“We, the research team, express our deepest gratitude to the Sawang people, especially to Ki’ Awang, whose lifelong devotion has safeguarded the coastal and marine environment.” – Arry Aditsya Yoga | Researcher in International Law, Ecopolitology, and Anthropology.
The global climate crisis today is no longer merely a matter of rising average global temperatures; it is a civilizational crisis that calls into question the very foundations of the human relationship with nature. Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that global surface temperatures have increased by approximately 1.1°C since the pre-industrial era, while more than 90% of the excess heat caused by global warming has been absorbed by the oceans. The sea, long perceived as an unlimited space, has in fact become the quietest archive of the accumulated ontological errors of modern humanity. It is within this context that translating the story of Ki’ Awang, an Indigenous elder of the Sawang people, acquires philosophical significance that transcends the locality of Belitong, for it speaks of another way of being in the world—being otherwise in the world.
Modern Western philosophy, since René Descartes, has constructed a sharp dichotomy between subject and object, humans and nature. Nature is reduced to res extensa, an inert entity that can be measured, calculated, and exploited. Critiques of this paradigm have long been voiced, from Martin Heidegger, who described modernity as the age of enframing (Gestell), to Hans Jonas, who warned of the ethical crisis embedded in modern technology. Ki’ Awang’s narrative stands outside this framework; the sea is never understood as an object, but rather as a living field of ethical relations.
Based on a three-hour interview with Ki’ Awang, he recounts his childhood as a gatherer of marine life, a subsistence practice common in coastal communities. Qualitative data from various maritime ethnographic studies in Southeast Asia show that traditional practices of harvesting sea cucumbers, for example, were carried out with high selectivity and seasonal pauses, in stark contrast to post-1970s industrial exploitation. Ki’ Awang explains that during his many dives to depths of dozens of meters, encounters with large sharks were recurrent experiences, yet never resulted in attacks, because sharks and many other animals are regarded as “relatives” or ancestral spirits who must be respected.
This belief aligns with anthropological findings on maritime totemism in various coastal societies, from Melanesia to Southeast Asia. Philippe Descola categorizes such systems as animistic ontologies, in which humans and non-humans share interiority, despite having different bodies. Environmental anthropology explains that respect for sharks can be understood as a cosmology-based mechanism of ecological regulation. Research on traditional ecological knowledge shows that areas that continue to practice customary prohibitions on certain species tend to have higher levels of biodiversity.
Quantitatively, customary marine territories in various parts of the world have been shown to possess fish biomass up to twice that of open-access marine areas without community management. Although specific data for Belitong remain limited, this global pattern provides scientific context for Sawang practices. Socio-cultural psychology helps explain how beliefs in large animals as “relatives” or ancestral spirits shape collective behavior. The theory of internalized norms shows that norms embedded in identity and cosmology are more effective in regulating long-term behavior than external regulation—a process Pierre Bourdieu describes as the formation of an ecological habitus.
Climate change is now disrupting these systems of relationship. Oceanographic data indicate rising sea temperatures and changing currents in Southeast Asian waters, affecting the migration of marine species, including sharks. In this context, Ki’ Awang’s knowledge is not only retrospective but also prospective. It preserves intergenerational ecological memory that can help interpret changes in the sea over long time scales—something often lost in short-term, data-driven climate models.
Debates arise when Indigenous knowledge is confronted with modern science. Some scientists position local knowledge as complementary to scientific data, while decolonial thinkers such as Arturo Escobar and Walter Mignolo argue that Indigenous knowledge possesses its own epistemology and cannot be reduced to mere variables. Ki’ Awang’s narrative, in this sense, is not “raw data,” but a living theory of the human–sea relationship. The Muang Jong ritual, practiced by the Sawang people, can be read as a symbolic response to ecological uncertainty. Victor Turner described ritual as a liminal space where societies renegotiate meaning and order. In the context of climate change, this ritual functions as a collective mechanism for confronting ecological anxiety, building solidarity, and renewing ethical commitments to the sea.
Contemporary environmental ethics, particularly the posthumanist approach developed by Donna Haraway, invites humans to “make kin” with other species. What is theoretically debated in global academia has long been practiced by societies such as the Sawang. Sharks, in their cosmology, are kin, not resources. Quantitatively, the global marine crisis is marked by a decline of apex predator populations by more than 70% in some regions of the world due to overfishing. In this situation, customary ethics that prohibit the killing of sharks gain concrete ecological relevance. They are not merely beliefs, but sustainability strategies born of long experience living alongside the sea.
Ki’ Awang’s story shows that sustainability does not always arise from policy or technology, but from how humans understand their position in the cosmos. As Tim Ingold emphasizes, life is a continuously moving web of relationships, not a closed system that can be fully controlled. In facing climate change, the most important lesson may not be how to dominate nature, but how to relearn how to live together with it.
Corresponding Author: Arry Aditsya Yoga | Researcher in International Law, Ecopolitology, and Anthropology.