Do you reckon the Chnese are wringing their hands over how Australians are going to fare as they ramp up their interests in our country ?

It's globalisation , deal with it.

Good article i agree with pretty much everything said, maybe not the SAPNG model though, the rough concept is good but the exclusivity bit is not.

I really think people should think and do more research on where their money is going and put pressure on resorts and charter boats to give back to the places they sell.

Speaking of Chinese Blowin, the other day I was watching a bus load of asian tourist scramble off there bus with their Asian guide as they entered a local Aussie tourist attraction, i was thinking how they come to Australia they see Australia but in a sense they don't really experience Australia, more just view it from the outside kind of like a zoo.

Then it hit me the Mentawai type charter boat/resort tourism model is exactly the same.

Generally Asian (mostly Chinese/Korean/Japanese), buy a package in their country, arrive in Australia get picked up by their guide who is of their native country, get shuttled to stop to stop in buses getting shown what their guide decides they should see or shopping at specially designed shops just for them, most likely owned by a company of their country,even getting feed a lot of the food they would eat at home, it's like a Chinese/Korean/Japanese bubble within Australia they even often get charged at ridiculous inflated prices but don't think anything of it because to them its cheap.

Now look at the Mentawai charter boat/resort model, its almost a carbon copy.
Generally Westerners (mostly Aussies/Americans/Europeans/brazilians), buy a package in their country, arrive in Indonesia get picked up by their guide who is often a westerner, get shuttled to western type hotel, then either to resort or charter boat, then taken surf spot to surf spot generally where their guide decides they should surf maybe the odd novelty village stop, again the food is often very western, and the resort or charter boat generally owned by a western again its like a western bubble inside Indonesia even the prices are ridiculous in an Indonesian sense, but seem fair to us as we compare it what we know, how much a hotel cost here a meal etc.

It's the same Indo - did you read about the $2B Chinese theme park planned for the central coast NSW ?

To be fair, I read this article straight after a story about how WA government and WA real estate mobs are in Asia trying to flog Perth real estate to the Chinese to prop up the housing industry.

To consider the plight of the Ments culture after reading about the proposed and ongoing destruction of our own didn't really flame the old sympathy up too hard.

Why should Ments people be exempt from globalisation ?

Tarzan - we are on the same side, two wrongs don't make a right, Indo should be owned by Indonesians.

I have Indonesians offering me land and opportunities most weeks and i always tell them how lucky they are that I can't truly buy their land.

PS - Blowrag ??? That's a bit of a D grade attempt isn't it ?

I have been to Indonesia ('Indo' = ?) 6 or 7 times, and until recently have been a typical FIFO surfer and had not learnt a single word of bahasa Indonesia (btw 'bahasa' by itself doesn't mean Indonesian, it only means 'language'). I can't fully explain why, but I have recently completed 2 CAE learning Indonesian language courses, and on my last trip spent some extra time in Medan by myself trying to get around using my new language skill (which is still pretty rubbish, unpracticed and uninformed, but better than grunting or speaking English louder and slower in the hope that that will make it more understandable).

Later this year I am going to spend a week at one of the Aussie-created and sponsored Mentawai Foundation centres, helping the Foundation with some of their work with the local kids (hopefully helping with swimming lessons for example), with maybe some surfing thrown in (and of course with a proper surf trip before / after the week).

I am no saint, but I just reckon I should go to the effort to put something back, and get a better feel and understanding for how our close neighbours live. We are way too selfish in our lucky land.

What are you going to do to become a better neighbour? Global can be local.

Stuart, as per your FB post "What visiting surfers do now will decide the fate of the future", there is surely only one option here to set things straight in the ments: Send in the Mad Hueys.

They'll establish the norms regarding dropping in, jetski step offs, aggression in the lineup, drinking bintang while getting barrelled: all the important things that developing cultures need.

Surely the Hueys have the right idea - you gotta take as much as you possibly can for yourself before anyone rises up and wants to 'share it' with you. Sharing is for suckers AMIRITE?

**mic drop**

Co founder of the Hueys GG!
Or a marketing ploy?
Uuuummmm

Udo what do you reckon?

;)

Interesting article. There's no doubt that globalisation is an unstoppable force, with the far reaches of Mentawai included. Anywhere a satellite dish can be erected on a thatched hut will inevitably broadcast the advertising dreams and soap opera lifestyles that continually belie the damage 'development' and 'progress' causes.

