By Eric Morgan Interview with Kees Kunstt on Wednesday, November 4, 2015. Oom Kees has always been an active voice in the SoCal Indo community. He and his wife Tante Margie, who are coming up on 45 years of marital bliss, have also been part of the team in helping the long running “De Indo”…
By Willem ten Wolde I was researching books written in English about the Japanese prison or internment camps in the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, when I found Annelex Hofstra Layson’s autobiography Lost Childhood: My Life in a Japanese Prison Camp During World War II. I was intrigued because it was—so far—the only one…
By Jeff Keasberry As of this month we are adding a new category to our TIP site: Food. Eating and cooking are at the core of our culture and talking about it equally so. The objective is not to create another recipe box per se, as there are plenty of those sites already, but more…
By Jamie Stern Photo: Jamie as a toddler with her Mother, Oma, Opa and Tante – 1989. Congratulations to all the new grandparents this year and to all the grandparents who received more grandbabies! The Indo Project’s very own newsletter editor, Ingrid McCleary, is celebrating her new grandson, Baby Ben. (Congratulations Ingrid!) This Sunday happens…
By Sierra Jacob. What of the children? Once resting swollen in our wombs, the weight we carried between the yawning of our hips. Tasting the salt air like we did, pushed up against the hunched horizon in liberation ships to Holland—to Australia—to the United States. How we thought we could forget the dark slash of…
By Kathryn Pentecost Fig.1: Dutch architecture, Yogyakarta 2011 (Collection: The author) The Dutch were certainly not the first Europeans to trade in the archipelago; English and Portuguese traders were also keen to exploit the natural resources of the archipelago. The Dutch, however, created the first multinational trading empire with the purpose of breaking the Portuguese…
By Kathryn Pentecost Indonesia is known as the world’s most populace Muslim nation and its cultural history is richly diverse. Throughout their history, Indonesians have been influenced by a diversity of religious and cultural influences, (though some commentators today fear that the country is becoming a less tolerant place) (Vltchek, 2012). Looking back into Indonesia’s…
Last December Dutch Postal Service (PostNL) research showed 90% of Dutch households send an average of 40 cards 6 December 2012 – The Hague – Sending Christmas cards is an old tradition and undeniably contributes to the spirit of Christmas and New Year. PostNL compared the traditions surrounding the sending of Christmas cards in 18…
The new book ‘Welcomed by the Smell of Endive’ by Dutch journalist Griselda Molemans (due on March 21, 2014) highlights the true story of how the group of 380,000 displaced persons from the former Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) were received in The Netherlands. Between 1950 and 1970, these Dutch citizens and loyalists were forced…
By Kathryn Pentecost Introduction In this series of monthly essays, I hope to help the readers understand the great complexity that is the story of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. I write as both an ‘insider’ (an Indo) and an ‘outsider’ (an Australian). Having just completed my PhD on my own family history in…