Raja Ampat Culture: Sasi Laut Ceremony

By Devina Vaniautami

Each region has its own story and tradition. Indonesia has thousands of islands with their own stories and traditions. This amazes us as it widens our perspective on how people honor what they believed in.

Raja Ampat has a custom that is in harmony with the environmental preservation movement, which many conservation organizations have done for years. This custom is known as Sasi. Sasi is divided into two, which are Sasi Laut and Sasi Darat. But this time, we will discuss Sasi Laut which is supported by the Indonesian government to preserve the Indonesian oceans.

Sasi Laut is a traditional ceremony performed by local communities in Raja Ampat. This ceremony is performed as a sign to start or end the harvest season at sea. Also, this ceremony is carried out to get abundant results during the harvest period, by closing the chosen areas until the specified time. The people in Raja Ampat believe that when they go to the sea, their success depends on the Sasi Laut ceremony.

The word Sasi comes from their native language, which means Oath. Sasi Laut is a tradition passed on by their ancestors and practiced by local communities in Raja Ampat. 85% of the Raja Ampat area is an ocean. Therefore, most of the locals have jobs as fishermen. The philosophy of the Sasi Laut is to respect and ask permission from the Creator to take His creation. For them, the Sasi ceremony is a sacred ceremony and everyone must obey the rules to maintain the sanctity of the ceremony.

Sasi procedure provides significant benefits to the preservation of marine life in Raja Ampat because the chosen areas for the Sasi ceremony are usually areas that produced high-priced marine products and need to be preserved. One of the examples is lobster.

Although the results of the Sasi ceremony are abundant, this ceremony has a prohibition to take the marine products with greed. There is a set of size and percentage of marine products that can be harvested by the locals during the ceremony of Buka Sasi. One of the examples is the locals may not take lobster containing eggs. This is done so that they can still preserve lobster species to be harvested in the following seasons. In this way, the lobster species in Raja Ampat may grow and protected.

The benefits of Sasi can be enjoyed directly by the people of Raja Ampat. Their livelihood is obtained from Sasi and most of the results are used for the community, like building public facility, church, and community events.

When we heard this story about Sasi, it reminds us that nature, especially our oceans, provide for everything we need. The air we breathe and the food we ate are given by the ocean. And how the people at Raja Ampat treat nature with respect and holiness, makes us feel that we should respect nature as we respect our parents, for they’ve provided us with everything that sustained our livelihood.