Hospital Births and Frontier Obstetrics in Urban West Papua

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with 60 urban Indigenous Papuan parents, we investigate how a frontier context shapes childbirth and maternity care. Building on arguments about how medical care may perpetuate violence and inequalities, we show tensions and contestations between Papuans and the Indonesian medical system over what care Papuans want and what is made available to them. Urban Papuans embraced medical advice and hospital assistance. They valued preserving the mother’s strength and fertility through vaginal childbirth or avoiding caesarean sections, which some described as part of a larger agenda of Papuan persistence amid Indonesian colonialism. But they often encountered what we call ‘frontier obstetrics’: invasive technological interventions in hospital births that display Indonesian power and authoritative knowledge, with little consideration for consent or culture in medical encounters. Challenging authoritative knowledge and contesting c-sections are ways some Papuans may disrupt and exceed the care that they are offered.