby production and consumption remain within the ecological carrying capacity of the earth.

In other words, it is time to see the world turned on its head.

The word ‘development’, once a central, almost universal goal, has become problematic due to social consequences and the limited capacities of the planet.

Since the colonial era, craft has been seen as a vehicle to enable the poor to climb out of poverty. Revising craft for income generation is currently a predominant economic model for so-called ‘craft development’. Also in Indonesia.

However, recent research shows that capitalist growth creates poverty; it does not relieve poverty. Poverty in the world has never been as great as it is today. Growth of GDP does not imply improved well-being. (see Jason Hickel)
This means that the global economic system requires rehabilitation; the dominance of its economic and productions systems is currently a most pressing global problem.


Batak backstrap loom being manipulated by Ompu Elza, br. Sinaga. (2019)

Because capitalist growth creates poverty, environmental destruction and is exploitative there is a serious problem when craft is transformed into a vehicle for economic growth: I am speaking of faster looms, greater production, hierarchical workshop settings with a boss, and independent craft makers being transformed into labourers.

ATBM (semi-mechanized) loom being manipulated by a Batak weaver in Pematang Siantar. (ca. 2010)

Indigenous craft production systems are alternative models for business and industry. Indigenous production systems may offer strategies of sustainable production and social equality. Rather than conceptualizing craft as lagging in terms of global economic development, craft may be treasured for the kinds of models that it provides for alternative and sustainable economic and production systems. Then the challenge for craft activists becomes how to ensure that indigenous craft systems survive and thrive and are honoured rather than transformed into yet another capitalist activity. 

To explain this, I would like to speak briefly (given the short time available), about the position of Batak textiles, in the physical and social environments of the Batak people.

The social role of hand-woven Batak textiles is an example of what industrial, post-colonial society is looking for -- and longing for -- when it aspires to become sustainable.

Indonesian people I think would all agree that the textiles of their ethnic communities are flags of identity. Each community has unique and characteristic textile designs.


detail of Batak Bintang Maratur textile

In the Batak area the weaving arts are in severe decline and much textile knowledge has been lost. As a consequence, many Batak people are not aware that the identity-function of the cloth relates to much more than just how it looks. It also relates to how the cloth was made and used. Because time is short, I will restrict myself to brief aspects of how it used to be made.

Ompu ni Sihol, surrounded by her grandchildren, is making indigo dye. (1980)

Batak textiles are like honey. A bee collects pollen from the flowers in the near vicinity and makes honey. A weaver, in this case Ompu ni Sihol, is like a bee. She assembles materials from the near environment and her honey is an ancient clothing tradition.

Batak textiles originally represented the near environment including:

1. Various kinds of wood to make the weaving equipment
2. Grasses used in weaving, dyeing and starching
3. Plants for dyes
4. Local fibres for the yarn, including banana and a kind of nettle as well as cotton
5. Water next to the village serving in all of the processes
The indigenous textiles were made using local materials and local knowledge, and stayed within local ecological capacities.

Here Op ni Sihol is using local, wild indigo, dye pots made from local clay, and the water flowing beside her village. She has transported the indigo in handwoven mats made from local grasses.

Her grandchildren are helping and learning. Call it capacity building, cultural survival, community building, valuing of the elderly, transmission of cultural heritage, or the indigenous education system.

Currently, Batak textiles are no longer like honey.
1. Fibres and yarns are imported from elsewhere; dyes are imported from elsewhere; equipment is imported from elsewhere. All of these Imports imply CO2 emissions for transportation and they put the Batak people out of work. They therefore also imply loss of skills.
2. The imported synthetic dyes and yarns are made of hydrocarbons, and these hydrocarbons are obtained from sacrifice zones, areas that are destroyed for the sake of economic growth.
Once ecologically sound, Batak weavings today represent the opposite of what they once were.
They no longer represent the homelands/local environment.
They represent pollution because they do not biodegrade.
They no longer support the community, and no longer use local equipment and heritage know-how.

Furthermore, the semi-mechanical loom is utilized in a different system of production. Weaving on a backstrap loom in the village helped to create an integrated social life. Local know-how is activated and shared when weaving was done. Precisely this kind of community integration is being lost due to industrial style production. There is loss of skill, knowledge of local environment falls into decline, local wisdom is lost, and the position of the elderly in society declines and there is the attendant gap between generations.
3. a production hierarchy occurs whereby the weavers become labourers in an owner’s or a designer’s set-up, instead of continuing as the independent artisans they once were. The new loom constructs inequality instead of community. When weaving produced integrated community life, cultural and historical identity were also produced.

