On maritime identity, cultural memory, and our relationship with the sea.
Sometimes, a few words are enough to make us reconsider how we understand the world.
Laut, Ibu Para Nelayan di Lamalera.
The Sea, Mother of the Fishers of Lamalera.
During my visit to Museum Bahari Jakarta, Indonesia, I came across an exhibition panel introducing the maritime traditions of Lamalera, a coastal community on Lembata Island, East Nusa Tenggara.
What caught my attention was not simply the community’s long-standing relationship with the sea, but the way the sea is understood through the imagery of a mother.
A mother who provides.
A mother who protects.
A mother whose generosity sustains life, but whose power must also be respected.
In Lamalera’s maritime traditions, the sea carries meanings shaped by generations of experience, beliefs, customary practices, and relationships. It is not merely a geographical space or a source of economic livelihood.
The exhibition describes how the sea is associated with maternal figures, including Ina Fae Belé, and how traditional whale hunting forms part of the community’s inherited maritime practices.
Within this cultural understanding, whales may be regarded as blessings, while customary knowledge and traditions shape the relationship between the community and the ocean.
Of course, these practices also invite difficult questions about marine conservation, animal life, cultural heritage, and environmental responsibility. Such questions deserve thoughtful consideration rather than simple judgement.
Yet, what stayed with me was something beyond the practice itself.
How differently might we behave towards nature if we understood it not merely as a resource, but as part of our relationship with life?
Perhaps this is where maritime identity begins.
Not necessarily with ships, ports, fisheries, or national policies, but with the meanings people attach to the waters surrounding them.
For some, the sea is a workplace.
For others, it is a passage connecting distant places.
For the people of Lamalera, the sea is also understood through the language of motherhood, care, and ancestral inheritance.
These different meanings remind me that our relationship with the ocean cannot always be explained through economic value or geographical boundaries alone.
The sea holds stories.
It carries memories.
It connects generations who may never meet, yet inherit ways of understanding the same waters.
And perhaps the most important lesson is not that everyone should understand the sea in the same way.
Rather, it is that we should remain willing to listen to the many ways people have learned to live with it.
I have increasingly come to appreciate that maritime identity is not something created solely through formal institutions or policy declarations. It also grows quietly through everyday practices, cultural memories, and the relationships communities maintain with their environment.
Before the sea becomes a matter of policy, it has already been part of someone’s life.
The story of Lamalera reminds me of this.
And perhaps, when we speak about protecting the ocean, we should remember that we are not only discussing ecosystems, resources, or territories.
We are also discussing relationships.
Relationships between people and nature.
Between ancestors and future generations.
Between what we receive, what we take, and what we choose to leave behind.
The sea may not speak in a language everyone understands.
But across generations, communities have found their own ways of listening.
And perhaps we still have much to learn from them.
Reflection Note
This personal reflection was inspired by my visit to Museum Bahari Jakarta (Jakarta Bahari Museum), Indonesia, where I encountered an exhibition panel titled “Laut, Ibu Para Nelayan di Lamalera.”
The exhibition introduced the cultural meanings of the sea within the Lamalera fishing community of East Nusa Tenggara.
The reflections and interpretations presented here are my own. They are not intended to reproduce the museum’s exhibition materials or to speak on behalf of the Lamalera community.
