In conversation with Prof. Dr Fridus Steijlen

On Thursday 7 July 2022, Prof. Dr Fridus Steijlen retired and took his leave as senior researcher at the KITLV and as professor by special appointment of Moluccan Migration and Culture in Comparative Perspective at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. To mark his departure, a farewell symposium was held at Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden. Ahead of that farewell lecture, Museum Maluku talked with him.

An in-depth interview with Prof. Dr Fridus Steijlen

In your rich career as an academic you have carried out research mainly within and around the contours of the Moluccan community in the Netherlands. In doing so you have gathered and shared a great deal of knowledge, so that you can be regarded as an authority in the field of Moluccan-Dutch relations. This eventually led to your appointment as the first professor of Moluccan Migration and Culture at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and to your position as chair for Museum Maluku. Has it been self-evident for you to commit yourself to the Moluccan community as you have done in your career? In other words, do you think connections can be drawn between your coming of age in left-wing Amsterdam and the later course of your career?

I was studying anthropology and a Moluccan friend of mine (David Berhitu) pointed out to me that there are population groups with a history of their own who came to the Netherlands in a particular way. That conversation was in 1976, a time before the Netherlands really became multicultural. It led to a conversation with David about how Moluccans came to the Netherlands. That had everything to do with the decolonisation of Indonesia. I then reached a point where I thought, this concerns me too; "I have to do something with this." It was, after all, also part of Dutch history. When there are tensions – as in '76 after the first train hijacking – it is a matter of working it out together. David was a member of the Gerakan Pattimura and they were open to the participation of Dutch people. That is how I became a member of the Gerakan Pattimura.

The Gerakan Pattimura was a critical, left-wing organisation that asked whether you should export the RMS from the Netherlands to the Moluccas, or whether it would be better to fight for freedom of expression in the Moluccas so that people there could decide for themselves. I became actively involved in this and eventually began specialising in Indonesia, because we needed that knowledge. So it is not the case that I was in a left-wing climate and therefore became involved with a Moluccan organisation, but it was a more general tendency that led me in that direction. That self-evidence about committing myself to the Moluccan community was therefore not necessarily there, but I think it had more to do with engagement and ideology. That was different then from how it is now.

That means I really began as a participant within the Gerakan Pattimura, and as a member I began orientating myself on Indonesia and Moluccans in the Netherlands. The latter not even orientating, really; I was simply part of the movement. At the end of my studies I wrote my thesis on Moluccan drug users and drug support services, because my friends were involved in that work. Looking back you can say that my involvement with the Moluccan community through the Gerakan Pattimura and the friendships I made became part of the beginning of my academic career. My participation in the Gerakan Pattimura, my network at the time and my involvement with human rights organisations concerning Indonesia gave my career its push. My career is a kind of continuation of – and was fed by – my active involvement.

You have led many valuable decolonial and social studies, and your archives at Museum Maluku, still to be opened up, are likewise full of interesting notes and important knowledge about and for the Moluccan-Dutch community. Although it is important as a researcher to remain objective, I can imagine that your immersion in Moluccan culture – both in the Netherlands and in the Moluccas – has influenced your views, ideals or reasons for further research. To what extent do you think your growth as an academic has been influenced by, or coincides with, the development of the Moluccan community in the Netherlands, or even the community's process of decolonisation? Do you see differences, for instance, between your work as a relatively new researcher such as "Uit de Schaduw (1989)" and your fairly recent article about the Moluccan-Dutch connection with the motherland (2019)?

The question here is really: "To what extent are you 'objective', or at any rate not prejudiced?" Which then has to be looked at in two ways. First: "Are you 'objective' when it comes to the position of Moluccans in the Netherlands?" And second: "To what extent are you 'objective' when you write about Moluccan history without interpreting everything through your old Gerakan Pattimura lens?" I think I have been very aware of that question, so that with every enquiry or analysis I look at myself in the mirror, so to speak, and ask whether my empathy for Moluccans plays a part in my analysis. Because I have been occupied with that question constantly, I think I have been sufficiently critical in my career and have thus remained 'objective' in my analyses, but others can answer that better than I can. A great deal of self-reflection is, in this case, what allows you to remain as 'objective' as possible.

That involvement also has an advantage. The fact that I was actively involved meant that doors opened during, for instance, the research for my dissertation – in which I spoke with various Moluccans holding diverse political and ideological positions. Although I had entered the Moluccan community through the Gerakan Pattimura, with its own political views, to my interlocutors I was a Dutchman who was willing to work together and who was more open than others.