The kind of cultural integration that I am describing runs very, very deep. If we look at what the Batak weaver makes, she is also demonstrating, through her cloth, her view of the universe.

  

I have depicted here the basic structure of Batak textiles. Western education teaches us to emphasize the patterning of a textile when searching for its meaning, but this emphasis on motifs and the visual is a colonial legacy. For the Batak people, basic composition was important for the whole cloth and all of its component parts. Not just motifs, but their  arrangement in the cloth. That basic structure had everything to do with how Bataks understood their universe was structured.

Traditional Batak textiles were always divided into three parts if they had a role to play in adat, or ritual. A cloth had two similar sides and a centre. That same 2:1 relationship was found in all the parts of a cloth. Note how the supplementary warp and weft patterns have two similar sides and a centre that is different. The structure is expressed in colour, technique and patterning.

The Batak loved textiles that elaborated a single theme in a complex way, so that the smallest design feature was homologous with the largest design feature. That was the Batak aesthetic.







Supplementary warp pattern













Supplementary weft and ikat patterns

The understanding of the structure of the universe spilled over into daily life: 

• In the kinship system, there are three groups: Wife-Giver, Wife-taker, Ego Clan
• The universe consisted of three layers: Upper World, Under World, the Middle World
• The three Gods in the upper world were represented by the three Batak colours: red, white, black/blue.
• Ritual, music, seating arrangements, village layout, house layout, house carving and colouring, all have that 3-part unity that is repeated and repeated. 

Not only the recapitulation of basic structures was satisfying for the Batak, but also increasingly complex elaborations of that arrangement.

The origins of this 3-part design unity can be found the culture history of the Batak, and appear to be rooted in early Austronesian influence, early connections with other parts of the archipelago (Timorese textiles are particularly striking for their similarity in general layout with Batak textiles), and early Hindu-Buddhist influence (still evident in sari layout). Their textile design, in other words, also reveals or reflects Batak culture history.

Design is community in yet another sense. The textiles were designed for the community, by the community. The Batak did not have ‘specialized designers’. That is a colonial invention. They did have talented weavers, some more talented than others. Designs emerged, developed and changed through the collective activities of weavers within their community. Designs grew incrementally, which explains why each ethnic group has strongly characteristic designs. The whole community approved or rejected the innovations informally, so that when new designs were accepted, this was a community decision. Furthermore, the adat community decided when and how a design could be deployed ritually. And on top of that, the full range of textiles design types represented the full range of social categories within the community. So social organization was reflected in the full range of designs. Clearly, textile design represented the whole society and was the work of the whole society.

So, what is this weaver weaving? She is weaving life. She is weaving together her physical environment, reproducing her intellectual universe, constructing community, enacting and depicting her kinship system, displaying her culture history, learning and expanding and passing on ancient skills.... Her identity has many, many layers, variously and deeply significant. The complexity of her work is spectacular, far greater than the sum of its parts.

It was therefore unthinkable that her work would become obsolete or ‘disposable’ like the commodities of industrial production. That would be throwing away her entire life, all that was precious and meaningful to her. There was no waste in her clothing system.

These multiple layers of meaning disappear when a piece of craft becomes a commodity representing only a single value: money. Then, the only value it has for the maker is at the moment of exchange, or when she gets paid as a labourer. This represents a considerable loss of social integration, cohesion, pride, know-how, uniqueness and on and on.

I would like to lay the goal of sustainable development beside the traditional Batak textile craft, when it was still like honey.  I have intimated that traditional Batak textile production already meets the goal of sustainability. The definition of 'development' is problematic, however.  Upon being used for capitalist development, that same tradition becomes unsustainable. And this is what we are currently facing. The word ‘development’ is problematic when it involves industrialization, and commoditization and all the consequences thereof for people, culture, communities and planet.

Attempts to use the Batak weaving arts as a source of income generation have led to an expansion of CO2 emissions and waste, as well as poverty for weavers, loss of know-how and community, de-skilling – all the things that I have mentioned above.

I propose that it would be prudent to safeguard the possibility of indigenous expressions of local genius. I propose that indigenous craft (clothing production) systems be recognized -- and also treasured – as models of sustainable production. The whole world, and certainly the Global North, needs these models. Craft can lead the world.

