Making food: exploring the indigenous resilience strategy of the Bima communities in west Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper explores collective food practices by indigenous communities in the underrepresented indigenous locations in Indonesia and how they shape the living space to create resilience strategies. There has been a wide range of discussions about the spatiality of food and using food as a method in urban and architectural discourse. However, more discussions need to be on how such a topic has been deployed in a vernacular setting. It is argued that discussion on collective food practices by indigenous communities will bring attention and a new approach to connect domestic space, shared space, and the broader discussion of a productive landscape and create a resilient community. This research investigates food practices and spatial structures in the indigenous community in Bima, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The villages of Mbawa, Sambori, and Maria become part of the case study, as they have a distinctive way of making food and living arrangements, selfsustaining despite the arid landscape. Through field observations and interviews, this paper attempts to capture the presence of food on the indigenous landscape, focusing on how indigenous communities produce and process it spatially and temporally. By mapping the community practices in processing food and its corresponding structures, three indigenous strategies that the Bima people have developed can be identified: caring for the landscape, constructing a collective structure, and internal ordering of the food system. The strategies extend the food practice beyond household units, connecting domestic with the broader landscape. It also shows how the strategies incorporate the physical features of traditional aspects and the traditions and transmitted values. This paper contributes to expanding the discussion of food as a cultural practice within vernacular architectural discourse through the practice of indigenous communities. Unfolding the complexities in making food and the spaces connected with the local vernacular traditions and rituals would guide our perspective in seeing how such practices carry meaning and enable local resilience among scarce resources