Structural repression against Indigenous communities in Indonesia, particularly as part of marginalized communities, continues to intensify through various forms of violence by state actors, including criminalization, dispossessions of living spaces, restrictions on access to natural resources, and physical violence that disproportionately affects Indigenous women and their children. In this article, the authors analyze forms of state repression and Indigenous resistance practices in Bombana, Southeast Sulawesi, as well as Dolok Parmonangan and Sihaporas, North Sumatra. This article employs a qualitative approach using multisited ethnography through in-depth interviews, participant observation, ethnographic reflection, and document analysis. The analysis in this study draws on Johan Galtung’s framework of structural violence, feminist political ecology of Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter, & Wangari, Crenshaw’s intersectionality, and Scott’s concept of everyday resistance. The findings in this paper reveal that repression operates through direct violence, permeating everyday life in the form of trauma, surveillance, and uncertainties. In this context, the authors find that the Indigenous women experience multiple forms of repression while simultaneously playing crucial roles in sustaining their communities through collective solidarity, ecological knowledge, reproductive labor, and everyday resistance practices.
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