Indigenous Batak textiles show: 
o how goods can be valued socially (when they are not commoditized)
o how they can produce social harmony and justice (without the egregious exploitation that has resulted in the world from the capitalist system)
o how cultural pluriversality functions 
o How local textile traditions embody alternative values whereby community well being rather than money occupies the central position.

Some Resources

Degrowth Movement

https://www.degrowth.info/en/a-history-of-degrowth/

 

Hickel, Jason. 2021. ‘Extreme poverty isn’t natural, it’s created’ (Blog March 21)

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-isnt-natural-it-is-created

 

Hickel, Jason. Growth is Killing Us.

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/economic-growth-is-killing-us

 

Hickel, Jason. 2018. The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and it Solution. Windmill Books.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1113531/the-divide/9781786090034.html

 

Hickell, Jason. 2020. The Great Unravelling: Inequality. Webinar: The Postcarbon Institute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rGvz0ibPMI

 

If continued growth is not sustainable, would its opposite – degrowth – be the right alternative? EOI (Escuela de organización industsrial) blog.

https://www.eoi.es/blogs/guidopreti/2014/01/10/if-continued-growth-is-not-sustainable-would-its-opposite-degrowth-be-the-right-alternative/

 

Robra, Ben and Heikkurinen, Pasi. 2019. ‘Degrowth and the Sustainable Development Goals’ In Decent Work and Economic Growth. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham

 

SDG Index Finds No European Country on Track, Green Deal Brings Potential

http://sdg.iisd.org/news/sdg-index-finds-no-european-country-on-track-green-deal-brings-potential/

 

Sustainable Development, Poverty Eradication and Reducing Inequalities 

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15_Chapter5_Low_Res.pdf

 

United Nations Climate Change website

https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement

 

UN Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. – do the SDGs fit??

https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda

Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=ETop of Form

 

"Why do you love Batak Textiles?"

I was interviewed many times during the Pulang Kampung III journey in which my team brought our film, Rangsa ni Tonun to the Batak area. The first question when I was interviewed was always, “Why do you love Batak textiles?”  I found this question difficult to respond to in a sound bite while standing on a windy field, hence this note.

I once impatiently answered in return, “What does it matter? The Pulang Kampung expeditions are not about me and my likes and dislikes, they are about the repatriation of material and intellectual culture. What I love is not the point.”

Was I wrong?

Many interviewers seemed poised to have a truth unveiled, the microphone pointed expectantly at my mouth. In the not too distant past, white-skinned newcomers entered the region and said that the textiles and most of the rest of Batak culture were of the devil. The White Man’s views achieved dominance through the hegemony of the new church and state. Sometimes I sense that only a white-skinned newcomer can release the culture-bearer from the burdensome yoke that my ancestors placed on them and, like a kiss from the prince, awaken them to the beauty of their own culture. These textiles have value, I say; do not underestimate them! What makes you love them? they press in return. Tell us what it is! They have been taught that modernity has value, not indigenous culture. Why does this white woman spend so much time, money, energy, so much of her life, on this textile tradition? What on earth does she see in these cloths?

Beautiful supplementary warp. Are there any weavers left
who know how to do this?

I could have waxed lyrical about the complex, beautifully executed, supplementary warp patterning (jugia) that is sometimes found in old textiles. I love the innovative combinations of supplementary weft (jukkit) and ikat. I love the way the same patterns are sometimes executed in all of the textile techniques in a single cloth: ikat, supplementary weft and warp and twining. I love the clever ways that weavers have adapted external influences and ‘Batakized’ them on their backstrap looms. I love the micro-regional traditions that used to be so vibrant, yielding ever so slight differences in weaving equipment and the resultant textiles. I love the deep, ancient colours that were obtained by methodical hard work, knowledge of nature and infinite patience. I love the way weavers once had the latitude and the opportunity to express their creativity at their looms. I love that I had the opportunity to work with Ompu ni Sihol and to catch a glimpse of how a textile was made in pre-colonial culture. But how could I share all of that when the people who were interviewing me probably didn't know the fine details of the old textiles and the names for the techniques that constructed them? The tradition is dying.

Beautiful ikat. Nobody makes this anymore.

