Kerry B. Collison, Indonesian Gold

by Christine Doran

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Kerry B. Collison, Indonesian Gold. Hartwell (Australia): Sid Harta, 2002, 613 pp.

The central theme that runs through Kerry B. Collison's novel, Indonesian Gold, is that the natural environment of Kalimantan is now in peril, and consequently the whole social fabric of the indigenous Dayak communities is also at risk. Throughout this long book of 613 pages, Collison progressively peels back the many layers of physical, commercial, political and social influences which have contributed to environmental degradation, showing the complex interactions of all these factors.

Rapid economic exploitation and industrial development since the 1980s have put the natural environment of Kalimantan in jeopardy, with the pressures escalating since the downturn in the Indonesian economy following the 1997 financial crisis. No doubt the best known example is the expansion of the timber industry, resulting in the rate at which forest cover is being depleted exceeding twelve thousand square kilometers each year. In his novel Collison illuminates some of the less well-known aspects of these developments. For instance, he highlights the use of fire on a large scale to clear forested land in Kalimantan in order to accommodate the expansion of palm plantations for the production of palm oil. This has led to annual widespread fires covering most of Kalimantan and spreading as far as the Malay peninsula to the west. Collison also writes of the rapid destruction of Kalimantan's peat swamp forests. The government-sponsored attempt to convert the peat lands to agricultural land has entailed the destruction of the distinctive fauna and flora of the swamp forests, unbalancing the natural ecosystem.

The damaging impact of mining is less well-known than the effects of destruction of the Bornean forests. In the novel the plot which Collison develops focuses attention especially on the destructive impact of mining operations in Kalimantan, particularly gold mining. He shows how the flood of immigrants seeking gold, including Javanese and Madurese transmigrants, has put intense pressure on both Dayak lands and communities. These immigrants, many of them illegal, came either as individual prospectors or were imported as a labor force by Indonesian and foreign mining companies. Their methods of extraction used large amounts of mercury, producing noxious gases and toxic residuals which were introduced into the river systems, polluting water supplies used for drinking, cooking and washing, and endangering fish in the streams and those who ate them. Problems have also arisen with the methods of waste disposal adopted by the larger mining operations, resulting in chemicals such as sulphuric acid, mercury, copper and arsenic entering the water system. Among the innovative extraction processes used is cyanide heap leaching, which involves spraying a cyanide solution over crushed rocks heaped into open piles. Collison states that this process brought with it "extremely high pollution risks and long-term toxic contamination" (p. 197).

Kerry Collison is an Australian author with long-standing connections with Indonesia. His previous novels set in Indonesia, which like Indonesian Gold he describes as "fact-based fiction," include The Fifth Season and The Asian Trilogy, comprising Jakarta, Merdeka Square and The Timor Man. These books have all dealt with political corruption, business wheeling and dealing, and high finance in Indonesia in the era of globalization.

Under the "New Order" both the mining and timber industries of Kalimantan became enmeshed in political relationships involving Suharto, his children, military leaders, and Chinese entrepreneurs. Collison is at his best in capturing the nature and motives of these web-like political interrelationships. Nor does Collison pull any punches in describing the deadly activities of the Kopassus Special Forces section of TNI, the Indonesian army, in Kalimantan as well as in Aceh, Irian Jaya and East Timor. Collison often identifies what has been taking place in Kalimantan, as in other parts of Indonesia, as a process of internal colonization within Indonesia by the politically dominant Javanese.

Dayak communities have generally not been consulted about the vast industrial changes taking place in their traditional country. They have received little or no compensation for the loss of their lands. Along with widespread environmental degradation, the social impact of recent industrial developments in Kalimantan has threatened indigenous Dayak communities. Violence has regularly broken out between Dayak and immigrant Indonesian and foreign mining groups. Dayak women have often borne the brunt of this, with rape a frequent occurrence in the cultural contact zone. Collison dramatizes this situation in the novel, in an incident involving the brutal rape and consequent death of a young Dayak girl who, like many of her friends, was attracted to the mining camps by the economic opportunities offered them as laborers, cooks and domestics.

Collison succeeds in dealing with these serious environmental and social issues by weaving them into a riveting story combining elements of romance together with high finance, stock market swindles, mining fraud, murder, and corpnrate skullduggery, along with occasional sex scenes and frequent coarse language. The story is based on the notorious billion-dollar BRE-X Canadian gold fraud in 1997 at Busang in the province of East Kalimantan. An interesting feature of the novel is the author's creation of a Penehing Dayak woman as the central character and heroine of the story. Angela Dau, the daughter of a shaman-chief, is herself initiated as a shaman, and after undertaking environmental studies in Bandung returns to her own people to assume the role of their leader in their attempts to resist the pressures being imposed upon them from outside. A romance--never consummated--develops between Angela and an American geologist, Stewart Campbell, but ultimately their relationship cannot be fulfilled because of the unbridgeable cultural differences that separate them.

Indonesian Gold is not great literature. The amount of detailed information offered is frequently tedious. Yet the issues dealt with are important, and they are wrapped up attractively in an exciting, even sensational package. As a vehicle for raising popular awareness about the environmental devastation facing Kalimantan and the risks of social and cultural degradation facing its people, the novel deserves to be commended.

(Christine Doran, Southeast Asian Studies, Faculty of Law, Business and Arts, Charles Darwin University, Darwin NT 0909, Australia)