Benuaq Dayak Community Wins Equator Prize

Benuaq Dayak traditional community has received the Equator Prize from the UN Development Program Agency. Awarded in a ceremony in New York last week. Benuaq Dayak is a community living in Muara Tae village, West Kutai of East Kalimantan. They received the award for successfully having maintained, protected, and restored traditional forests in concession areas. "This is the proof that our struggle is not wrong. The accusations that we are 'delaying development' are not true," Petrus Asuy, a Benuaq community elder, said last week.

Over the last 20 years, Muara Tae has lost much of its land area to mining and palm oil concessions. Petrus and his friends, however, have refused to hand over their traditional lands. They have always resisted, even though they often had to deal with violence, intimidation, as well as criminalization.

September 29, 2015