The study, conducted within an applied-anthropology framework, used participant observation, in-depth interviews, informal conversations and documentation to examine the relationships among ecology, customary land tenure, kinship, Indigenous language, traditional knowledge and customary institutions. Its participants included customary leaders, elders, women, youth and other community members in Keerom. The qualitative design focused on how these elements sustain cultural continuity rather than producing numerical estimates of language use, participation or rates of cultural change. The findings are therefore specific to the experiences and institutions of the communities represented in the research.

Customary land tenure and the keret kinship system emerged as central mechanisms for regulating access to resources, inheritance, social obligations and conflict prevention. These structures connect territorial relationships with social relationships, helping organize collective life and maintain a shared identity. The study’s technical framing treats Taikat culture as an interconnected biocultural system: land, water, forests and sago groves are not merely resources, while language, knowledge and customary institutions do not operate independently of the ecological settings in which they are learned and used. The reported crisis concerns the weakening of these linked relationships and the conditions that allow them to persist across generations.

Formal education, religious transformation, market integration, migration and administrative expansion were identified as pressures that have altered traditional learning environments and reduced opportunities for transmitting Indigenous language, ecological knowledge and customary practices. On this basis, the authors argue that cultural sustainability among the Taikat depends on strengthening language revitalization, protecting customary territories, reinforcing Indigenous education and recognizing traditional governance institutions. Their central conclusion is that cultural preservation in contemporary Papua must maintain the interconnected social and ecological systems supporting Indigenous identity and resilience, rather than treating cultural continuity as the safeguarding of isolated customs alone.

Subject of Research: Qualitative ethnographic research on biocultural sustainability among the Taikat people of Keerom, Papua

Article Title: Cultural sustainability crisis of the Taikat people of Papua

Article References: Frank, S. A. K., & Idris, U. (2026). Cultural sustainability crisis of the Taikat people of Papua. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04780-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04780-8

Keywords: Taikat people, Papua, cultural sustainability, biocultural systems, Indigenous languages, customary land tenure, traditional knowledge, intergenerational transmission, ethnographic research, customary governance, Cultural, sustainability

A new mini review published in Frontiers in Political Science on 19 October 2026 offers the first systematic mapping of this fragmented debate. Led by Esau Miram and Ahmad Ismail of Hasanuddin University, with colleagues including Jayana Suryana Kembara from the Department of Anthropology, the research team searched the Scopus database using the keyword noken, retrieving twenty-two documents published between 2013 and 2026. Because the term denotes both the Papuan electoral practice and the woven bag from which it takes its name, the raw yield spanned two largely separate literatures. After screening out fifteen documents that address noken as material culture rather than as an electoral institution, and adding three foundational works through backward citation chaining, the team assembled an analytic corpus of ten documents and subjected them to reflexive thematic analysis following the six phases described by Braun and Clarke in 2006.

The distribution of the literature is itself a finding. The Scopus-indexed scholarship retrievable under noken is dominated by material-culture studies covering ethnobotany, weaving fibres, the creative economy, heritage value, and the occupational health of the bag makers, while work on the electoral dimension remains comparatively sparse. The ten documents in the analytic corpus were coded and mapped onto three competing schools of thought, each grounded in a distinct tradition of democratic theory. The higher-order architecture of the analysis was deductive, drawing on the aggregative-liberal tradition, the deliberative turn, and critical or agonistic critiques of consensus as sensitising concepts, while the internal content of each stream emerged inductively from close reading of the corpus.

The first and most institutionally entrenched perspective is the procedural-liberal reading, which treats noken as a constitutional exception rather than a unique democratic form. This interpretation rests on the premise that democratic legitimacy derives from the aggregation of preferences of formally equal citizens, and that one person, one vote is a substantive expression of political equality codified internationally through Article 25(b) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which mandates universal and equal suffrage by secret ballot. Secrecy, directness, and equal vote-weighting are interdependent, so any compromise of one element jeopardizes the entire system. The most theoretically explicit contribution comes from Bert de Villiers, whose 2024 chapter in Brill’s Asian Law Series contends that the Constitutional Court’s 2009 decision effectively abrogated the individual’s right to vote by replacing individual ballot choice with communal decision-making, drawing a comparative analogy with Australian native title jurisprudence following Mabo v Queensland.