That's the difference between Australia and Mentawai. We are (comparatively) highly educated in a global context, many of us have a healthy skepticism, and can learn from what we've stuffed up in the past.

The Mentawai people's education is different - way more connected to the local land and ocean, but perhaps lacking the broader picture (because they are so inherently isolated from the rest of the world), and also because development is only in it's infancy there. And then they have to deal with some of the most backward corruption to be found in Indo.

That's why Rob's point is totally valid - we each take responsibility for our own actions and who we choose to support over there - there's nothing contentious about that - everything starts with self.

Spending time on the islands as opposed to FIFO boats, I was able to see a little of their culture and way of life. But the question is what do we know what the Mentawians want ? Are we making comments on what we want or what we reckon is the best for them ?
After what's happened and witnessed over many years in Bali, I would guess it maybe much the same.

True that On the road, although it's not the Mentawai people that will stuff up things they don't have the money to do that and most just have to keep living life as they do, its the Mentawai government that will allow it to happen as are happy to have development and wold care if the Mentawai's became another Bali.

But it's generally foreign owned companies that do know better but many of which just want a piece of the Mentawai pie and many of which don't care about the impact of things and giving back but only care about profit.

That's why as surfers we have responsibility to put pressure on these operations not to stuff up things and lift their game.

Even simple things like employing locals, many resorts only employee Mentawai locals for very basic jobs like housekeeping and gardening, while the top rung jobs are taken by more educated staff from Padang and even Jakarta, i know this first hand as worked at a large Mentawai resort (Which i won't name)

It would be great if we surfers could influence the future development of this place. Sure we can try and I am sure most will. But I can't forget the time when first going to Bali and experiencing its richness in art, food and culture. Then trying to help them directly with providing clothes - specifically denim at the time. Then my good mate, Madi, wants my shirt and plast silver stars all over to look like a Ryan stone cowboy. He wanted western goods and life style whilst we were happy to be consumed by the Bali culture.

No doubt Rob Henry has good motives in what he proposes here, and also no doubt in the short-term some good could potentially come of it. I wish those of us that had the luck to have been in Indonesia in the early 70s had recognized these issues, although whether anything practical could have been done to alter the development trajectory of Bali and other places remains an open question. Perhaps the Bukit could have been protected somehow? I know from personal experience that the government of Bali is well aware of the over-development issues, pollution, crowding and unsustainability of the present situation there, but are struggling, with the aid of NGOs, to do much more than develop advertising campaigns to 'green Bali', in the face of the relentless pressures. Surfers are only a small part of this of course, yet there are many millions of us today, and there's no sign of a slow-down in starters any time soon. For the Mentawai, and other once remote surf meccas, while our civilization provides cheap airfares, and entrepreneurial types in the surf industry spot a buck to be made, surfers will continue to flock to those islands, and associated development there will continue apace - analogous, in terms of its impacts, to a growing tsunami of change sweeping over those islands. But in the longer term, as the positive feedbacks of our fossil-fueled lifestyle on the climate system really kick in (albedo loss, permafrost melt, ice gas release off continental shelves among others), sea level will continue to rise, corals and the reefs they build will continue to degrade, and the global changes in weight distribution from the melting ice shelves may contribute to further destabilization of the tectonic plate boundaries. The waves there and in most other parts of the world will of course be radically affected, as indeed occurred on Nias and elsewhere during the earthquakes of the mid 2000s. Some may actually be improved, at least in the short-term, but most, I would argue, will not. This will take many decades to centuries to play out, but most if not all of it is an inevitable result of our collective lifestyle choices, and is a clear example of the unsustainability and short-termism of our behaviour. Surfers are among the more selfish in all these regards, and I include myself in this category, with our very heavy carbon footprints from equipment and travel. And like other relatively 'poor, undeveloped' peoples, at least in our deeply flawed western economic way of thinking, those people on the Mentawai will experience the brunt of these changes. So is there a moral to this story? I'll leave it to you to work that out.

TB, mine's still considerable, although a lot less so than the 'leaders' of our sport / lifestyle (whatever you want to call it) with their 100s of boards and many thousands of travel miles. I made the decision not to travel for surf holidays some years ago. There are several morals. One is simply to consider the apparent hypocrisy of 'trying to help' people when our very presence there, and the means we use to get there, is effectively consigning them, or their descendants, to a radically altered world. Another is the lack of accountability in terms of the economics of such travel and lifestyle choices in terms of their real costs to the biosphere, including the very thing we so desperately chase, the waves themselves. On the local scale, how many of the boats there store all their wastes and dispose of them appropriately? How much damage have their anchors done to the reefs there? How much of these kinds of impact have the land camps had? As Blowin said at the beginning - it's globalization, but we each have choices.

