Women's Issues

Mpur Peoples and Development
a film by Mnukwar, with support from DTE

This new film explores the views of the Mpur community, West Papua, on development plans for their region which will affect their land, livelihoods and culture.

Mpur Peoples and Development from Down to Earth on Vimeo.

Dear Friends,

Please help us help humanity by reading and encouraging other adults to read the graphic novel at www.papuanvoices.com in English, German or Korean. We're working on an iPad/iPhone version and hope to have this graphic novel soon in print and published as an eBook. (Tip: Try your scroll wheel to flip pages.)

The Illustrator and I have chosen to release the first three chapters (64 pages) now, given the urgency of the content (see the WestPAN Home page) and also because we can update and add to this "flip book" over time. You can read the remaining three chapters of the book in text form with occasional illustrated pages as they are released. Just go to the last page of the graphic novel for the link. (Tip: There's a Table of Contents at bottom left.)

If you care about disappearing cultures and biodiversity, you can help raise the world's awareness of West Papua by forwarding this appeal to your friends and colleagues, or by letting them know about this through Facebook, Twitter or word-of-mouth. If you enjoy the beautiful illustrations in this book and come to appreciate the global significance and urgency of its story, please tell others about papuanvoices.com.

The Author

West Papuans recently announced a foundational consensus on their legal defence and right to declare national sovereignty, thereby asserting their fundamental human rights and ancestral ownership of land. (The consensus has global significance in that West Papua remains on a scale similar to the Amazon in terms of what is being lost - diversity of local species and tribal societies, and the amount of oxygen produced by the "lungs of Asia".)