Within the same stream, Iqbal Yunus Nugraha evaluated the noken system against Article 25(b) of the ICCPR and concluded that it produces a clash between international human rights law and a legal pluralist framework, since votes allocated by a prominent leader or through tribal consensus evidently compromise the principles of secrecy, directness, and individual choice. Nugraha does not advocate outright abolition but suggests a transitional accommodation towards greater compliance with international standards, a stance reflected in the Constitutional Court’s subsequent jurisprudence, which has progressively narrowed the noken exception. A third contribution by Andi Yunus in the Hasanuddin Law Review argues that noken shares structural characteristics with the United States Electoral College, particularly its dependence on intermediaries who cast votes on behalf of larger constituencies, concluding that noken represents a form of multilayered democracy compatible with pluralistic societies. De Villiers counters that this comparison stretches the limits of comparative law, given that Electoral College electors are themselves chosen by individual voters through a secret ballot, whereas noken entirely displaces individual balloting.

The second stream, the deliberative-customary reading, challenges the procedural-liberal perspective by conceptualizing noken as a genuine democratic form with its own intrinsic logic of legitimation. Drawing on the deliberative turn associated with Jürgen Habermas and John Dryzek, which holds that legitimacy derives from public reasoning, mutual justification, and consensus formation rather than mere aggregation, and on the democratic pluralism literature of John Keane and James Tully, this stream reframes the inquiry. The seminal work is Cahyo Pamungkas’s 2017 study, which rigorously examines noken within the framework of Habermas’s theory and posits that its fundamental operative principle is not the delegation of votes to a dominant figure but communal consultation through musyawarah and mufakat, meaning consensus. The traditional bag serves less as a receptacle for ballots and more as a tangible symbol of consensus achieved through discursive negotiation. Pamungkas acknowledges the potential for manipulation by Papuan elites who may unilaterally determine votes, but asserts that such manipulation constitutes a corruption of the practice rather than its intrinsic nature.

Additional contributions expand this cultural framework. Birgit Brauchler’s 2014 study examines noken as a mode of belonging that simultaneously articulates local Papuan identity, national cultural diversity, and a globally circulating indigenous peoples’ discourse, demonstrating that the legitimacy of customary practices stems from their integration into collective identity and recognition rather than from adherence to externally imposed norms. Setyanto and colleagues in 2020 shift the emphasis from cultural recognition to institutional practice, elaborating noken as a constitutive expression of Indonesian cultural pluralism and the operational basis of regional elections in the Papuan highlands. However, this stream faces two limitations: the risk of romanticization, where scholars presume communal cohesion without adequately theorizing internal stratification concerning gender, age, clan rank, and economic status, and limited analytical tools for distinguishing genuine deliberation from elite legitimation.

The third stream, the critical-governance reading, raises an empirical-conditional question rather than a normative one: under what circumstances does noken function as a deliberative practice, and under what conditions does it serve as a mechanism for perpetuating elite power? Drawing on critiques of deliberation by Lynn Sanders and Clarissa Hayward, who caution that consensus may obscure rather than eliminate domination, and on the literature showing how adat revivalism in post-1998 Indonesia allows elites to employ customary claims as tools of mobilization, this stream treats noken as a subject of political ethnography. Efriandi and colleagues in 2021 frame noken as a challenge of peripheral democratic governance, documenting how the disparity between formal electoral norms and their enforcement in highland Papua creates structural conditions conducive to elite control, vote concentration, and limited accountability. Bao and colleagues in 2023 contend that the philosophical underpinnings of noken, namely honesty, transparency, and integrity, have been progressively undermined under the Special Autonomy regime, as the influx of state funds, consumptive lifestyles, and high-cost political competition have transformed this symbol of communal trust into a mechanism for patronage politics.

The review identifies four research gaps: an empirical-geographical gap, since only a small fraction of the analysed documents specifically address Papuan districts such as Yahukimo, Lanny Jaya, Jayawijaya, and Tolikara where noken is actively practised; a methodological gap, with doctrinal-normative and descriptive approaches predominating while political ethnography and process tracing remain infrequent; a conceptual gap, since no current framework integrates representation, customary authority, electoral legitimacy, and adat-state negotiation within a unified analytical structure; and a comparative gap, with systematic comparison to similar indigenous electoral arrangements such as Māori reserved seats in New Zealand almost entirely absent. From these gaps emerge five future directions, including district-level political ethnographies in highland Papua, longitudinal studies across multiple electoral cycles, gender-sensitive research on the role of Papuan women in musyawarah, comparative studies in the Global South, and the use of the noken case as an empirical foundation for revising democratic theory itself.