When in Indo I stay with a local Mentawaiian legend. He has a PhD in arthropology and has studied the mentawaiian extensively (and being 1, very familiar with the culture). We are working with him to hopefully start a store / cafe along the pitstop stretch with good aussie coffee. His accomodation is a traditionally mentawaiian hut which can accommodate up to 10ppl. For $100 (AUD) per day you get a driver (fuel included), cooks/food. It is SIC!! Have lost his contact but will post soon!
It doesn't get much better than this dude in terms of supporting the locals. His place is on the east side of the island where kanduis is. about 4min walk from baby kanduis. Cant believe anyone would say fuck the Mentawais because Australia is being taken over by the Chinese - that seems like a reason for empathy.

TB, as you may have already discovered, there's a heap of analysis of surfing's significant carbon footprint, and pro surfing in particular, on the web. To the point that some contests are trying to 'offset' this by buying into various schemes. Agreed re SurfAid, and as I said at the beginning Rob Henry's ideas may help in the short-term. But we as surfers are driving all sorts of changes on those islands, locally as mentioned with pollution issues and the inevitable shifts in traditional lifestyles and cultures, and globally, as major individual consumers of fossil fuels.

Great article, important issue, well written Ken. I too have done 4 x FIFO tours to the Ments, been stoked on the place, but noticed the disconnect between we on the boat and them on the land. Each boat trip costs $5k of coin from door to door, but too little of that coin is shared with the local Ments people.

Perhaps an existing model to mirror is Supply Nation, which links certified Indigenous business with mainstream Australia (see www.supplynation.org.au). Australian Government has backed that organisation with the Indigenous Procurement Policy, meaning by 2020 at least 3% of the $59,000,000,000 p/a in government contracts is spread between Indigenous owned and controlled businesses (see more at https://www.dpmc.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/publication/factsheet-indigen... ) .Statistics show, Aboriginal businesses are100 times more likely to employ an Aboriginal person. The goal is more Indigenous jobs, greater business experience and capacity as well as serious and lasting social change.

For local Ments people to be empowered - they need to have ownership and control of local Ments businesses. Interesting, that T-diddy mentioned a mate up in the Ments with a business, but didn’t have the contact details. If Suku Mentawai functioned like Supply Nation, then those links would be on the Suku website, and then everybody would have a reference point when they make their purchasing decisions.

I'm hearing you Andrew P.

It's not really on with touring surfers just breezing through and not benefitting the locals financially.

That's why you'll often find me hanging around the Byron Main Street hitting up the Euro backpackers for coin.

Usually just $5 for " bus fare "

( burp !!!)

From T-diddys comment above.

"most are not from the ments though but from the mainland"

Which is pretty common, i don't know why some organisation doesn't start a basic training program in places like Pei Pei village area for playground area and Tua Pajet for Telescopes area etc, teaching younger people english and teaching them about the needs and running of resorts, so in the future they can be employed.

Even if they enter at a basic skill level such as house keeping, gardener, Kitchen hand, then work up to roles with more responsibility such as boat driver, surf guide (more responsibility because safety issues), bar man/maid then onto areas that require more skill like administration etc

There needs to be a transition to ultimately employee Mentawai people in both resorts and charter boats.

I haven't heard of such a program?

Is it happening?

It's not just about teaching skills and english, its about teaching and understanding of what tourist expect, standards like service and cleanliness etc and even why tourist/surfers come to Mentawai's as we take this for granted but these people often do not understand this.

IMO there is so much more that can be done to not dictate but to gently guide and help the locals to be able to get more involved in the industry or at least future generations.

BTW Rob i know your reading, would love to hear more of your take on some of these comments :D

Hope to Fuck this Mentawaii resort by Sentosa on Siberut dont get the go Ahead !

Got back from the Mentawaiis a week ago. Had a good time/got good waves blah blah blah but definitely the last time I'll visit the area. The place is now crawling with people from all over the planet and new camps/tourism operators are springing up like mushrooms.

I really hope the unique natural environment and local people can ride out the human tsunami without too many downsides but probably not. The corrupt, untrustworthy Indonesian government (at all levels) will make sure of that.