West Papua

That Indonesia’s ongoing occupation of West Papua continues to be largely ignored by world governments is one of the great moral and political failures of our time. West Papuans have struggled for more than fifty years to find a way through the long night of Indonesian colonization. However, united in their pursuit of merdeka (freedom) in its many forms, what holds West Papuans together is greater than what divides them. Today, the Morning Star glimmers on the horizon, the supreme symbol of merdeka and a cherished sign of hope for the imminent arrival of peace and justice to West Papua. Morning Star Rising: The Politics of Decolonization in West Papua is an ethnographically framed account of the long, bitter fight for freedom that challenges the dominant international narrative that West Papuans' quest for political independence is fractured and futile. Camellia Webb-Gannon’s extensive interviews with the decolonization movement’s original architects and its more recent champions shed light on complex diasporic and intergenerational politics as well as social and cultural resurgence. In foregrounding West Papuans’ perspectives, the author shows that it is the body politic’s unflagging determination and hope, rather than military might or influential allies, that form the movement’s most unifying and powerful force for independence. This book examines the many intertwining strands of decolonization in Melanesia. Differences in cultural performance and political diversity throughout the region are generating new, fruitful trajectories. Simultaneously, Black and Indigenous solidarity and a shared Melanesian identity have forged a transnational grassroots power-base from which the movement is gaining momentum. Relevant beyond its West Papua focus, this book is essential reading for those interested in Pacific studies, Native and Indigenous studies, development studies, activism, and decolonization.

Ethnography that explores the political landscape of West Papua and chronicles indigenous struggles for independence during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

This book reviews the long guerilla struggle of the 'Organisasi Papua Merdeka' (OPM) for a Free Papua, and traces the rise of a non-violent independence movement alongside it, the Papua Council, following the fall from power of Indonesia’s military dictator, General Suharto, in 1998.

In alignment with Indigenous Politics, an emerging sub-field of Politics and IR, this book considers West Papuan Indigenous nationhood. Combining Settler Colonial Studies and Critical Indigenous Theory, the research opens up sovereignty as a political category of analysis to reveal an embedded nation within Indonesia. In June 2000 the Second Papuan People’s Congress in Jayapura rejected the basis on which West Papua had been incorporated into Indonesia and resolved that the “people of Papua have been sovereign as a nation and a state since 1 December 1962”. Indonesian president Wahid firmly opposed this resolution and state officials posted historical narratives on the Australian Embassy website that legitimated Indonesia’s incorporation of the once non-self-governing territory. A mapping and analysis of these narratives demonstrate a settler colonial present within Southeast Asia. It is argued that the US’s appeasement of Indonesia’s takeover in the 1960s was based on the Great Power’s concern to promote its strategic and economic status in the region. “This is a timely intervention that contributes to a growing debate on settler colonialism as a mode of domination that characterises the global present and involves locales not normally seen as settler colonial. West Papua fits the bill”. -Associate Professor Lorenzo Veracini, author of Settler Colonial Studies: A Theoretical overview.

For West Papua and its people, the promise of sovereignty has never been realized, despite a long and fraught struggle for independence from Indonesia. In Laughing at Leviathan, Danilyn Rutherford examines this struggle through a series of interlocking essays that drive at the core meaning of sovereignty itself—how it is fueled, formed, and even thwarted by pivotal but often overlooked players: those that make up an audience. Whether these players are citizens, missionaries, competing governmental powers, nongovernmental organizations, or the international community at large, Rutherford shows how a complex interplay of various observers is key to the establishment and understanding of the sovereign nation-state. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from YouTube videos to Dutch propaganda to her own fieldwork observations, Rutherford draws the history of Indonesia, empire, and postcolonial nation-building into a powerful examination of performance and power. Ultimately she revises Thomas Hobbes, painting a picture of the Leviathan not as a coherent body but a fragmented one distributed across a wide range of both real and imagined spectators. In doing so, she offers an important new approach to the understanding of political struggle.

Chemical weapons deployed. Choppers taken out. Tens of thousands of people displaced. Communications repressed. The West Papuan independence movement has reignited, and Indonesian troops are cracking down. In The Road, John Martinkus gives a gripping, up-to-date account of the province's descent into armed conflict and suppression. Replete with vivid detail and new information, his revelatory work of journalism shows how and why a highlands road led to an uprising, and where this might all lead.