Decades ago they were targeted and killed on the streets for being purportedly loyal to the Netherlands. Now Indonesia's Eurasians are singled out by talent scouts looking for actors and models.
These changing perceptions of Indo-Europeans, following Indonesia’s independence from the Netherlands in 1949, is the focus of PhD research by ANU College of Asia and the Pacific scholar Rosalind Hewett.
At an international student conference in Indonesian in 2010, a Manadonese man of French and Dutch descent captured her attention.
Communication was a little difficult. She spoke just a smidgen of Indonesian, he a small amount of English.
Nevertheless, they kept in touch via Skype and in 2011, met up again. They got married in 2014, and currently reside in the North Sulawesi Indonesian province of Manado.
Hewett says her interest in colonial Indonesia was sparked by Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s novel This Earth of Mankind – which she read while studying history and Indonesian as an undergraduate student.
From there she studied Indonesia’s war of independence, learning about the period which saw the Southeast Asian nation shake off a long period of Dutch rule.
The violent revolution against the Netherlands saw thousands killed.
Only recently, Dutch ambassador to Indonesia, Tjeerd de Zwaan, apologised for ‘the excesses committed by Dutch forces’ between 1945 and Indonesia’s independence in 1949.
“During this time, many Eurasians (also known as Indos), were targeted and killed on the streets by young Indonesian independence fighters, because they were seen as loyal to the Netherlands,” Hewett said.
“After independence, thousands of Eurasians left Indonesia for the Netherlands, Australia and elsewhere, because they couldn’t get jobs.”
Even before the War of Independence, an estimated 200,000 Eurasians residing in colonial Indonesia were viewed somewhat negatively.
Financially, they tended to be better off than the Indigenous population, but were still stereotyped as “indolent, emotional and morally loose,” Hewett pointed out.
Nowadays, Eurasians in Indonesia are admired for their perceived good looks.
“They tend to be associated with stardom and success, and people in cross-cultural relationships like me tend to be told that our children are destined for television,” Hewett remaks somewhat bemusedly.
“Talent agents have even approached the parents of pre-primary school aged children in malls and on the streets in Indonesia, purely because of how they look.”
As part of her research, she has interviewed 74 Eurasians residing in Indonesia, Australia and The Netherlands, aged 18 to 89.
The interviews have taken her to historic Dutch hamlets, modern polluted Indonesian cities, and rural villages nestled in the shadow of volcanoes.
She’s found those who left Indonesia during the 1940s, 50s and 60s for The Netherlands and Australia mostly did so to escape violence, discrimination and poverty.
Eurasians who stayed in Indonesia tended not to report such traumatic experiences.
Hewett is completing her thesis, Left Behind? Indos (Eurasians) in an independent Indonesia in the School of Culture, History and Language.
She was a recipient of the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration PhD Overseas Travel Scholarship, which she used to undertake archival research in the Netherlands from October to December 2012.
