Documentary Short · Indigenous Education Series · 2025
At Sekolah Adat Dangiang Batuwangi in Garut, Indigenous knowledge and religion are brought together as complementary foundations for educating younger generations.
About the Film
A Bridge between Adat and Religion
Sekolah Adat Dangiang Batuwangi: Jembatan Antara Adat & Agama is a documentary short about an Indigenous school in Dangiang Village, Banjarwangi District, Garut Regency, West Java.
The school was established as an alternative learning space rooted in two important foundations of community life: adat and religion.
Through collective deliberation, community members agreed that the two should not be placed in opposition. Indigenous customary knowledge and religious life can instead accompany and strengthen one another.
Logline
In a village in Garut, an Indigenous school brings adat and religion together so that younger generations can remain connected to their cultural roots while responding to a changing world.
Synopsis
Learning without Separating Culture and Faith
Sekolah Adat Dangiang Batuwangi offers a form of education that grows from the life, knowledge, and decisions of the community itself.
Children and young people learn about their cultural inheritance while continuing to participate in the religious life practised by their families and community.
The school emerged from an understanding that adat and religion do not need to compete for space. Both can contribute to the formation of identity, ethics, responsibility, and relationships between people, ancestors, community, and the natural world.
In the midst of modernisation, the school functions as both a safeguard and a bridge. It protects knowledge that could otherwise be forgotten while enabling younger generations to carry that knowledge into their present lives.
Central Question
How can an Indigenous school bring religion and tradition together?
The answer begins with the community’s decision not to treat them as opposing forces, but as two living parts of the same social and cultural reality.
Adat and Religion
Growing Side by Side
For many Indigenous communities, religion and adat are often discussed as though one must replace the other.
The experience of Dangiang Batuwangi offers a different approach. The community recognises that religious belief can continue alongside customary knowledge, local history, language, social values, and relationships with ancestral territory.
Through dialogue and collective agreement, difference is managed without removing either part of community life.
An Alternative Learning Space
Education Rooted in Community Knowledge
Sekolah Adat is not simply another version of a formal classroom.
It creates space for knowledge that is held by elders, families, cultural practitioners, and the wider community. Learning can take place through stories, observation, practice, discussion, ceremonies, relationships with the land, and participation in everyday life.
In this model, community members are not merely recipients of an externally designed education system. They become teachers, knowledge holders, and decision-makers in the education of their own children.
Facing Modernisation
Remaining Connected to Cultural Roots
Modernisation brings new forms of education, technology, communication, work, and social aspiration.
These changes can create opportunities, but they can also distance younger generations from local histories, languages, values, and Indigenous systems of knowledge.
Sekolah Adat Dangiang Batuwangi does not attempt to isolate young people from contemporary life. It prepares them to enter that world without losing their relationship with the community and culture from which they come.
The Heart of the World
“The heart of the world is Adat.”
For Indigenous Peoples, adat is not only a collection of ceremonies or inherited symbols. It is connected to knowledge, values, relationships, territory, responsibility, and the continuity of community life.
Documentary Approach
Listening to the Community
The documentary places the experiences and perspectives of the community at the centre of the story.
Rather than defining Sekolah Adat only from outside, the film observes how community members themselves understand the relationship between education, faith, culture, and the future of their children.
The film presents Indigenous education as a living practice created through dialogue, collective decisions, and everyday participation.
Production Context
The Sekolah Adat Series
The documentary was produced by the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago—AMAN—and Mata Nusantara—MATATA.
It forms part of a series documenting Sekolah Adat initiatives and the ways Indigenous communities develop learning spaces based on their own knowledge, needs, and cultural contexts.
Project Information
Film Details
Title
Sekolah Adat Dangiang Batuwangi: Jembatan Antara Adat & Agama
English title
Sekolah Adat Dangiang Batuwangi: A Bridge between Adat and Religion
Format
Documentary short
Series
Sekolah Adat
Year published
2025
Location
Dangiang Village, Banjarwangi District, Garut Regency, West Java,
Indonesia
Produced by
Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago—AMAN · Mata Nusantara—MATATA
Producer
Nura Batara
Director
Kalfein Wuisan
Camera
Kalfein Wuisan · Batara Tambing · Rido Siregar
Editors
Kalfein Wuisan · eKrisna
Main themes
Indigenous education · Adat and religion · Cultural transmission ·
Community-based learning
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