Political Awakening in West New Guinea

Abstract

ON AUGUST I5, i962, an agreement between Indonesia and the Netherlands ended a thirteen-year dispute over the status of West Irian (West New Guinea). The agreement provided for a transfer of administration by the Netherlands to Indonesia after an interim United Nations period and contained provisions for realizing the act of granted to the inhabitants before the end of i969.1 However, the Netherlands administration had begun to implement its promises of self-determination during the last few years, and it claims that the small elite which has emerged reflects a genuine political consciousness. This article is concerned with the development of that consciousness. West Irian covers some i6iooo square miles of territory, most of which is dense swamp and rugged mountain. Contact with the outside world has been minimal. The designation of its people as was made by outsiders; its meaning is obscure; it may come from the time when slaveraiding expeditions from sultanates in the Moluccas collected their human cargo from the Papuan islands. The Dutch East India Company considered New Guinea a backwater and merely a convenient barrier against intruders into its lucrative spice trade. Effective Dutch occupation could not be claimed until i898 when posts were established at Manokwari in the north and at Fak-Fak in the southwest. Nevertheless, West Irian remained an almost forgotten land until the Pacific war. Administrative control was haphazard and limited to a few scattered posts along the fringes. So primitive were the inhabitants and so easy was it for the colonial government to attract semi-skilled and skilled personnel from other areas in Indonesia that village teachers, hospital attendants, and even policemen came almost exclusively from Ambon, Menado, and the Kei and Tanimbar islands.2 In this primitive society such men were part of the ruling caste, participating in a system of double colonialism. The expression Papua bodok (stupid Papuan) was employed by some of these outsiders whose air of superiority gradually came to be resented by the Papuans. On the other hand, Papuans used the term