This article examines how adat culture influenced peace-building and reconciliation efforts in North Maluku Province (NMP), Indonesia. This province was plagued by communal conflict from 1999 to 2000 following the fall of President Suharto’s regime. Nonetheless, NMP stands out as a rare success story for its comparatively quick consolidation of peace and its bottom–up efforts to reconcile the community, which was divided along ethno-religious lines. In-depth interviews were conducted with local elite and expert actors, and the Reality Check Approach (RCA) was used to explore the emic perspective of villagers at the grassroots level. An important key to the successful peace-building was that both the elite actors in regency government and most people at the grassroots level were united in their efforts to use a reinvigorated adat culture to reconcile the communities. In addition, minority groups and migrants were largely included and standard top-down attempts at reconciliation were absent, as most international organisations also promoted the local initiatives. The level of reconciliation does not, however, extend further than peaceful coexistence, partly because issues of culpability remain taboo in NMP. To achieve thorough reconciliation, the former conflicting parties would need to assume responsibility for wrongdoing and follow it up with forgiveness.