The Sumatran rainforests of Indonesia are home to the Orang Rimba - the general population of the wilderness. Their confidence and itinerant lifestyle are not perceived by the state and, as their timberlands are pulverized to clear a path for palm oil ranches, many are being compelled to change over to Islam to survive.
In a wooden cottage on stilts, a gathering of children wearing white sit on the floor. They sing "I will secure Islam till I kick the bucket" and yell "There is no god however Allah", as one.
Three months back, the 58 families that make up the Celitai clan of Orang Rimba changed over to Islam.
They were grabbed and transported into Jambi, the closest city, and given garments and supplication mats.
The Islamic Defenders Front - a vigilante amass whose pioneer is confronting charges of instigating religious brutality - encouraged the change.
Ustad Reyhan, from the Islamic minister bunch Hidayatullah, has remained to ensure the new confidence is honed.
"Until further notice we are concentrating on the children. It's less demanding to change over them - their mind isn't loaded with different things. With the more seasoned ones it's harder," he says.
"Before Islam they just had faith in spirits, divine beings and goddesses, not the preeminent god Allah.
"When somebody passed on, they didn't cover the dead, they just would leave the body in the woods. Presently their life has significance and bearing.
"[Before] they lived in the backwoods. They just lived for every day, every minute. When they kicked the bucket, they passed on. Be that as it may, now they have a religion, they know there is a life following death."
'No decision'
Yet, village pioneer Muhammad Yusuf - Yuguk, to utilize his Orang Rimba name - was pondering getting by in this life when he changed over.
"It was a substantial and troublesome choice, yet we have an inclination that we must choose between limited options, in the event that we need to push ahead," he says discreetly.
"With the goal that our children can have an indistinguishable open doors from the untouchables, the general population of the light, we had no other decision. We had to all change over to Islam."
Pariahs are the "general population of the light", since they live in open territories and are frequently in the sun, not at all like the general population of the wilderness.
The encompassing larger part Muslim populace calls the Orang Rimba "Kubu".
"It implies that they are exceptionally messy, they are waste, you can't look since it is so nauseating," clarifies anthropologist Butet Manurung, who has lived with the Orang Rimba for a long time.
"It additionally implies primitive, idiotic, terrible noticing - essentially pre-human. Individuals say their development isn't finished."
It's contemplated 3,000 Orang Rimba living in focal Sumatra.
"In the event that you preceded, you would have seen our woodland. It was unblemished, with enormous trees," says Yusuf.
Presently there are appropriate unending spooky white wore out sticks in a single course, and palm oil trees in perfect lines in the other.
The nonattendance of any common sounds is creepy.
"It's altogether gone. It happened just over the most recent couple of years. The palm estates came in, and after that the woodland began to consume," includes Yusuf, alluding to 2015's staggering fires, which consumed more than 21,000 sq km of timberland and peat arrive.
Consistently, landowners begin fires to clear land with annihilating impacts, yet those fires were disastrous in view of a more drawn out dry season.
A large portion of a million people were influenced by the poisonous dimness from the fires and handfuls kicked the bucket from breathing issues.
"I was panicked. We were so frightened of the flares and smoke surrounding us," Yusuf lets me know.
His clan hurried to the closest village to escape and this was the place the change procedure began.
Imperiled populace
"Before long, we needed to send our children to school, yet the educator needed to see their introduction to the world authentications, and for that you need to have a state religion that the legislature perceives.
"So we had an innate meeting, and talked about what religion we would pick, and chose to pick Islam," says Yusuf.
Indonesia - the world's biggest Muslim nation - authoritatively perceives six religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
Indigenous rights bodies are battling to get acknowledgment for the many different religions honed crosswise over Indonesia.
The nation's sacred court as of late controlled to support them, finding that it was against the constitution to compel individuals to express a religion.
Rukka Sombolinggi, leader of the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago, has been a key figure in this battle.
"We have been around before the new religions arrived, however now it resembles they lead us, and need to clean us from this nation. We need to battle back," she says.
She says the Orang Rimba are a standout amongst the most imperiled indigenous clans in Indonesia.
"They achieved the purpose of finish misery and saw that grasping one of the official religions would presumably enable them to leave this terrible circumstance. It involves survival."
'No space to live'
I encountered a feeling of the separation towards Orang Rimba, when I met a remote clan as yet honing this roaming, polytheistic lifestyle.
We were eating with them in the wilderness when a cop and neighborhood government authorities arrived and asked what we were doing and on the off chance that we had licenses.
Our Orang Rimba manage Miyak was unmistakably disturbed, and inquired as to why such reports would be vital all alone land.
"We have no space to live. We are dependably told we are itinerant individuals with no religion, no culture," he let me know.
"Our religion isn't regarded. The administration is continually demanding that we change over and live in houses in a single place. We can't do that. Our lifestyle isn't that way."
"Why you are making our lives so troublesome?" he asked the authorities.
The officer, Budi Jayapura, approached me to check my records and stated: "We have to watch over them.
"They don't comprehend the idea of taking. They say the organic product developed without anyone else on the tree so it can be taken, yet it was planted by somebody. Perhaps in their conviction framework it is OK, however not in our general public."
The pig issue
The way that they chase and eat wild pigs additionally makes social strains, he included.
