Nusantara, which is supposed to be Indonesia's new capital city, has not been constructed on the vacant site. Instead, it has been home to diverse existing inhabitants, including the Indigenous peoples. This paper seeks to explain Nusantara as a locus of asymmetrical competition over resources between the Indigenous population (who define their land as a lived space) and political and economic agents (who utilise the land as the locus of their capital accumulation). Indigenous people in and around Nusantara had been competing with the accumulation forces before the construction of Nusantara began. For many years, Indigenous people experienced a structural injustice (i.e., the absence of legal land title, historical conflict with the HGU-holding companies, and lack of access to education) and constant denial of their rights and presence (i.e., the state's application of the terra nullius doctrine).

This paper employs Critical Realism as its methodology, drawing on accounts from 54 participants with several backgrounds: Indigenous people, transmigrants, advocates, central and local government officials, and other expert practitioners. The data are collected through fieldwork in Nusantara, Penajam Paser Utara, Kutai Kartanegara, Samarinda, and Jakarta from November 2025 to January 2026.