Something else I find very important in research is showing that people have agency, that people have strength of their own. I think it is very negative to dwell only on victimhood. To be honest I think '70 years of Moluccans in the Netherlands' was too dominated by victimhood. I think that by naming the strength of a community you can also show what they have had to fight against, and thereby show the negative side of Dutch policy. That is perhaps the same intention that led me to join the Gerakan Pattimura back then: looking for strength in people themselves.

In 2006 you wrote, together with historian Henk Smeets, one of the standard works on Moluccans in the Netherlands: "In Nederland Gebleven." Looking back on your writing and research processes and the extensive work that came out of them, do you think there have been particular developments or events over the past 16 years that would absolutely have to be added to a standard work on Moluccans in the Netherlands such as "In Nederland Gebleven"?

At the time the book fell under the responsibility of the Moluks Historisch Museum. The research process that preceded it was one to which many young Moluccan researchers contributed. A number of sub-projects came out of that, and their material was taken up in "In Nederland Gebleven." So it is important to mention that the overview stands on the shoulders of several Moluccan researchers.

In 2006 we described a reasonably complete picture of the history and the state of affairs. In the sixteen years since, things have happened that really ought to be added now. We have now found a publisher who is interested in reissuing the book, and we have to write those sixteen years into it. A new generation has come to the fore, for instance, which looks at certain things in different ways. That generational change has to be given a clear face.

Something else that needs describing further is how transnational relations have developed. There is much more cooperation on an equal footing, in the sense that people in the Moluccas have become far more assertive and no longer simply let themselves be influenced by Moluccans from the Netherlands. They make more demands and, of course, they have not stood still either.

Do you see that as a form of agency as well?

That is certainly a form of agency. The developments among Moluccans in the Netherlands and in the Moluccas have a dynamic of their own and are in fact drifting somewhat apart. Particularly in terms of political views and mutual relations. If we look at the slogan of the commemoration of 65 years of Moluccans in the Netherlands, it was "Van Ver Gekomen" (Come from afar). From that you can take that the emphasis lay on how far people had come and that they were proud of it, without denying that things had gone wrong, that people felt cheated and so on. It breathed something like 'this was achieved against the current'. If you then look at the tenor of last year's commemoration – 2021, 70 years of Moluccans in the Netherlands – then 'victimhood', 'deception', 'apologies' and so on are central; there is far less strength in that. It is a very different framing from five years earlier.

The interesting question is why that happens. I think it has to do, among other things, with public debates. Those are about the history of slavery; Black Lives Matter and standing up for your rights. Standing up for your rights can also work in two ways. Along the lines of: "I am here and I want to be recognised. Look at everything I have achieved." Or you can say: "All you have done is cheat me." Those are mechanisms that, in my view, play a part. The consequence is that people lose sight of everything the first generation did. I wrote about that too in a review of Coen Verbraak's television series "Molukkers in Nederland." There, for instance, we did not see the strength of the community. Another factor, I think, is the pandemic; everyone is in their own bubble, and alongside that social media gives everything a different dynamic.

What has to be written about those sixteen years also has to do with things like the development of identity, the redefinition of the Moluccan neighbourhoods and changing transnational relations. That whole package of elements is important to add and to carry through, because time has not stood still.

Are you also planning, in the second edition of "In Nederland Gebleven", to consult young Moluccan researchers and their studies again, or to involve them in the process?

A chapter has to be written about those last sixteen years. To safeguard the continuity of the book in terms of tone, I will do that. But it is based partly on what I have seen and observed in collaboration with young Moluccan researchers. I can only write this because I have had a great deal of contact with the community.

In the panels at my farewell I tried to give a reflection of the people I work and have worked with. They are people from various corners and not only with an academic background. Which was also a kind of statement from me, to show that I became an academic from an activist background. Don't forget to connect.

Your field of research does not focus only on the Moluccan islands but covers at least the whole Indonesian archipelago. Since 2003, for instance, you have been involved as project coordinator in the "Recording the Future" project, initiated by the KITLV together with LIPI and Offstream Films. The main aim of this project is to create an audiovisual archive of daily life in Indonesia. This innovative and possibly unconventional way of doing research adds a fresh, creative layer to the concept of research within many Western disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. How do you view unconventional research methods (for Western academia), and to what extent do you think such methods can claim a place within the contours of Moluccan culture and society as an object of research?

