ORDINARY PEOPLE. EXTRAORDINARY IMPACT.
Delima Silalahi led a campaign to secure legal stewardship of 17,824 acres of tropical forest land for six Indigenous communities in North Sumatra. Her community’s activism reclaimed this territory from a pulp and paper company that had partially converted it into a monoculture, non-native, industrial eucalyptus plantation.
By organizing hundreds of local villagers to peacefully occupy marble mining sites in weaving protests, Aleta Baun stopped the destruction of sacred forestland on Mutis Mountain on the island of Timor.
Prigi Arisandi initiated a local movement to stop industrial pollution from flowing into Surabaya’s river that provides drinking water to 3 million people.
Yuyun Ismawati implemented sustainable community-based waste and sanitation management programs that provide employment opportunities to low-income people and empower them to improve the environment in Indonesia.
Paramount Chief of the Bentian Tribal Council in East Kalimantan, Loir Botor Dingit led rattan farmers in sustainable forest management, a campaign that generated national attention and won government support for forest dwellers’ rights.
A biologist by training, Rudi Putra led communities in dismantling illegal palm oil plantations that are causing massive deforestation in northern Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, protecting the habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran rhino.
Mama Yosepha Alomang organized resistance to the world’s largest gold mining operation. Despite inhumane confinement and torture, she continued to promote traditional cultures, collective action and the well-being of indigenous peoples.
