The Supreme Sukundimi Declaration – Sacred Water, Moral Ecologies and Ontological Politics in a Mining Encounter in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

ABSTRACT I discuss the Supreme Sukundimi Declaration, published as part of a campaign against the Frieda River Copper-Gold Project, in relation to the cosmo-ontological politics of individual and collective actors in a mining encounter in Papua New Guinea. I analyse the mobilisation of the Sepik River as a sacred being and a political actor from a perspective informed by findings from long-term fieldwork with Nyaura communities. In my analysis, I draw on theories from the New Animism that I combine with a political ontology perspective to grasp the political significance of the Sepik River’s connectedness with human and non-human entities in a regional and national context in which spirits are an important part of reality. I suggest that the fight of Sepik people, who align themselves with ancestral forces against the mining project and their national government, can be understood as a fight between different ontologies or ways of being-in-the-world.