Ultimately, the three streams should be understood not as competing judgments on a singular issue but as explorations of distinct dimensions of the same subject. Noken can simultaneously be a constitutional exception with contested compatibility with universal suffrage, a culturally embedded form of deliberative agreement, and an empirically ambivalent institution vulnerable to elite capture. The review concludes that noken is most appropriately conceptualized as a hybrid political institution situated at the intersection of four axes: state electoral norms, customary deliberation, customary authority, and socio-cultural legitimation. Each school of thought foregrounds a different axis while treating the others as background, and the mismatch between four axes and three lenses is analytically meaningful rather than an inconsistency. The broader significance extends beyond resolving a localized Indonesian controversy, positioning the noken system as fertile ground for the comparative analysis of democratic pluralism in pluralistic societies worldwide.

Subject of Research: A systematic review of the scholarly debate on Papua's noken electoral system, mapping three competing interpretations of the customary collective voting practice recognized by Indonesia's Constitutional Court in 2009.

Article Title: Procedural democracy versus customary deliberation: the scholarly debate on Papua’s noken electoral system

Article References: Miram, E., Sukri, Ariana, Ekawaty, D., Kembara, J. S., & Ismail, A. (2026). Procedural democracy versus customary deliberation: the scholarly debate on Papua’s noken electoral system. Frontiers in Political Science, 8, Article 1893764. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2026.1893764

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2026.1893764

Keywords: noken, Papua, Indonesia, electoral system, deliberative democracy, legal pluralism, indigenous voting, Constitutional Court, musyawarah, one person one vote, customary law, democratic theory

The study, published in Discover Global Society, rests on a deliberately conditional argument. Local knowledge, the authors contend, does not inherently become tourism value; a tourism activity is not inherently a social innovation; and social innovation does not necessarily produce inclusive development. Each step requires something extra. Knowledge must be translated with community authorization, translation must reorganize relationships and capabilities to count as innovation, and innovation must be institutionalized under community control before its benefits can be called inclusive. In Kampung Yoboi, the researchers found strong evidence for the first two steps and only partial evidence for the third.

The raw material is distinctive. Sago, the starchy staple of Papuan communities, functions simultaneously as food, livelihood, ecological system, cultural identity, and intergenerational knowledge. In Kampung Yoboi it has been reinterpreted as a tourism experience through guided sago-forest tracking, traditional food preparation, storytelling, and the sago grub festival. A tourism manager told the researchers that sago is not merely food but the community’s identity, a medium through which visitors can learn about the culture, environment, and way of life around Lake Sentani. The floating settlement itself, with its colorful docks and painted houses, has been reframed as the destination rather than a backdrop to separately constructed attractions.

Methodologically, the study is an interpretive qualitative case study. The team used purposive, criterion-based sampling to assemble informants across seven categories: one community leader, four members of the Tourism Awareness Group known as Pokdarwis, one tourism manager, five residents involved in tourism, four local knowledge holders, five visitors, and four village-level institutional actors. Semi-structured interviews lasting forty-five to sixty minutes were audio-recorded with consent, transcribed, and analyzed thematically in NVivo 12, combining deductive codes drawn from social innovation theory with inductive codes that surfaced unanticipated issues such as dependence on individuals and damaged facilities. Triangulation across participant groups, field observations, and documentary sources strengthened the analysis, and an audit trail preserved interpretive decisions.

The findings show that tourism value in Kampung Yoboi is co-created rather than manufactured. A community leader explained that the village becomes attractive because what visitors see comes from local life itself, from the lake, the houses on water, and the way people live with sago and nature. Ordinary infrastructure doubles as tourism infrastructure: bridges are both daily pathways and visitor routes, and household practices such as craft production and food preparation become small-scale income opportunities. This supports value co-creation theory, in which tourism value emerges from interactions among residents, knowledge holders, visitors, and the material environment rather than from managers alone.

Yet the translation process remains fragile. Much of the community’s knowledge about sago, customs, and lake life is transmitted orally and resides with individual elders. One local knowledge holder noted that many stories still need to be written down and introduced more clearly to visitors and younger generations. Without community-controlled documentation, the researchers warn, tourism development could fragment or erode the very knowledge it celebrates. The study treats documentation not as a technical fix but as a political question: who decides what is recorded, who is authorized to share it, and how customary authority is preserved when cultural content circulates to outsiders.

The social innovation dimension emerges through what the authors call relational recombination. Elders contribute cultural interpretation; households supply food, crafts, and hospitality; Pokdarwis members and the tourism manager coordinate activities; visitors provide feedback and recognition; and village institutions shape legitimacy and resources. Training sessions and community forums allow residents to discuss visitor suggestions and improve management skills. A Pokdarwis member described how villagers support tourism in different ways, some making crafts, some preparing food, and others beautifying the village. Innovation here is not technological novelty but the reorganization of roles, relationships, and collective capabilities in response to locally defined needs.

