Cultural Diversity in West Papua

Many of the last remaining tribal cultures on our planet can be found in West Papua. Some tribes are hunter-gatherers; others follow agrarian traditions that pre-date Mesopotamia. At least 250 distinct languages and hundreds more dialects are spoken in West Papua - an astounding 15% of the world's languages spoken by just 0.01% of the global population.

In addition to language, each tribe is autonomous, with its own leaders, traditions and belief systems. Each time even a small number of people are displaced, a unique cultural heritage may be lost forever.

Papuans have co-existed sustainably for more than ten thousand years, but many tribes appear unlikely to survive beyond this decade. Through the ages Papuans have been happier and far better nourished than many of us in the modern world. In the lowlands, a single day's work (some tribes have no word for "work") harvesting a sago palm will feed an extended family for weeks. Leisure time is more abundant than most in the "developed world" could imagine. Yet Papuans are seen by the Indonesians as backward and lazy, since they tend not to strive for economic gain.

Papuan people are Melanesian, with no ethnic or historical connections to Indonesia. A Papuan's dark skin and curly hair bear no resemblance to a typical Indonesian, just as their methods of carving, painting and dancing are in no way related to the predominantly Muslim traditions of the Indonesians.

Men are armed with wooden spears and arrows (although quite a few now have machetes). Tribal warfare is an elaborate ritual that involves shouting and posturing as they threaten each other and try to look fierce. It usually ends quickly if anyone is seriously injured. Few will ever die, and there is no intent to kill in large numbers or to obliterate the other tribe.

Some tribes used to practice cannibalism, but they didn't eat human flesh for sustenance. It was generally a rite of passage, with the young man assuming responsibility to nurture and protect the consumed victim's family. This seems very strange to us - perhaps as strange as genocide and modern warfare might seem to them. The notion of wiping out an entire village was unthinkable until the Indonesian occupation.

Supporting the ongoing genocide, Transmigration is turning the West Papuans into a minority in their own land. The largest-scale organized resettlement in history, Transmigration has resulted in Indonesian immigrants making up more than 40% of West Papua's total population, over 80% in urban areas.

Under the guise of "development" the Transmigration program was designed to enforce unity within Indonesia by flooding occupied territories like West Papua with Javanese settlers, displacing the indigenous people by outnumbering them with settlers from other overpopulated Indonesian islands. (The Transmigration program was supported by the World Bank, and to some extent by the Canadian government and the expertise of Canadian consultants SNC-Lavalin.)

Mr. Martono, the former Indonesian Minister of Transmigration, proudly stated his government's policy this way: "By way of Transmigration, we will try to realize what has been pledged - to integrate all the ethnic groups into one nation. The different ethnic groups will in the long run disappear because of integration, and there will be one kind of man."

Transmigrants are encouraged to clear vast areas of the "wilderness" to cultivate their staple food - rice. Unfortunately, this impinges on native Papuans' traditional food sources, as it destroys forest gardens and upsets the natural balance of the rainforest. Soils wash away or lose their nutrients within a few years, and flooding occurs regularly during the rainy season, polluting their water. Native Papuans must then abandon their remarkably sustainable relationship with the natural environment to take miserable jobs in the worker economy.

Papuans have been forcibly relocated to resettlement camps and urban areas. Here they are outnumbered by resettled Indonesians (as much as 4 to 1) and obliged to trade their traditional way of life for the wage economy. The better jobs go to Indonesian migrants, and the Papuans are enlisted as lowly-paid labourers. Requests for better treatment or higher wages result in persecution, torture, and ultimately murder of those who try to improve working conditions. As one West Papuan stated, "If two or three of us gather for a meeting, they cut our throats."

Any attempt to revive traditions, sing the Papuan anthem or even raise the West Papuan flag is still punishable by death in most cases. One of the best-known examples is Arnold Ap, an anthropologist and musician who gave up his life to keep West Papuan culture alive. He was assassinated by Indonesian security forces in 1984.