Weaving decolonial pedagogy: Surasa as ancestral grammar in the Indigenous community of Kampung Cireundeu, Indonesia

Scholarship on Indonesian adat communities foregrounds ritual continuity and political recognition but rarely shows how learning unfolds. This article examines Surasa, the weekly gathering of the Sunda Wiwitan community in Kampung Cireundeu, West Java, as a localized Indigenous pedagogy in an urban minority setting. Drawing on Marie Battiste’s critique of cognitive imperialism and on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017, 2019 and 2024, the study analyses documented episodes: adult evening sessions, children’s Sakola Sunda, and youth-led rehearsals for the Suraan ceremony. Surasa teaches through four practices: collective narration of ancestral history, Sundanese script learning tied to ritual recitation, the teaching of cara ciri manusia and cara ciri bangsa as an ethical grammar, and communal deliberation that turned school exclusion into elders’ authority over religious grading. Smartphones, full-day schooling and tutor shortages strain the practice. Surasa thus emerges as a negotiated, youth-sustained pedagogy asserting epistemic authority within, not outside, state schooling.