Some people are more receptive to the company’s entreaties. Mando’s cousin, Marzuki, applied for a job with GKP, selling his 1,200 clove and cashew trees for a total of 987 million rupiah ($70,550). Fully grown, the trees could probably produce around 100 million rupiah ($7,150) worth of produce per year, local farmers say. Marzuki says the only reason he would protest is if the company hired foreign laborers.

“It’s better than waiting for the money to come later,” the 32-year-old says outside a family shop in Roko-Roko. “They promised to repair the land and return it when they’re done.”

Whether villagers want to deal with the company may be a moot point. Bambang Murtiyoso, GKP’s operational director, says the land in its concession belongs to the state, even if locals have been farming it.

“That’s national forest in Wawonii, so residents there don’t have the right to trade land, they [can] only sell the plants on it,” Murtiyoso said over the phone. He acknowledged that his workers had erred in breaching Marwah’s land, while insisting that GKP was operating legally.

The presence of the company, locals say, has driven a wedge among community members. GKP has hired some villagers to work in public relations, which entails persuading their neighbors to accept cash payments in return for their land. Others, like the men who showed up on Marwah’s land, have taken field jobs with the firm.

These days, if Marwah sees supporters of the mining firms around Roko-Roko, she’s too angry to greet them.

“It’s like a war among brothers,” says a man named Dani, an anti-mining activist who lives in the village of Masolo, not far from Roko-Roko. Some of his neighbors have also given up their land to GKP. “It’s splitting apart the village.”

On his first night back in Roko-Roko, Mando sat together with 20 men, including his father, who had vowed to oppose the mining.

“Last time, the situation created us, and we weren’t ready,” Mando said of the protests in March, as male heads of families sat and smoked. “The next time, we have to be the ones to create the situation, and we can control it.”

Mando is reserved, soft-spoken and young, but there is no shortage of respect for the role he has played in organizing the grassroots.

Early this year in Kendari, he helped secure the necessary permits to protest from the police. During the demonstrations, he often read their demands through a megaphone, even facing down the deputy governor flanked by anti-riot police.

That’s not to say the movement has a clear hierarchy. It rose organically, locals say, without the help of big NGOs.

“At first there was no one instructing, and no one being instructed,” Abaruddin, Marwah’s husband, said of the initial protests.

That night at the meeting, the villagers decided they would need to take a more systematic approach. They decided to form an organization, ambitiously calling themselves the National Farmers Union. It was less a practical coalition than a symbolic agreement to dig in their heels against the mining firms.

Over the next few days, Mando visited two more villages whose inhabitants had sailed to Kendari for the protests in March. In each place, they agreed to prioritize data collection: How many people supported the mine? How many had already sold land? How much land is left?

When Mando arrived in one village, a gaggle of students was parading around with megaphones, reminding residents they didn’t have to sell their land. It was the fifth group of activists Mando had encountered.

“We keep making separate fronts, but we get confused, so we need to unify somehow,” Mando said at meeting in Lampeapi village, two hours north of Roko-Roko.

Poor infrastructure has raised the difficulty level. Wawonii’s bumpy roads become impassable when it rains. Weak cellphone reception limits contact between villages. In July, plans for a demonstration in Roko-Roko fell through because it couldn’t be organized in time.

After Governor Ali promised to revoke the permits in March, GKP brought 4G internet service to Roko-Roko, the first village to receive internet in southern Wawonii. Mando let out a chuckle knowing he’s using the network to organize against its patron.

A legal solution?

Opposition to the mining is mainly driven by environmental fears.

Farther east, on the island of Obi in North Maluku province, for example, fishers and farmers have accused another nickel-mining Harita Group subsidiary of polluting coastal waters. The provincial attorney’s office has investigated.

Harita Group corporate communications manager Roliya Helana did not respond to requests for comment.

Wawonii residents fear a similar fate. If mining pollutes the sea, tuna fishers may need to venture into deeper waters. Edible sea snails, now plentiful, may disappear. The island’s lush rainforests, which provide the residents with clean water, could also be threatened.

“The impact on the environment will be substantial,” Mando says. “We live on the fresh water from the mountains. If the rivers are contaminated, where will we get our water?”

