Playing up the primitive: After being buried under 40 years of Indonesian rule, West Papuan culture is still very much alive and kicking, as Eben Kirksey finds out - West Papua / Culture

New Internationalist, April, 2002 by Eben Kirksey

But once the political component of merdeka is realized -- and it will eventually be realized -- Papuans will face the fresh challenge of re-establishing an independent cultural identity. There is a danger that cultural solidarity will become fragmented, jump-starting local ethnic conflicts. For instance, with over 250 distinct cultural groups and dialects, arguments about a national language are sure to take place.

In the years leading up to the independence of Frantz Fanon's homeland of Algeria he wrote: 'Every colonized people finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country... The colonized becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle.' Indonesian may be the only language that could serve as the lingua franca of an independent West Papua. This would result in continued dependence on Indonesia.

A more subtle and possibly more complicated problem is the language that would be used to talk about culture in post-independence West Papua. The adat concept makes tourist fetishes out of cultural fragments arid alienates many Papuans from indigenous religion. It is possible for Papuans to go beyond this Indonesian idea. They can embrace a modern role in an international community and at the same time maintain distinctively local visions of reality.

An exiled spokesman for the Penis Gourd People's Assembly (see page 24) has an innovative vision for the future of West Papua. He would like to incorporate each of the Papuan cultural groups as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). In this hypothetical nation each tribal NGO would have its own autonomous territory. Tribal elders appointed to a board of directors would govern each NGO. Mee Inc, for example, would directly negotiate with the Korean logging firms that are currently clear-cutting their land. This would ensure that any resource extraction is done according to local norms. Rather than supporting a top-heavy bureaucracy in the cities, profits from development projects could be channelled directly into local communities. A national legislative assembly and judicial system -- composed of representatives from the NGOs -- could help mediate relations among the different groups.

Partly this vision relies on international acceptance. Globalization does not like to accommodate local government based on indigenous cultural terms. We will know that merdeka has truly come to West Papua when a foreign CEO puts on a penis sheath and dances waita tai in hope of brokering a deal with the Mee Inc board of trustees.

Anthropologist and historian [Eben Kirksey] is a Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford.