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Permissive Residents: West Papuan Refugees Living in Papua New Guinea

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Permissive Residents: West Papuan Refugees Living in Papua New Guinea Permissive residents West PaPuan refugees living in PaPua neW guinea Permissive residents West PaPuan refugees living in PaPua neW guinea Diana glazebrook MonograPhs in anthroPology series Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/permissive_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Glazebrook, Diana. Title: Permissive residents : West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea / Diana Glazebrook. ISBN: 9781921536229 (pbk.) 9781921536236 (online) Subjects: Ethnology--Papua New Guinea--East Awin. Refugees--Papua New Guinea--East Awin. Refugees--Papua (Indonesia) Dewey Number: 305.8009953 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Teresa Prowse. Printed by University Printing Services, ANU This edition © 2008 ANU E Press Dedicated to the memory of Arnold Ap (1 July 1945 – 26 April 1984) and Marthen Rumabar (d. 2006). Table of Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi Glossary xiii Prologue 1 Intoxicating flag Chapter 1. Speaking historically about West Papua 13 Chapter 2. Culture as the conscious object of performance 31 Chapter 3. A flight path 51 Chapter 4. Sensing displacement 63 Chapter 5. Refugee settlements as social spaces 77 Chapter 6. Inscribing the empty rainforest with our history 85 Chapter 7. Unsated sago appetites 95 Chapter 8. Becoming translokal 107 Chapter 9. Permissive residents 117 Chapter 10. Relocation to connected places 131 Chapter 11. Being ‘indigenous’ in the Indonesian province of Papua 141 Coda: Forty-three West Papuans arrive in Australia by outrigger canoe, 2006 155 vii List of Illustrations Photos: Photo 1. Yospan dancing accompanied by Mambesak musicians in front of the Governor's Office, Jayapura (Kapissa is the spectacled dancer facing the photographer, and Ap is second guitarist from right), c.1981. (Chapter 2) Photo 2. Arnold Ap (seated fourth from the right) and fellow Mambesak musicians, c. 1981. (Chapter 2) Photo 3. Grating cassava to become like sago. (Chapter 7) Photo 4. `Who's [sic] put the border mark!' Oil painting by Herry Offide, 1999. (Chapter 9) Photo 5. Decorated wall, entry area of house at Waraston camp, East Awin. (Chapter 10) Maps: Map 1. Location of East Awin. (Prologue) Map 2. Irian Jaya and the border region of Papua New Guinea showing the location of Cenderawasih University (UNCEN), Jayapura, East Awin, and regions from where Ap recorded performance material. (Chapter 2) ix Acknowledgements The manuscript for this book was written during a post-doctoral research fellowship awarded by the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at The Australian National University 2003±04. It evolved out of a PhD dissertation written in the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU, during the period 1996-2001. The original dissertation was guided by the insights and analyses of a panel of three advisors, Kathryn Robinson, Sjoerd Jaarsma and Chris Ballard. Others who read single chapters carefully and offered important comments include George Aditjondro, Michael Cookson, Stuart Kirsch, and JW Schoorl. George Aditjondro provided access to many unpublished resources that were critical to the chapter on Arnold Ap. I was also privileged to have Pim Schoorl map watersheds in the Muyu region. Justine FitzGerald read the whole dissertation, generously correcting my translations from Indonesian into English. Father Jacques Gros, who lives and works among Muyu in the border camps of PNG, read the dissertation and this book, and contributed valuable ethnographic comments. xi Glossary ABRI Indonesian Armed Forces bilum string bag dusun dusun is an Indonesian term used by West Papuans to mention a bounded area of land that has been passed down from fathers to sons for many generations, containing cultivated areas such as rubber, coconut and rambutan plantings, naturally occurring and planted sago gardens, forested areas for hunting, as well as rivers and rockpools. Ancestors are buried in their dusun, and the spirits of some continue to occupy it. A person's history and that of their lineage is inscribed in the features of their dusun. merdeka political independence, can also mean freedom and liberation OPM Free Papua Movement PEPERA PEPERA is the abbreviation of Penentuan Pendapat Rakyat referred to popularly as the Act of Free Choice. Between 14 July and 2 August 1969, 1022 West Papuan delegates appointed by the Indonesian administration voted in a series of regional consultations on Irian Jaya's political integration into Indonesia. translokal From 1976, where disputes occurred over land rights caused by transmigration, local peoples were to be compensated for the appropriation of their land by being incorporated into the transmigration program as local transmigrants known as translokal. Transmigration A central government