PHKom Wologai: Preserving Traditions and Recovering Local Seeds

The daily management of the Wologai community (PHKom) is one of the areas of organizing WOMEN AMAN whose members are spread across Wologai Village, Central Wologai, and East Wologai, Detusoko District, Ende Regency. PHKom was formed on the initiative of Wologai Indigenous Women who consciously needed a forum to tell stories, discuss, exchange ideas, and find solutions to problems faced in the village collectively. The number of members is 31 people. Wologai Indigenous Women have for years made their customary territory a source of livelihood through planting coffee, cloves, candlenuts, vanilla and various local food crops such as local rice, local corn, sorghum, millet, sweet potatoes, nuts, and local vegetables.

In cultivating their agricultural land, Indigenous Women possess knowledge that prioritizes environmentally friendly traditional agricultural practices that have been passed down through generations. This has been key to the success of Wologai Indigenous Women and their families in ensuring their survival for hundreds of years. However, these traditional practices are threatened with extinction due to the threat of modern agricultural practices that use chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as well as modern seeds and agricultural production facilities that at first glance facilitate and increase community agricultural production. In the long term, this practice can damage soil fertility, reduce the availability of local food seeds, and even threaten the loss of Indigenous Women's knowledge that has been passed down by their ancestors since ancient times.

Recognizing this condition, Indigenous Women and the younger generation who are members of PHKom Wologai agreed to document knowledge through training, interviews and recording all information from Indigenous Leaders and Indigenous Women regarding the traditions of cultivating their agricultural land, restoring local seeds through collective gardens and increasing community capacity regarding the management of customary areas based on the traditions and knowledge of Indigenous Women.

The impact is that 80 Indigenous Women have acquired knowledge about the tradition of managing customary territories and living spaces, how to utilize and manage land and water, how to utilize plants/vegetation and animals for traditional food, traditional healing methods, sacred places, rituals, types of plants/vegetation and animals that are protected and/or considered sacred, traditional medicine, traditional food and traditional skills. Indigenous Women have also succeeded in restoring local food in a 2-hectare collective garden to grow peanuts, brenebon beans, sorghum, jali-jali, sweet potatoes, local corn and local vegetables. The program has an impact on the entire population of Wologai Village covering an area of ​​2032,4 hectares, 731 men, 819 women, 537 young people.