JakartaPost-Dec 23, 2022
After dawn in a small town in eastern Indonesia, a young man holds an ornate umbrella over non-binary priest Puang Matowa Nani, as they walk barefoot to a nearby pond to perform the annual ritual of mappalili. The ceremony marks the start of the planting season in South Sulawesi, where the androgynous Bissu community to whom Puang belongs once held divine status but is now fighting against extinction. Less than 40 Bissu remain in just a few areas across South Sulawesi, according to anthropologists, and they now perform cultural and shaman-like roles to prevent their traditions from dying. Nani, a Bissu in their 60s who was born male, said they faced opposition from their family when they experienced a gender identity crisis as a child but were now at peace with who they were. “My family disliked it, especially my older brother,” they recalled. “He kept beating me to force me to be a real man. “I’ve tried to change but I could not.” In the 1950s, a rebellion led by the Islamic State of Indonesia group sought to create a caliphate in the country, leading to many Bissu being accused of violating Islamic principles and facing persecution. They were hunted, murdered or forced to behave as masculine men. “Since then, Bissu no longer wanted to show themselves, they disappeared, and they didn’t want to do any cultural activities,” Halilintar Lathief, an anthropologist at Makassar State University, told AFP. “They were scared and decided to hide.” The community is now on the brink of extinction, seeing its numbers dissolve into the majority Bugis ethnic group in South Sulawesi. Bugis people believe in five genders: makkunrai (cis women); oroane (cis men); calabai (men who take on roles traditionally for women); calalai (women who take on traditionally male roles); and the Bissu, who are neither male nor female but embody all genders. Older Bissu have died, and without financial or cultural support, not enough of the younger generation are replacing them. The remaining few, however, are trying to keep their heritage alive. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2022/12/23/s-sulawesis-all-gendered-priest-tradition-dying-out.html