"This is a Muslim people group. In the event that they see the pig's blood and the extra bits, they are irritated," the officer clarified.
What is forbidden, or haram, for the Orang Rimba straightforwardly stands out from what Muslims eat, clarifies Mr Manurung.
"Orang Rimba won't eat trained creatures, for example, chickens, cows or sheep. They believe it's a type of disloyalty. You bolster the creature, and when it gets fat you eat it. The reasonable activity is to battle. Whoever wins can eat the washout."
This conflict of societies started in the 1980s, when then-President Suharto gave land and motivating forces to transients from packed Java to move and open up the wildernesses of Sumatra.
From that point forward, immense zones of woodlands, customarily home to the Orang Rimba, have been given out to palm oil, elastic and mash and paper organizations without pay to the indigenous clans.
Zulkarnai, a Ministry of Forestry official, who encouraged the mass change of the Celitai clan, concedes that as a youngster, he thought the Orang Rimba weren't human.
"One day a 'Kubu' kid stole natural product from one of my neighbors, and he shot him. We headed toward the body, and I understood it wasn't a sort of creature, it was a human, much the same as us.
"I understood that we need to help them.
I feel frustrated about them. They will starve on the off chance that they don't change."
In the most recent decades, a huge number of hectares of rainforest have been cleared in Indonesia, in what a few investigations call the world's speediest rate of deforestation.
Polluted Land
New palm oil manors have been expanding at a rate of in the vicinity of 300,000 and 500,000 hectares for every year for as far back as 10 years.
In the last 30-odd years, the greater part of Sumatra's woodlands have vanished, supplanted by monoculture palm oil ranches.
Sigungang's family lives on a palm oil ranch. He tries to chase wild pigs when they come.
"Be that as it may, in the event that we can't discover anything, we are compelled to eat palm oil natural product. It influences your make a beeline for turn," he says.
The streams in the estate are dirtied with pesticide and his family is getting stomach issues drinking from it.
"There is no backwoods for them to chase in, the water they angled in and drank from is dirtied, as is the air," says get-togethers serve Khofifah Parawansa, unassumingly. "So we are giving them houses, villages to live in."
The legislature - working with manor organizations - has fabricated various lodging homes for the Orang Rimba.
A year ago, President Joko Widodo reported all the more new lodging and some land for them, following a meeting with innate pioneers - the main sorted out by an Indonesian head of state.
Minister Khofifah says confidence is a piece of this procedure.
"On the personality card, they need to state what religion they have. There are those that have progressed toward becoming Muslims, some who have moved toward becoming Christians. So now they are becoming acquainted with God."
However, a considerable lot of the lodging domains have fizzled and are successfully apparition towns.
Without work or an approach to bolster their family, numerous Orang Rimba who lived in them quickly backpedaled to the hints of wilderness that are cleared out.
"What we need is for them to quit taking without end our woodland. We don't need houses like the outcasts," says Ngantap, one of the senior citizens of an Orang Rimba clan.
"I am settled and cheerful in the woods, I am a man of the wilderness."
Ngantap wears the customary loincloth of the Rimba individuals, with a sack of cigarettes dangling from the side.
Unmarried ladies generally wear straightforward sarongs covering the bosoms. When hitched, the sarong is tied around the midriff leaving bosoms open for bolstering babies. Many now wear garments all things considered.
In any case, Ngantap demands they are clutching their confidence.
"It's inappropriate to state we don't have a confidence. Religion is an individual right of each individual. It's inappropriate to dishonor somebody's confidence.
"On the off chance that our conviction framework is lost, and the divine beings and goddess have no timberland home, fiasco will rule."
Ngantap's wife Ngerung disclose to me they are associated with the trees from birth.
"After an infant is conceived, three trees must be planted, one for the placenta, one for the child, one for the name. They can never be chopped down or harmed. When we stroll through our woodland we help individuals to remember this."
Mr Manurung clarifies: "Orang Rimba venerate numerous divine beings, the tiger [being] a standout amongst the most capable.
"They have a divine force of honey bees, a lord of hornbill feathered creatures, divine beings and goddesses of many trees. They likewise adore a divine force of water springs. They will never go to the latrine or place cleanser in the stream, so you can drink it straightforwardly."
Forfeit
Miyak, my guide, changed over to Islam so he can travel and battle to attempt and secure his family's timberland.
They are endeavoring to enroll the timberland as their hereditary land, following a point of interest 2013 court administering which said indigenous individuals have rights over backwoods they have lived in for a considerable length of time.
He can partake in gatherings yet not in religious functions or ceremonies. As he now utilizes cleanser to wash himself and eats chicken and bovines, he can't enter his family home.
"When I got instructed in the untouchables' routes, there were numerous things that I needed to forfeit.
"However, I acknowledge that, since I am an envoy and extension for some individuals here with the outside world and the legislature, about our woods and rights."
Despite everything he fears the divine beings and goddesses of the old religion.
"It's the sacrosanct individuals - our ladies shamans - [that] I fear. They can impart and see the divine beings and goddesses.
"The shaman can turn into a tiger, can turn into an elephant if the divine beings are extremely irate, and assault individuals. I am frightened of that. I stress over breaking the guidelines."
However, Miyak's biggest fear is that is his kin's lifestyle will vanish until the end of time.
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