Presentation Edu Dumasy | 8 February 2019

On 8 February 2019 in the Alleman Centre in Amstelveen, Edu Dumasy gave a presentation on contemporary Indonesia against the background of the historical relationship shared by both our countries. He uses his own Indisch and Indonesian family history, illustrated with pictures of his travel experiences on five Indonesian islands between 1975 – 2018. He also visited professionally various schools. His goal over a number of years is to build collective commemoration and recognition of our shared history among school children both in the Netherlands and Indonesia.

About Edu Dumasy

Until he retired from education in 2011, Dumasy was an education specialist in turn working as a teacher of transcultural pedagogy in teacher training, and interim director of nonconformist primary schools and a vocational secondary school.

He was born in 1948 in Bandung on Java and from the age of two grew up in the Catholic village of Gemert in East Brabant where he became a teacher. Both his father’s and mother’s side of the family served in the KNIL. During study visits (1975 – 2018) to schools on the Indonesian islands of Java, Madura, Bali, Lombok and Sumatra, he gained insight into the historical and contemporary situations in his mother country and that of his family, such as the wars in Atjeh (1870 – 1900), the Japanese occupation (1942 – 1945), and the decolonisation process (1945 – 1962). It was not until later in life, just before his departure on his first ‘roots journey’ to Indonesia, that he discovered his mother was a full-blooded Indonesian; it transpired that she was adopted by the Dutchman Alfons van Velzen, his grandfather from Delft who married a woman from Madura. This turned his way of thinking completely on its head, so from taking a transcultural view to seeing our shared Dutch-Indonesian relationship from multiple perspectives. Not only through his Indish family but also his Indonesian family, which includes priyayis (Javan nobility), santris (devout moslims) and abangans (Maduran farmers), he presents an inside look at the Dutch-Indies and Indonesian community.

A transcultural approach to bridging both the theoretical and practical cultural differences between nations and ethnic, cultural and religious groups forms the guiding principle of his working life in education (1969 – 2011) as a college lecturer and interim director in primary and secondary education. He has shared his insights and experiences with his 23-year-old son who took the initiative to make an ‘identity journey’ through Java and Sumatra in July-August 2018. So together they visited the places where their family formerly lived in Surabaya, Malang, Purworejo, Yogyakarta and Bandung, as well as Dutch and Indonesia war cemeteries on behalf of the War Graves Foundation. His son also got to know for the first time his extended Indisch family in Jakarta, which enabled him to strengthen his European-Asiatic identity.

Through education, publications, lectures and digital formats, Dumasy tries to pass on to future generations the experiences described above to finally bring about a reconciliation with our Indisch-Indonesian history. A task and challenge taken up enthusiastically by committed Indisch and Dutch volunteers. Since 2013, attention to the Dutch Indies / Indonesia has also been given in a similar way in Amstelveen schools to raise awareness of this Shared History.

For more information visit ontmoetenherdenk.nl

Wijkcentrum ALLEMAN

Den Bloeyenden Wijngaerdt 1

Amstelveen – Bankras

Starts 20:00 | Room open 19:30

Admission | €3.50