Indonesia Mountain Society

mountain: history - landscape - culture

The origin of Indonesia, besides it is identical with the term “Nusantara” which means the unity of regions consisting of islands, Indonesia –from long time ago—is also known with the concept of “Nusakendeng”. The concept of “Nusantara” or “archipelago” shows the attachment of Indonesian with water, or sea. Meanwhile, “Nusakendeng” which means the unity of regions consisting of the clusters of mountain, shows the attachment of Indonesian with mountain.

This fact shows that since thousand years ago, Indonesian people from the east to the west, the north to the south, are living close to the mountain. The modest thing from Indonesian people’s culture which is identical to the mountains is the way of live in which giving honor of the mountain, land, forest, until tp the unity of biodiversity within. Thus, the way of live of Indonesian people is the way which is in harmony with nature, harmonic, maintaining the balance, and conservative.

However, in the recent development of the mountain, including land, forest, until the unity of life within are having a great suffer and intervention from the latest Indonesian people. The nature is continuously changed as the object of exploitation regardless of the great damage and the impact for human living itself.

Indonesia Mountain Society

The way of life of latest Indonesian people, including culture, and the human civilization is dominantly showing the disconnection of human and mountain. The mountain and the totality of nature areno longer seen as the unity of live, except for the object that has to be exploited.

One of the disconnections between human and mountain is caused by the disconnection of human’s knowledge towards His nature. Human are desolated to the mountain that give them life, and that kind of desolation has broken the human dialogical connection with the nature which is caused by the knowledge loss, culture, and the way of life of old Indonesian human who treat the mountain with fullyrespect.

One of the efforts to bring back the connection between human and nature, mountain; forest, and the total life within it, is by re-introducing the nature itself.

The first step in implementing the effort is by digging the knowledge related to the specific culture in every mountain in Indonesia. Then, that has to be data collection, and distribute the knowledge to the Indonesian people, especially every people that lives near the mountain.

“Indonesia Mountain Society” or IMS is the program or self-sustaining movement which is expected can raise the awareness of people towards nature and mountain as the unity of life that has to be noticed, known, and understood. So that, the people will have the sense of belonging and loving. After that, the people will automatically have the collective awareness of maintaining the nature.

In addition as the program or movement which initiate the research in every region, Indonesian Mountain Society is also trying to be the core of database media in every activity so that the result can accumulate the whole data related to the mountain and the connection with the people in Indonesia.