A Note on Languages and Locations

T,HE SETTING of this study is a multilingual place, and not simply by virtue of the large number of migrants who live within its borders. Biak-Numfor is an regency, a subdivision of the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya, which lies just east of the border, a line that slices New Guinea in half. The ' history of primary education dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century, so even older villagers tend to be conver- sant in Indonesian, the national language that grew out of Malay, the admin- istrative lingua franca spoken in and throughout the Indies in colonial times. Biak, like Indonesian, is an Austronesian language. Linguists have placed it in the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian branch of the fam- ily, which includes the South Halmahera-West New Guinea group and the Oceanic group, which includes the Austronesian languages of , Mi- cronesia, and Polynesia (see Blust 1984: 29; Pawley and Ross 1995; Tryon 1995). Biak speakers (and linguists) describe the language as consisting of scores of different dialects (see Fautngil et al. 1994; van Hasselt and van Hasselt 1947). The Numfor version (sometimes called "Mefoorsche" or "Ma- foorsche" by Dutch writers) once served as a lingua franca in Cendrawasih Bay and along the northern shores of the Bird's Head Peninsula, as well as in the to New Guinea's west. Indonesian is very much a written language. Biak is not. Although the Protestant missionaries who settled among "Mefoorsche" speakers produced translations and original works in that dialect, there was little consensus in the early 1990s among my consultants as to how Biak words should be divided and/or spelled. My transcriptions of Biak texts are, as a result, idio- syncratic, although I have tried wherever possible to follow the lead of recent students of the language. I have used the symbol fbl for what my consultants called a "soft /b/," a phoneme whose pronunciation lies between an English Pol and Av/. Aside from this, my spelling of words is generally consistent with that found in Soeparno's (1977) dictionary (see Fautngil et al. 1994). I have identified terms and phrases as Indonesian (I) or Biak (B); the identity of other foreign terms (generally English or Dutch) should be clear from the text. I have taken the liberty of marking plural forms of Biak and Indonesian words by adding-s. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own, as are the betrayals that this task always entails. A brief glossary of frequently used terms appears at the end of the book. The western half of New Guinea has gone by many different names: Nederlands-Nieuw-Guinea and Tanah Papoea, in the writings of Dutch offi- cials and missionaries; Irian Barat and Irian Jaya, in the speeches of Indone- Xll • A NOTE ON LANGUAGES AND LOCATIONS sian politicians; and West Melanesia, in the proclamations of exiled Papuan separatists. The islands that make up Biak-Numfor have gone by different toponyms, as well: Mafor, Mefor, Wiak, and the Schouten Is- lands, to name a few. In this book, I have used terms consistent with public usage in the context I am describing; thus the province now sometimes called Papua, in a concession to popular sentiment, appears as it was known at the time of my fieldwork, as Irian Jaya. I follow local practice in referring to Biak-Numfor as Biak, after its most populous island. The villages and cities I mention really exist, but I have changed the names of some of their inhabitants.