Shifting identities : a case study of Routa sub-district, Konawe regency, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract

Routa sub-district, located in a remote area on the border of the three Indonesian provinces of South Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi, and the natural resources of this region have attracted many from different parts of Sulawesi to seek their fortune there, and more recently the mineral resources have attracted foreign investment. The Tolaki, Bugis, Toraja and Bungku living in Routa make it a multicultural and multilingual society. The remoteness of this location has resulted in language contact over four generations of speakers of the four local languages; most people of Routa are at least bilingual, or even multilingual. Both bilingualism and multilingualism have resulted in linguistic behaviour such as code switching and code mixing in their daily communication. This multilingualism is a particular identity marker to help distinguish between established and new migrants in this area. People in Routa try to use Bahasa Indonesia to represent their national identity, but they actually use a form of what I term Melayu Sulawesi which betrays their regional identity, and they mix it with their local language to index their local identity, their suku. The influences of these languages in Routa sub-district have created a new language identity which I call 'Bahasa Sinonggi', a unique combination of Bahasa Indonesia, Melayu Sulawesi, Bugis, Toraja, Tolaki and Bungku languages. I argue that this language shifting plays an important role in constructing identity because my findings show that code switching and code mixing index his/her language identity group. Unfortunately, the dominance of the local languages has resulted in the extinction of some 'original' local languages such as Routa, Epe, Waru and Lalomerui. The speakers of these languages now use the Tolaki language. In the context of a multicultural society in which every suku has their own adat to guide procedure, the informal conflict resolution mechanisms of Routa demonstrate flexibility and creativity, so as not to disadvantage any one suku. Tolerance is based on acceptance of difference rather than an understanding of one another's adat. Also there is evidence of a normative effect conferred by the Islamic religion. The issue of ethnicity, of suku background, has an interesting aetiology, which began in the DI/TII rebellion era; initially the people were categorised, perhaps for administrative simplicity, as Routa-Bugis, Routa-Toraja, Routa-Tolaki, and Routa-Bungku. During the DI/TII rebellion, all suku suffered the same fate; they were displaced, herded together and their livelihoods and homes destroyed. This created a climate of fellow-feeling, which diminished the feeling of suku bangsa. The one thing they still had was the jungle, a place for the rebels to hide but a source of forest products for the residents. These former distinctions have now been subsumed under the rubric of Orang Routa, an identity which predominates today, indexed by the use of 'Bahasa Sinonggi'. I examine the linguistic features of this local dialect through analysis of speech events. I also investigate conflict resolution and the emergence of new identity in this multicultural society as it faces new political and economic development, most notably a multinational mining venture. Show more