Who are the Orang Riau? Negotiating Identity across Geographic and Ethnic Divides

Abstract

Debates about identity have multiplied across Indonesia in the wake of the implementation of regional autonomy. In the ethnically heterogeneous province of Riau, identity is prominent in the public debate and pivotal to struggles over the distribution of resources and questions of political allegiance. This chapter examines the extent to which these public discourses of identity are reflected at the grassroots level, drawing from my own experiences as an intermittent member of a non-Malay Riau household, and on data from semi-structured interviews conducted in June 2002 with community leaders and 40 other people from a range of social and ethnic backgrounds.