Jakarta, though, wants to drastically increase nickel production. Thomas Lembong, the head of the national investment agency, recently said the country’s nickel-related industries could surpass the value of palm oil, of which Indonesia is the world’s biggest producer, in the next 10 or 15 years.

The Southeast Asian nation has some of the world’s richest deposits of high-grade nickel sold into the steel and electric vehicle battery industries. Much of the recent growth in its nickel market is related to demand for electric vehicles elsewhere in the world.

“Electric vehicles are good for the environment, but [they’re available] only to those who have money,” Mando says.

Mando has been in contact with Melky Nahar, head of campaigns at the Mining Advocacy Network, or Jatam, a national NGO. Melky has advised the Wawonii activists to make enough noise that officials in Jakarta can’t ignore them.

“[Wawonii citizens] need to ensure that the land owned by residents who aren’t in the concession area or who suddenly are put in the concession area without their approval isn’t destroyed by mining activities,” Melky told Mongabay. “The people must stand guard as landowners and the masses. That will force the government to choose a side.”

Just catching the attention of the district government has been a struggle. Amrullah, the head of Wawonii district, has refused to comment on the mining since March and didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

“We have no idea what the government is doing now,” Henara Gama, a resident, said at one of the gatherings in Wawonii. “We’re neglected and alone in this.”

The best way to resolve the conflict might be through a lawsuit, says Henri Subagiyo, executive director of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law.

In 2016, the Supreme Court invalided the permit of an iron-ore mining company on Bangka Island in North Sulawesi province after residents sued, culminating years of protests by locals.

In Wawonii, some residents accuse GKP of failing to consult locals about its mining plans as part of the environmental impact assessment process, as required.

“The permits will continue until they are cancelled, or until they are brought to court and told to stop,” Henri said at his office in Jakarta. “As far as I know, Southeast Sulawesi has a lot of problems with mining, but no one has brought the problems to court.”

On Aug. 26, Governor Ali told reporters in Kendari that his administration had examined the remaining permits and found no irregularities, meaning he couldn’t revoke them without risking a lawsuit from the companies.

It wouldn’t be the first time Harita has gone to court over the revocation of a nickel-mining permit. In 2017, it sued the governor of North Maluku over the cancellation of a land concession there.

Lester Wong, a representative of the Japanese-owned firm Igawara, which holds two mining concessions in Wawonii, suggested Igawara would contest the revocation of its permits when Mongabay contacted him in May. Because Igawara’s permits were held through foreign direct investment limited liability companies, known as PMAs, he said, they were under the authority of the central government, not the provincial government.

Other companies with mining licenses in Wawonii are owned by Indonesian businessman Anton Sugiono, whose Dharmawangsa Group is also building a controversial dam conservationists say threatens the only remaining habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, in North Sumatra province; Vence Rumangkang, a prominent businessman who co-founded Indonesia’s Democratic Party and who is fighting for a piece of a vast oil palm development in Papua province; and Teuku Badruddin Syah, an Acehnese businessman who is also involved in coal and palm oil on the island of Borneo, according to corporate filings with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights. None of them responded to a request for comment.

GKP was previously owned by the Tamara Group, which belongs to the family of the Indonesian billionaire Pek Teng Beng. The Lim family bought it in 2017.

“This is in the interest of the people and the region, not for any one person,” Governor Ali told reporters in Kendari last month.

As he spoke, another video was circulating, showing Wawonii residents holding excavator operators hostage as they were working. The video was featured on Patroli, a national news show on the Indosiar network.

For Mando, who graduated from Kendari’s Haluoleo University last year with a bachelor’s degree in archaeology, organizing against mining has forced him to delay plans to continue his studies in the field. Nine caves in his home village were the focus of his senior thesis.

“There were bones, remnants of food consumption, pottery, paint,” he said. “We don’t know much about Wawonii’s history, but it could all be lost with mines.”

Additional reporting by Philip Jacobson.

Follow Ian Morse on Twitter: @ianjmorse

Banner: Mando stands in front of his childhood home in Roko-Roko. Image by Ian Morse for Mongabay.

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