TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – For Nani Keizer, puberty in the 1990s was more than a milestone of adolescence. It was when she began questioning her identity and where she came from. Keizer, an Indonesian child adopted by a Dutch family in the 1980s, realized that her physical features were markedly different from those of her adoptive parents.
Keizer later learned that she had actually been born into an Indonesian family living in Jakarta. Her adoptive parents then handed over the adoption documents that became the starting point for her search for her family in Indonesia. But she grew frustrated after discovering that the information in those documents was false, preventing her from tracing her biological mother. “It appears my adoption papers were not authentic,” Keizer, now 43, told Tempo in late March 2026.
The discovery led Keizer to question the authenticity of everything she had been told about her background. She said she no longer trusted the information concerning her birth mother, her family’s address, or the account of how the adoption took place.
Keizer said she had to reexamine and verify every clue contained in her adoption file. That search eventually brought her into contact with other Indonesians who had also been adopted by Dutch families.
