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BIAK, Indonesia — Members of the Abrauw clan have lived like their ancestors for 15 generations. In parts of the rainforest, they farm with wooden plows, gather herbs, and set traps to catch snakes and wild boars.

The land they occupy on the island of Biak is everything to them: their identity, their livelihood, and their ties to their ancestors. But now the small clan fears it will lose its place in the world as Indonesia continues its long-standing quest to join the space age.

The Indonesian government claims to have purchased 250 acres of the clan’s ancestral land decades ago, and has been planning to build a small-scale spaceport there since 2017 to launch rockets. Clan leaders say the project will force them out of their homes.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo personally proposed to SpaceX founder Elon Musk last year on the idea of ​​launching rockets from Indonesia, without mentioning a site. Mr. Musk has yet to reach an agreement or make a public comment on the matter. But the prospect of his involvement sparked a flurry of activity by Biak officials to promote the location and renewed opposition from the island’s Indigenous people.

Building a spaceport is part of Mr Joko’s effort to modernize the Southeast Asian island nation with new airports, power plants and highways. often with little emphasis on environmental consequences. It’s also part of the country’s checkered history of using questionable methods to acquire land from Indigenous peoples, leaving some groups impoverished while taking advantage of influential Indonesians. and international companies.

Biak tribe leaders say building a spaceport on the site will mean cutting down trees in a protected forest, disturbing endangered bird habitats and evacuating the Abrauw.

“The position of the indigenous people is clear: we reject the plan,” said Apolos Sroyer, chairman of the Biak Traditional Council, which is made up of clan chiefs. “We don’t want to lose our farms because of this spaceport. We don’t eat satellites. We eat taro and fish from the sea. It’s been our way of life for generations. Tell Elon Musk this is our stance.”

Nearly the size of Maui, Biak lies just north of the island of New Guinea and is part of the Indonesian Province of Papua. II. During World War II, as General Douglas MacArthur fought to retake the Pacific, American forces defeated the Japanese there in a crucial battle. Biak became part of Indonesia in the 1960s after the United Nations ceded the former Dutch territory of West Papua, provided that Indonesia had a popular vote.

Instead, in the 1969 vote considered fraudulent by many PapuansIndonesia rounded up a thousand tribal leaders, including chiefs from Biak, and held them until they voted to join Indonesia in what is paradoxically known as the “Law of Free Elections”.

The dwindling Abrauw clan, one of the 360 ​​clans in Biak, now has around 90 members. Most live in the village of Warbon, located on the northeast side of the island about a mile and a half from the proposed spaceport site.

The center of clan life is a blooming valerian tree by the ocean.

Waves crash on the white sands nearby, and black, brown, and white butterflies fly between its branches. Clan members consider the tree sacred and say it marks the origin of Abruw. They often visit the tree to offer their offerings and pray to their ancestors. Sometimes they gather there and camp for days. Had the spaceport been built, the tree would be outlawed, as would the beach where the Abrauw often fish and the forest where they farm.

“For Papuans, territory is identity,” said clan chief Marthen Abrauw, as they were sitting in the shade of the sacred tree one afternoon recently. “We will lose our identity and no other clan will accept us in their land. Where will our children and grandchildren go?

Some clan members found employment in other parts of Indonesia, but those who remained in Warbon largely subsist on the fish they catch and the taro, cassava, and sweet potatoes they grow. The clan practices nomadic farming, clearing trees in the forest for crops in a new location every two years.

Some go on foot or by motorcycle to the nearby village of Korem to worship at the Pniel Evangelical Christian Church. Home to over 1,000 people, Warbon includes members of numerous other clans who married the Abrauw but retained the clan identity of their male ancestors. The church also opposes the spaceport.

Indonesian officials who support the project say Biak, which is just 70 miles south of the Equator and facing the Pacific, would be ideal for launching rockets. SpaceX has plans to put tens of thousands of communication satellites into orbit in the coming years

“This is our wealth,” said Herry Ario Naap, Biak’s deputy. “Other regions may have oil or gold. We have been given a strategic geographical position.”

Mr. Joko wooed Mr. Musk, suggesting that auto company Tesla could cooperate with Indonesia to make electric vehicle batteries, as Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of nickel, which is a key component. A team from SpaceX visited Indonesia earlier this year to discuss possible cooperation, officials said.

Tesla submitted a battery manufacturing proposal to Indonesia in February, but the government refused to disclose details. Mr Musk and his companies did not respond to requests for comment. In September, Mr. Joko supported the space program by increasing its budget by a factor of twenty and incorporating it into the new National Research and Innovation Agency, which reports directly to him.

Laksana Tri Handoko, head of the agency, who personally oversaw the Biak site last month, said the island remains a viable choice, but said it would take 10 times more land to build the massive spaceport he envisioned. Controversy over the Biak site may cause Biak to choose an alternative location, such as Morotai island, about 550 miles northwest.

A key factor, he said, will be to ensure that the government has a “clear and clean” title to the land. “Biak is not the one and only place,” he said. “We have many options.”

Government maps show that nearly all of the Abrauw clan’s ancestral lands, including some houses, are within a proposed buffer zone that will be cleared of humans once the small spaceport is built. The maps also show that the original project site is almost entirely within a protected forest.

The space agency has long said it bought the 250 acres from the Abrauw clan in 1980. However, the clan says it never sold the land. According to the clan leaders, the four men who signed a document conferring the agency title were not clan members and had no right to sell.

They said the older generation was too scared to object, as the Indonesian military was conducting military operations against Biak and anyone who criticizes the government could be jailed as a separatist.

“Silence was the only option,” said Gerson Abrauw, a cousin of the clan chief and a Protestant pastor. He refused government assurances that a spaceport would provide employment.

They say that the spaceport project will create employment, but there are no space experts in our clans and villages,” he said. “Three years of cutting down trees, uprooting and digging foundations. After that, there will be a feast to say goodbye to us, and then only those with a pass will be able to enter the area.”

Dera Menra Sijabat reported from Biak and Richard C. Paddock from Bangkok.