project to relocate landless and underemployed families from densely populated areas like Java and Madura to areas considered underpopulated such as Kalimantan and the Indonesian Province of Papua. UNCEN Cenderawasih University, Jayapura UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees WPIA West Papuan Indigenous People's Association A note on transcription and terms `Northerner' is a term that I have borrowed from the refugee expression orang utara referring to people from the northern region, including those from the north-west coast (Sorong, Manokwari) and the islands (Biak-Numfoor, Serui), as well as those people living inland of Jayapura at Genyem and other places. The term northerner stands in contrast to `southerner' (orang selatan), referring broadly to Muyu, Mandobo and Kanum peoples at Iowara. Usually, highlanders xiii Permissive Residents from the Jayawijaya mountain range were identified as `Dani people' (orang Dani) or `mountain people' (orang gunung). People at Iowara who came from the Oksibil region near the Star Mountains were also called orang gunung. Several terms appeared frequently in conversation in the field, and throughout the book. I have translated perjuangan as `the struggle', meaning the political struggle for nationhood. Pembebasan is translated as `liberation' or `freedom' although it was occasionally used by narrators to represent a state of political independence. Asli is translated as `indigenous' or `original'. Asing is translated as `foreign', and pendatang as `newcomer'. Tabah (or pertabahan) is translated as `endure' or `holding out', for example in the context of holding out in exile. xiv Prologue Intoxicating flag Since 1961, West Papuan people in the `Indonesian Province' of Papua raising the Morning Star flag in public have been shot by Indonesian soldiers.1 Public declarations of allegiance to West Papuan nationhood broadcast beneath the flag have provoked violent retaliation. Raising the flag in public recalls the nascent state. It acts to constitute a West Papuan people and place, momentarily establishing the legitimacy of an alternative regime outside of the Indonesian state.2 While West Papuan people at the East Awin refugee settlement in Papua New Guinea (PNG) no longer fear being shot down for raising the flag, the affect is not dissimilar. Raising the West Papuan flag is intoxicating. In the moments between the flag's ascension from the bottom of the pole to the top, the air can be cut with a knife. Acts of flag raising have constituted `signal events' in the history of West Papua since 1961. At East Awin, flag-raising ceremonies are held annually to commemorate several events: the inaugural raising of the Morning Star as a national flag by the West New Guinea Council (1 December 1961); the first physical battle between the OPM or Free Papua Movement and the Indonesian military at Arfai (28 July 1965); Seth Rumkorem's Declaration of Independence (1 July 1971); and the failed uprising in Jayapura (11 February 1984). In the second month of my dissertation fieldwork at the former United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refugee settlement in East Awin in 1998, I received a hand-written invitation to attend the flag-raising ceremony on 1 July. The ceremony took place at Waraston, East Awin, a camp comprised of people from the north coast and adjacent islands. A ceremonial ground was freshly scythed for the occasion, a flagpole erected, and a stage covered in tarpaulin. The ceremonial ground formed part of a narrow swathe cut through the surrounding jungle. To the south it bordered a clay track that wound its way past Waraston, and continued for 10 kilometres in both directions past 17 other small camps. On the northern side of the ceremonial field were the houses of Waraston. These 20 houses were perched on 2-metre poles, and constructed from milled and hand-adzed timber. Roofs were a bricolage of weathered plastic sheeting, and odd bits of bark, tin and sago thatch. I was invited with several other people to sit in the makeshift stage lined with blue tarpaulin. Other guests shifted in their seats alongside me, fanned themselves and picked the biting insects off their legs. Next to me sat Lucia, a dignified widow whose husband had been shot by Indonesian soldiers in the forest on the border, and then burned alive in the house into which he had crawled. (Note: 1 Permissive Residents all names of West Papuans in this book, except those of songwriters, are pseudonyms.) Yohanes sat with his back to Lucia and me. A feisty war veteran who had fought the first West Papuan battle against the Indonesians at Arfai in 1965, he had sustained injuries to his spine after being captured and beaten with a plank. His tensed back reminded me of the embodied character of the struggle. Seated behind three low tables at the front of the stage were several lay preachers and teachers. One side of the ceremonial field was lined with women holding babies folded into fabric slings.
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