How quickly and radically things have changed! I confess that I don’t like the brightly coloured, modern Batak textiles with gold yarn that are made on ATBM looms. I find them gaudy. They make me sad. I see in them the careless, simplified, purely market-driven dead end of a rich and dignified heritage. This is not the part of the tradition that I love. But it may be all that the reporters are familiar with. Hence their question, perhaps? Hence my difficulty in responding.

But even my admiration for Batak weaving techniques and patterning could not have sustained me for all of these years were it not that they opened a window onto something much larger that never ceases to fill me with awe: the entire complex and tradition of Indonesian weaving. There are a few places on the world’s surface where weaving has attained a dazzling height of complexity and achievement. The Indonesian archipelago is one of those places.The weaving of the Batak people of Sumatra is a small, though very special, variant in that giant corpus of Indonesian weaving.

A stunning bintang maratur ikat. This textile is no longer made.

This makes Batak weaving all the more precious. Its distinct and special value emerges when it is juxtaposed with all of the other traditions in the archipelago. The value of the Indonesian textile tradition as a single, great complex is greater than the sum of the weaving traditions that comprise it. Each individual tradition is a building block or a link in the mesh. Each gains additional meaning from that larger whole and contributes to the fabric of that larger complex. Only as an assemblage is it complete. When people ask me why I love Batak textiles, one of my stock answers is that my focus on Batak textiles is a fluke of fate. I could have chosen any of the textile traditions in the Indonesian archipelago. All are rich. All are deserving of deep scrutiny within a comparative context.

Frankly, I am dismayed that UNESCO chooses to select bits and pieces (batik, Sumbanese weaving) to promote as intangible world heritage. This well-intentioned attempt to preserve the finest cultural contributions in fact demonstrates how little UNESCO knows about what is special about the weaving culture of Indonesia. Its recognition of pieces of the whole undermines momentum to recognize that larger whole. By focusing on the individual pieces of the puzzle, UNESCO fails to see the larger image. There is a need to recognize and protect the entire complex.

Only a simple twined edge, but so well made and the colours blend beautifully.

Through my own work I do what I can to raise awareness of the value of the Batak tradition. My means are limited. I have no institutional backing and no source of funding. (I am very lucky to have the loyal support of MJA Nashir who understands and shares my vision and goals and hugely augments my ability to pursue them.) The Batak tradition is more than rich enough in all of its facets to fill my anthropological career. Research of the Indonesian textile tradition is a multi-person project.

An ikat pattern that is no longer made. It combines three different ikat patterns.

Combination of supplementary weft and ikat. Soft and beautiful.

Sometimes I want to answer the question of why I love Batak textiles by invoking an even larger context. I want to point out that it is not Batak textiles per se that I love. Rather, I am committed to doing what I can to make room in this world for indigenous culture. The world is in deep crisis. Indigenous cultures are endangered. Languages and cultures are disappearing at an ever-increasing rate. Contrary to what some Batak people think and thank me for, my intent is not to “promote Batak culture outside Indonesia”. Instead, I confront people, and especially Batak people, with the fact that Batak culture is a victim of so-called progress. The spectacular cultural accomplishments of the Batak people are diminishing daily. Do I feel love for this? No, I love the possibility of cultural diversity. I feel horror, sadness, disgust at cultural loss. Will the Batak people choose to nurture, protect and promote their own cultural contributions or will they continue to turn their backs so that they can march to the drum of modern materialism? To my mind, a well-made Batak textile has greater and more lasting value than a Mercedes Benz fresh off the assembly line, but my views are not supported by the global economy. Will the Batak safeguard their cultural identity? How will they do it if they choose to do it? It is a huge challenge and it faces all of the indigenous peoples of the world.

An unusual sibolang ikat. This is the only one I know.
An individual weaver's creative impulse?
Thankfully she had the time to experiment.

During my first ‘Back to the Villages’ project, I gave a copy of my book, Legacy in cloth, Batak textiles of Indonesia (2009) to a weaver and I watched her reaction. She ran an emotional gauntlet. The book confronted her with the fineness of the textile achievement of her culture and simultaneously with its loss. Memories surfaced. The book made her silent. Another weaver said she felt happiness on the one hand and pain on the other when she witnessed the achievements of her culture. My original intent was just to say thank you to the weavers by giving them my book. I am an anthropologist. It is my obligation to give my research results to the people about whom I conduct research. I had not reckoned on the impact that the return of cultural heritage would have. This is not about objects, not just about cloth. This is about identity, hearts, minds, memories, the sense of the past and the future.