The Dutch East Indies Connection

courtesy of KITLV, circa 1910

When I started this blog in 2005 I was inspired by my journey back to my birth country - Holland. This was almost 18 years after my trip to my ancestral land in 1987 - Indonesia.

Things are accelerating now and with the help of social media the dots are connecting. American Indos are looking for relatives in Indonesia, Indonesian Indos are looking for relatives in America or Holland and Dutch Indos are looking for American relatives and it's all over the map. The world is getting smaller and smaller as we find branches of family long lost and forgotten over time. It's like a big tree with all kinds of branches and twigs going in different directions but the trunk is holding it all together. Well, the Dutch East Indies is the trunk.

Our non-Indo brothers and sisters are also searching for their ancestral connections in the Dutch East Indies. They have old documents, photos, family stories and are on the same path of finding out about their family's history. We are fascinated by Tempoe Doeloe - The Good Ol' Days. Living in the jungle, clearing out land for plantations, meddling in medicinal herbs and native superstition, engaged in a European upbringing and education yet climbing trees and swimming in the rivers and catching fireflies barefoot. We want to know what it was like growing up in the tropics.

A lot of this has also to do with searching for a cultural identity. When one's history is so complex and exotic and almost other-worldly it becomes a source of confusion and pride at the same time. I always like to use the analogy of the British in India and how they produced Anglo-Indians; the Dutch in Indonesia produced Dutch-Indonesians.

We also want to know about the dark days. The lost paradise.

My Heritage

My interest in my heritage is something that has evolved over time. I suspect it is also a process of maturation. In the early years it was all about me, but it was also a lot about assimilation. To immigrate to a new country for the transitional generation it is almost a process of denying one's roots. You're in the thrust of adaptation and you want so much to blend in and belong that you put your heritage on the back shelf. As I became an adult and particularly after my parents passed away, I realize that all those values and wisdom and lessons taught to me came from "the old country" so to speak - from another era, from my roots. I pity those who were not guided by parents. It is that parental guidance that stays with a person for a lifetime.

My heritage is a badge of honor. When asked what my background is, it becomes a lesson in history. It is so complex and so alien that I grapple to illustrate an element that they can connect with. Sometimes I explain the parallels to the British in India and the Anglo-Indians. Some examples of Eurasians are: Burghers of Sri Lanka (British-Sri Lankans), Bui Doi (French-Vietnamese), Anglo-Burmese (English-Burma), Filipino Mestizo (European-Phillipino). And it's ever evolving as more mixed marriages occur in this ever global society.

I always like to think that Indos (Dutch-Indonesians) are the quintessential prototype to diversity and multiculturism, but in fact we are not. It's just that we can identify our beginnings back 350 years when the Portuguese Maritime Explorers landed on the shores of the Spice Islands and went on from there to the Dutch.