However, the researchers draw a sharp line between emergent and institutionalized innovation. Kampung Yoboi’s creativity is relationally rich but institutionally weak. Roles and responsibilities have not been fully formalized, tourism is not consistently integrated into village planning and budgeting, and activities depend on a small group of motivated individuals. A tourism manager observed that the ideas already exist but must be managed collectively so tourism does not depend on a few people and instead becomes a shared responsibility of the whole village. Youth involvement in digital promotion and oral history documentation is promising but remains peripheral to formal decision-making.

Inclusion, the study’s most demanding criterion, is emerging but incomplete. Recognitional inclusion is the strongest dimension: tourism visibly affirms sago culture, floating settlement identity, and lake-based livelihoods, and the village’s national recognition, including a place among the top fifty villages in the 2021 Anugerah Desa Wisata Indonesia and finalist status in the 2025 Wonderful Indonesia Award, has reinforced community pride. Economic opportunities exist through food, crafts, and hospitality, but they remain small-scale and unevenly accessible. Procedural and distributive inclusion lag behind, because evidence on who controls priorities, who receives the largest benefits, and how women, youth, and less-connected households participate is limited. Visibility of Indigenous culture, the authors stress, is not the same as inclusion when communities lack authority over representation and development priorities.

Material constraints compound the governance gap. Limited village funding restricts the maintenance of bridges, toilets, sanitation systems, and public spaces, and poor sanitation threatens both visitor comfort and the environmental quality of Lake Sentani. Human resource limitations affect guiding, interpretation, digital promotion, and safety management, while existing training is too occasional to build a continuous capacity system. These constraints reinforce one another: weak institutional recognition limits funding, inadequate facilities reduce visitor satisfaction, limited skills weaken service quality, and reliance on a few individuals threatens continuity. The central problem, the researchers conclude, is not a shortage of creativity but the absence of stable governance, financing, maintenance, and capacity-building arrangements.

The study’s theoretical contribution is a conditional pathway with clear policy implications. Local knowledge contributes to inclusive community-based tourism through community-authorized translation, relational recombination, and community-controlled institutionalization. The authors recommend integrating tourism into village planning and accountable budgeting, treating bridges, sanitation, and public facilities as shared community and visitor infrastructure, establishing representative coordination among village governments, customary leaders, Pokdarwis, knowledge holders, households, women, and youth, and making benefit distribution transparent. Institutionalization, they caution, should not mean imposing external bureaucratic models that displace Indigenous institutions, but rather formalizing rules and roles while the community retains cultural authority.

The limitations are acknowledged candidly. A single-case, interpretive design with twenty-four informants cannot establish statistical representativeness or causal effects, demographic data were too incomplete for subgroup analysis, and the absence of longitudinal data prevents assessment of whether current initiatives endure. Visitor statistics are also patchy; available records indicate roughly 1,852 visitors during 2021 to 2022, but comprehensive seasonal series do not exist. Future research, the team suggests, should compare Indigenous lake-based tourism cases, track governance and benefit distribution over time, and test whether the proposed pathway holds under different customary, ecological, and institutional conditions.

For a village of floating houses on a Papuan lake, the stakes extend well beyond tourism. Kampung Yoboi demonstrates that communities can convert inherited ecological knowledge into experiences that visitors genuinely value, and that this conversion can strengthen identity, pride, and learning. But the research also delivers a caution to policymakers and destination marketers everywhere: participation is not empowerment, visibility is not inclusion, and creativity without institutional foundations risks evaporating when its few champions step away. The pathway from knowledge to inclusive development, the study shows, must be built deliberately, governed locally, and maintained continuously, one bridge, one budget, and one documented story at a time.

Subject of Research: Local knowledge and social innovation in inclusive community-based tourism in an Indigenous lake settlement in Papua, Indonesia

Article Title: Local knowledge and social innovation for inclusive community based tourism in Kampung Yoboi, Papua, Indonesia

Article References: Risamasu, F., Srem, A. I. A., Wabe, T. G., Manaqib, I. W., Amandaria, R., Azkar, R., Darma, R., & Ardiansyah, M. F. P. (2026). Local knowledge and social innovation for inclusive community based tourism in Kampung Yoboi, Papua, Indonesia. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00627-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00627-9

Keywords: community-based tourism, Indigenous tourism, social innovation, local knowledge, sago, Lake Sentani, Papua, inclusive development, value co-creation, participatory governance, cultural sustainability, Indonesia