EPIGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION: “LIKE BLACK AND WHITE PARTS OF THE EYE”

In April 2008, and only six years following the legal formation and secession of Indonesia's Riau Islands Province (Provinsi Kepulauan Riau, or Kepri) from adjacent Riau Province, then Governor of Riau H.M. Rusli Zainal (2003–13) attended a meeting of the South Sulawesi Family Association (Kerukunan Keluarga Sulawesi Selatan, or KKSS) in Riau's provincial capital of Pekanbaru. The South Sulawesi Family Association is one of Indonesia's largest and most active ethno-regional associations, with members hailing from or tracing their roots to South Sulawesi, an east Indonesian province widely known as the ancestral homeland of Indonesia's Bugis people. Outnumbering that province's indigenous Makassarese, Mandar and Torajan peoples, South Sulawesi's Bugis people are historically renowned as much for their seafaring prowess as they are for the wanderlust that fuels their travels throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, and beyond in “search of good fortune” (Bugis: massappa’ dallé).

The Riau Governor, a “Malay of Bugis ancestry” (Malay: Melayu keturunan Bugis), had been previously honoured by the ethno-regional association with the honorary “title” (gelar) of Daeng Magguna. Roughly translatable to “he who is useful”, the title bestowed upon the Riau Governor by the association featured the Bugis-Makassar honorific “Daeng”, commonly given to Bugis-Makassar people of noble birth. Daengis also a title whose meaning reverberates in the historical imaginary of Riau and Riau Islands Provinces, two places whose contemporary borders closely align with those of the once-sprawling Malay Sultanate that stretched from what we today call Indonesia, through Singapore, to Malaysia. .