Sacred Authority and Informal Governance

Sacred sites in Indigenous societies are often framed as symbolic or spiritual spaces, obscuring their role as institutional mechanisms within social-ecological governance.Addressing this gap, this study reconceptualizes Pasah Patahu, a sacred site among Dayak communities in Central Kalimantan, as an institutional actor that generates social authority, territorial legitimacy, and ecological regulation.Using an interpretive qualitative design, data were collected from 60 participants across five villages through semi-structured interviews and contextual observation and analyzed via reflexive thematic analysis.The findings offer three theoretical insights.First, Pasah Patahu functions as vernacular governance, where legitimacy arises from moral consensus rather than formal bureaucracy, challenging state-centric views of authority.Second, ritual practices operate as social infrastructure that stabilizes community responses to livelihood uncertainty, reframing ritual as adaptive socio-economic practice rather than symbolic expression.Third, the principle of Mahaga Petak Danum illustrates how ecological ethics are reproduced through lived experience, suggesting that sustainability may be rooted in moral-cultural systems beyond regulatory frameworks.By shifting the analytical lens from symbolism to institutional agency, this study advances sacred ecology scholarship and broadens debates on governance, resilience, and environmental ethics beyond the modern state.