Cultural Discourse on Mount Mutis Area in West Timor Indonesia: The Idea of a National Park and Environmental Desacralization

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-77-0_6How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Environmental communication; national park; sacred forest; Atoni Pah Meto tribe; Mount Mutis

Abstract

This study discusses changing the nature reserve status of the Mount Mutis area into a national park and ecotourism park in West Timor. The Atoni Pah Meto tribe considers changing status a desacralization of the environment. This environmental communication study uses CuDA communication ethnography and examines aspects of cultural communication to understand both explicit and implicit meaning in communication practices. This research examines the identity intertwined with places, experiences, and feeling associated with the Mount Mutis area. The meaning and narrative of the Mount Mutis area from the perspective of indigenous peoples are communicated to the Government and the wider community’s interest. The result of this study shows that indigenous peoples view themselves as an integral part of history with sacred values of nature, culture, history, and spirituality in Mount Muti’s area. Within the area, there is a network of sacred forests as the birthplace of the clan and the ancestral history of the Atoni Pah Meto tribe, which encourages indigenous peoples to protect the Mount Mutis area without any strings attached. From their perspective, protecting the Mount Mutis area has noble values and is a sacred duty. This study helps understand communication behavior intertwined with cultural discourses and places or spaces in nature, which results in public actions and policies for preserving nature.

Copyright

© 2022 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - E. Suminar
AU  - Pawito
AU  - P. Utari
AU  - D. T. Kartono
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/30
TI  - Cultural Discourse on Mount Mutis Area in West Timor Indonesia: The Idea of a National Park and Environmental Desacralization
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Social and Political Sciences (ICoSaPS 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 31
EP  - 37
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-77-0_6
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-77-0_6
ID  - Suminar2022
ER  -