Blog
Extractivism
Anti-tech struggles

The Manyawa, indigenous people against nickel mining

By
ATR
11
July
2025
Écoutez cet article
Share this article
Ngigoro, an elder of the indigenous Hongana Manyawa tribe, says that his ancestral forest is being destroyed by mining.
Ngigoro, an elder of the indigenous Hongana Manyawa tribe, says that his ancestral forest is being destroyed by mining. Source: https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20250528-nickel-rush-for-stainless-steel-evs-guts-indonesia-tribe-s-forest-home

On the Indonesian island of Halmahera, one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in Indonesia is threatened with extinction by the largest nickel mine in the world. An essential mineral for the electric car industry, but also for the entire industrial system.

Who are the Hongana Manyawa?

In the primary forests of Halmahera Island, in the Indonesian archipelago of the Moluccas, some 500 individuals of the Hongana Manyawa indigenous people live. They have no contact with the rest of the world, except for a few exchanges with the 2,500 to 3,000 members of the tribe who have settled down.

But this forest, which provides them with food and shelter, is also very important socially and spiritually, with birth and death rites closely associated with it. During hunts, Hongana Manyawa never target juvenile animals or pregnant females. Nor do they cut trees, which they consider to have soul or feelings.

This nomadic hunter-gatherer people have lived in perfect harmony with their natural environment for thousands of years, settling temporarily in small camps of branches and leaves before moving to let the forest regenerate.

Nomad group of Hongana Manyawa in the Halmahera tropical forest. @AMAN Source: https://www.canopee.ong/le-media/enquetes/les-minerais-une-nouvelle-menace-sur-les-forets/

Industrialism thrives on ecocides, ethnocides and genocides

Unfortunately for this people, the presence of nickel in the subsoil of Halmahera Island has aroused the desires of French and Chinese industries. They aim to create the largest nickel mine in the world there, a project that will require the razing of 6,000 hectares of forest. Industrial society is incompatible with freedom.

The French company ERAMET has obtained a concession of 4,500 hectares, three quarters of which are on the territory of the Hongana Manyawa. This takeover of their land seriously endangers the survival of this people, who have shown their ecological sustainability over the long term. First, the mining project will destroy the tribes' feeding territory — the wild fish and pigs they used to eat have disappeared. A few months ago, videos showed hungry tribesmen begging for food from minors. On the other hand, multiple contacts with the 30,000 mine workers are likely to lead to diseases for which the Hongana have no immunity. The start of land exploitation in 2019 corresponds to an increase in respiratory diseases and HIV cases. This is another benefit of “progress.”

Moreover, the arrival of large numbers of Chinese or Indonesian workers will inevitably lead, in the medium term, to the disappearance of the language and culture of the Hongana Manyawa people.

Thus, the techno-solution sold to Westerners to fight against global warming involves intensive deforestation (and therefore a reduction in the carbon sink), an irreversible attack on biodiversity, an elimination of a people's culture and probably, in the medium term, its disappearance.

In the field, groups of contacted and settled Hongana Manyawa are working with NGOs such as Survival International in order to protect their land, forest and culture. But the fight seems lost in advance. Let's repeat: the use of a strategy of War of Attrition is useless in an asymmetric conflict. Indeed, it is rare to succeed in stopping a major industrial project, and if activists ever succeed, thousands of others are carried out. The anti-nickel campaign of associations and NGOs to defend the Hongana Manyawa is all the more doomed to failure as it associates nickel with the battery industry, which is far from being the largest consumer.

Weda Bay nickel mine, Indonesia. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5pwmV0PLVs

Nickel, a metal essential to the industrial system

Because nickel has the characteristic of being able to alloy with a very wide variety of metals to obtain alloys with very particular properties (mechanical or electrical resistance). It is found in almost all sectors, from the automotive industry to aeronautics, including household appliances or agro-industry.

While the “energy transition” argument is put forward to manufacture storage batteries and justify the multiplication of nickel mines, the main use of this metal remains the manufacture of alloys. In fact, stainless steel manufacturing alone absorbed nearly two-thirds of the nickel produced in the world in 2022.

So the Hongana Manyawa and their lands would end In any case by being sacrificed in the name of industrial development, even if battery production was slowed down or even stopped. This is far from being the case.

At the end of June, the Indonesian president inaugurated on Halmahera Island the construction of a $5.9 billion industrial complex dedicated to the production of electric car batteries. Extractivism is only intensifying. More than ever, we must stop imploring exploiters or believing in a hypothetical reappropriation of the industrial system. To preserve the last indigenous peoples and cultural diversity from industrial predation, we must stop the technological system.

Did this article interested you ?

Join us and get access to member-only content and training.

Join us

Join the resistance.

ATR is constantly welcoming and training new recruits determined to combat the technological system.