Otanaha Fort: Existence, Identity, Contestation of PowerCultural Heritage Area and Tourism Object in Gorontalo City

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-236-1_99How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Fort Otanaha; Identity; fortified settlement; Ownership Claims and Contestation

Abstract

This article will discuss the existence of Otanaha Fort in Gorontalo City as a collective memory of Gorontalo people which has become a cultural heritage and one of the tourism objects in Gorontalo City. Historically, Otanaha Fort was built by the Portuguese and discovered in 1525. At that time, Gorontalo port was a transit area for the navy of the Kingdom of Ternate and the Kingdom of Gowa. This article is the result of qualitative research through observation, interviews with informants and literature study. The result of the research is a product of material culture. The fort is a source of pride and identity which is interpreted in various perspectives and power relations of groups that interact with Otanaha Fort. As a representation of power, Otanaha fort became a surveillance medium on Tomini Bay shipping route. Its existence is currently a contestation between the state and the surounding comunity. The state represented by Gorontalo City Tourism Office because Otanaha Fort is a cultural historical tourist attraction. The state is also present through the central government with supervision over the preservation of cultural heritage carried out by the Cultural Heritage Preservation Center or Gorontalo Region Cultural Conservation Center. Since the state claim the ownership of the fort, the local communities in surounding area are considered it as an ancestral heritage which is interpreted as an effort to legitimize ownership by fighting through demonstrations or legalizing it with a certificate. In anthropological study, this kind of site is considered as fortified settlement.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Melissa Wala
AU  - Hamka Naping
AU  - Muhammad Basir Said
AU  - Tasrifin Tahara
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/04/29
TI  - Otanaha Fort: Existence, Identity, Contestation of PowerCultural Heritage Area and Tourism Object in Gorontalo City
BT  - Proceedings of the World Conference on Governance and Social Sciences (WCGSS 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 909
EP  - 916
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-236-1_99
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-236-1_99
ID  - Wala2024
ER  -