Documentary Short · Indigenous Education Series · 2025
At Pesinauan Indigenous School in Olehsari, Banyuwangi, learning becomes a way of returning to knowledge that continues to live in the memories and practices of community elders.
About the Film
A Space for Returning
Sekolah Adat Pesinauan: Merawat Tradisi Mewariskan Weluri is a documentary short about an Indigenous school in Dusun Krajan, Olehsari, Glagah, Banyuwangi, East Java.
Pesinauan was created as a space where community members can speak, learn, and move within the values and knowledge of their own traditions.
More than a place of instruction, the school becomes a space for returning—to knowledge that younger generations may not have experienced directly, but which continues to live in the memories of elders.
Logline
In Olehsari, Banyuwangi, an Indigenous school creates a space for younger generations to return to knowledge still carried by their elders and community.
Synopsis
Returning to Knowledge that Still Lives
Pesinauan Indigenous School grows from the community’s desire for a place where people can learn from knowledge that remains alive around them.
Some of that knowledge was not directly experienced by younger generations. It survives through the memories, stories, practices, and experiences of elders.
The school creates a bridge between generations. Learning becomes a process of listening, remembering, practising, and rebuilding connections that may have weakened over time.
In this sense, Pesinauan is not only a school. It is a place where community knowledge can return to everyday life and be carried forward by another generation.
Central Question
How can an Indigenous school become a space for returning?
The answer begins with recognising that knowledge has not disappeared. Much of it continues to live in elders, community memory, and everyday cultural practice.
Knowledge and Memory
Learning from the Elders
Indigenous knowledge is not preserved only in written documents.
It can remain in memory, language, stories, ways of working, relationships, and practices carried by older generations.
Pesinauan creates a space where these forms of knowledge can be shared again, allowing younger people to encounter a history and way of knowing that remains present within their own community.
An Indigenous Learning Space
More than a Classroom
Pesinauan is not simply another version of formal schooling.
Learning grows from the people who hold knowledge and from the cultural environment in which that knowledge continues to have meaning.
Elders, families, cultural practitioners, and community members become part of the learning process. The community itself becomes a source of knowledge.
Generational Continuity
Passing Knowledge Forward
A tradition can continue only when another generation is able to enter into it, understand it, and make it part of their own lives.
Pesinauan creates conditions for that encounter to happen.
The school is therefore concerned not only with remembering the past, but with enabling knowledge to continue through people who will carry it into the future.
A Reminder
It is not the elders who are left behind by time.
The film turns the question around: younger generations may instead be the ones who have become distant from the knowledge accumulated by those who came before them.
Documentary Approach
Listening to a Community Learning from Itself
The documentary approaches Pesinauan through the people who inhabit and sustain the learning space.
Rather than treating Indigenous knowledge as something belonging only to the past, the film observes how it continues through memory, conversation, learning, and relationships between generations.
Pesinauan is presented as a living process through which a community reconnects with knowledge already present within itself.
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 Pesinauan: Merawat Tradisi Mewariskan Weluri
English title
Pesinauan Indigenous School: Caring for Tradition, Passing on Weluri
Format
Documentary short
Series
Sekolah Adat
Year published
2025
Location
Dusun Krajan, Olehsari, Glagah, Banyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia
Produced by
Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago—AMAN · Mata Nusantara—MATATA
Producer
Nura Batara
Director
eKrisna
Camera
Kalfein Wuisan · Batara Tambing · Rido Siregar
Editors
Kalfein Wuisan · eKrisna
Main themes
Indigenous education · Intergenerational knowledge · Community memory ·
Cultural transmission
Watch
Watch the Documentary