When we began the project people were either in favour or utterly against. As we carried on, people became more positive because we were creating an archive of audiovisual material and people began to see its value. I think this is certainly possible in research concerning Moluccans too. In fact Jeftha Pattikawa's "Verloren Banden" project is a good example. Countless home videos must have been made by Moluccans during funerals, weddings and celebrations. Using that found footage could therefore be a way of seeing how certain developments took place.

If we are talking about unconventional research methods, you could think for instance of holding a series of interviews with young people and then repeating them five years later with young people of the same age group. That says something about the temperature of a society. You can plan material of that kind towards the future, but you could also look into the past provided you think carefully about which sources you use. Because there is a great deal of material made by Moluccans.

Within the Moluccan community people are also looking at different ways of transmitting knowledge. Through oral history, for instance. How do you see that alongside/against/together with Western academic historiography?

There is a difference between oral history and oral traditions. Oral traditions are the origin stories of your clan/village/family. Oral history is about, for instance, interviewing first-generation Moluccan veterans who can testify about their experiences in the period '45-'49. There are almost none of them left. Another example is interviewing the second generation about what they experienced in the camps. Oral tradition can be very interesting as a historical source that says a great deal about the history of a clan/village/family. But you have to be just as critical towards those oral traditions as towards any other source.

It is important to realise that as soon as these stories come to the Netherlands they are told differently. That is because the tellers here have been educated differently and have learned to listen differently. That makes it fascinating as a historical source, but again you have to consider it critically.

My last question builds to some extent on the previous ones, in that it concerns the future of the Moluccan community, (academic) research and building on your experiences. At Museum Maluku we are constantly manoeuvring between taking decolonial positions and thinking about the Moluccan community's process of decolonisation on the one hand, and having to work within the structures of a capitalist society on the other. How do you see the future role of Museum Maluku – working with young Moluccan researchers (or those with an affinity for Moluccan culture) – in educating the whole of Dutch society about the Moluccan community? In your view, are there overlooked subjects that have long deserved more attention, or that have only just come to light and can offer new insights?

The field of tension in which you manoeuvre can be turned into a kind of strength, or agency. What you see happening in response to the major research into Dutch violence in Indonesia in the period '45-'49, for instance, is that a black-and-white position has been taken. Some people say that if you say violence was used, you are also saying that all veterans are war criminals. Which is not true. It is important to have an eye for nuance and not to leap to the defensive because of your family history. If you do that, you stay stuck in a framing of history you cannot get out of. If, on the other hand, you figuratively enter into debate with your own history, your own forebears, how they made their choices, whether they were choices at all and in what context they were made, then that teaches you something about colonial relations and about how your own mindset may have been colonised. Which is no problem at all, because everyone's was. By learning from that you may be able to find a way out.

It has everything to do with my answer to the second question: self-reflection is the way out. Where does my bias lie? Why do I think this? Your bias as a Moluccan might lie in the fact that your (great-)grandfather was a KNIL soldier and you do not want to hear that something went wrong there. If you know that that is your bias, you can be open to the fact that things did go wrong, without your grandfather being to blame for it. You can then take the step towards decolonising your own mindset. It is precisely that field of tension in which you manoeuvre, and the critical self-reflection that goes with it, that allows you to take the next step.

There is a very specific role for Museum Maluku there. Namely to enter into that discussion and that conversation about history with its own constituency. In the 1970s there was a left-wing movement that began putting question marks against the RMS. That was a group of young people who started reading certain books and entering into debate with their own history. Through that discussion with their own history they could reflect on their own current positions towards developments. Not in order to condemn it retrospectively, but to understand why those developments took place. Self-reflection therefore begins with asking questions of and about yourself, but also asking questions of others and so being open to listening to what others have to say.

During my last trip to Maluku it occurred to me that I had never asked people in the Moluccas what the Indonesian Revolusi means in their collective memory. What lives on about that in the Moluccas? Those are very important questions for understanding people's mindset, so that you can also understand the relationship with Jakarta. The moment you ask that there, people say: "The Revolusi, that was on Java, wasn't it, not here; our history was very different." And then they are not even talking about the RMS. Suddenly you see where other biases in research and historiography lie; you have to take that into account, the experience in the Moluccas was different from elsewhere in the period '45-'49. These are discussions in which the museum can play an important role. Also by asking questions of people outside its own bubble, who can help formulate the questions. In the long term the museum can then play a role in education too. Because if you do not first enter into discussion with your own history, that is not yet possible.

Finding new insights, which is what you are asking about, really suggests that filling in blank spaces closes the story. In reality, with every new insight you create blank spaces somewhere else, because there are other things there that we do not understand. That is the dynamic in which you always have to keep working.