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“Race, Identity and Diplomacy in the Papua Decolonization Struggle, 1949-1962,” in
Race, Ethnicity and the Cold War: A Global Perspective, ed. Philip Muehlenbeck
(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012).
David Webster
As they gained independence, African governments were courted from many corners.
1
One of the most unusual was a group of unofficial diplomats from Papua, which was then
still the Dutch colony of West New Guinea.
2
There, in the seas where Asia faded into the
Pacific islands, a Papuan nationalist movement sought to insert itself into an Indonesian-
Dutch diplomatic and military struggle for control of their homeland. The Dutch spoke of
tutelage, the Indonesians of regaining a part of their territory still under colonial rule. The
issue threatened to erupt into war before the US government intervened in 1962 and
forced a settlement that saw the territory transferred to Indonesian rule, where it remains,
restively, to this day.
Papuan nationalists touring Africa in 1962, months before the American-mediated
settlement, carried with them a pamphlet. “BROTHERS AND SISTERS NEGROIDS!” it
exhorted. “It’s about time you break away from your busy work to listen to what we
Papuans have to say! Many, many times you have heard about us from the Dutch and
Indonesians, without having known us. Now we will take the floor ourselves. We are
living in the Pacific, our people are called Papuans, our ethnic origin is the Negroid
race.”
3
The pamphlet made an audacious claim that mobilized ideas of race to back a
demand for independence. As they traveled through Africa, their hosts remarked with
surprise on their appearance. These inhabitants of a Dutch colony, claimed by Indonesia,
“looked African.” Armed with that perception, they tried to turn “race” into a diplomatic
asset, transforming marginalization and powerlessness into a tool they could wield
internationally.
It would be difficult to make a case for ethnic ties between Africa and the
Melanesian Pacific, but the emergent Papuan nationalist movement nevertheless seized
on the dark skins and curly hair of many people in both areas. They lacked the strength to
win their case internationally. Yet in deciding to press the case for Papuan-African
commonality, they forged the identity that is still asserted in today’s Papuan
independence movement.
The case for the Papuans was not just one of diplomacy: it was an effort to
convince the world that there was such a thing as a Papuan people. The claim was
grounded in an assertion of racial difference between Papuans and Indonesians—
something made clear in the title of the Papuan nationalist pamphlet, The Voice of the
Negroids of the Pacific to the Negroids throughout the World. The pamphlet’s opening
article, signed by nationalist leader Nicolaas Jouwe, conceded that the case could not be
grounded in historical records, since the Papuans’ ancestors were illiterate. Still, he
wrote, “we Papuans know that we are an independent people and this is the time we want
to fight before the international forum to remain ourselves. We do not want to be slaves
anymore.” Papuans were a distinct people who “differ[ed] from the Indonesians
ethnologically not in the way the Indian differs from the Pakistani but like the people of
Ghana in West Africa differ from the Chinese. . . . WE ARE PAPUANS AND WANT TO
REMAIN PAPUANS!” Lest there be any mistaking its intent, Voice of the Negroids was
copiously illustrated with photographs of Papuans. One depicted a Papuan teacher
alongside Frédéric Guirma, Upper Volta’s ambassador to the United Nations. “What is
the ethnical difference between them?” the caption asked.
4
Similarly, an appeal from the
Papuan National Committee, the main vessel of Papuan nationalism, called on “all
negroid peoples in the world” as “fellow tribesmen” to lend help.
5
Papuan nationalists
continually stressed difference from Indonesia as foundational to their nation. “The
Papuan people form a nation, which has the right to its territory and its national State, in
the same way as the other peoples of the world,” one public meeting resolved in a motion
to UN Secretary-General U Thant. “The Papuans are not Indonesians.”
6
Grounded in
claims of difference and claims of international justice, the Papuan nationalist case
looked to the United Nations for support. As a host of new African states joined the
United Nations, they found hope in identification with Africa’s decolonization wave and
with Africans.
The period leading up to the publication of The Voice of the Negroids saw
Papuans form an identity within the context of Dutch-Indonesian struggle, defining
themselves along lines of “race.” The idea that Papuans were a race apart from
Indonesians was very much a product of colonial administration and anthropology. Yet
Papuan nationalists sought to reclaim and redeploy the idea that they were “black” for
their own ends. This was partly to build a unifying sense of nation within Papua, but
equally it had pragmatic diplomatic goals, as a strategy to build international support for
Papuan independence. Diplomatic struggle drove identity formation. Papuan nonstate
diplomats donned the hallowed pan-African mantle. This gave them a claim to the dignity
of independence, and offered the prospect of overseas supporters able to lend weight to
their claims for a separate future from the regional giant, Indonesia.
Yet it also left them victim to ideas of space and place implicit in Western minds.
If they were black, that made them, to many in the West, primitive. A claim for
independence was rendered into an argument against independence. Diplomatic thinking
of the day “situate[d] black subjects and their geopolitical concerns as being elsewhere
(on the margin, on the underside, outside the normal),” to cite Katherine McKittrick and
Clyde Woods. Writing on the history of Papua’s transfer from Dutch to Indonesian rule
has similarly tended to exclude Papuan voices, even though “the situated knowledge of
these communities and their contributions to real and imagined human geographies are
significant political acts and expressions.”
7
In other words, Papuans were subjects in their
own history, even though most historical accounts have omitted them.
The new Papuan identity was constructed internationally, rather than by factors
from within the territory. It is best understood as part of the Africa-centred global wave
of decolonization in the early 1960s. Papuans, told they were “black,” reclaimed and
redeployed the imposed race category. Rejecting any notion that they were part of
another country, or destined for years of “tutelage,” they demanded equality with other
peoples, framing this claim in internationally accepted terms as a demand for
decolonization and self-determination. The decolonizing “wind of change” in Africa
offered a window for parallel Papuan hopes for decolonization, but Cold War politics
slammed that window shut. Although it failed in its bid for independence, the Papuan
claim to be in a sense African became foundational to Papuan nationalism. Before it
could make claims that linked Papua to Africa in the 1960s, however, Papuan nationalism
had to form within more limited regional spaces.
Papua in Indonesian and Melanesian Contexts, 1945–1959
Papuan identity emerged in the short period between the Indonesian independence
declaration of 1945, and the Indonesian takeover of the 1960s. It was historically
contingent—which does not make it less real or deeply held. International factors were
key in identity formation. In 1944, Allied forces pushed the Japanese military out of New
Guinea. General Douglas MacArthur established his base at what is now the Papuan
provincial capital, Jayapura—then called Kampong Harapan, the village of hope. The
arrival of African American soldiers made a major impression. Jouwe recalled the
impression of these dark-skinned troops on local Papuans: “They saw how the Negroes,
who were as black as we, were building roads, driving large army trucks, and were able
to do all sorts of things as well as the Whites. They saw Black pilots, Black sailors,
Blacks in beautiful uniforms with bottles of Coca-Cola. Of course they had no idea about
racial discrimination in the USA. But what they saw opened their eyes. They had always
been despised and treated as savages.”
8
Another nationalist leader, E. J. Bonay, took
away a similar impression of African American soldiers: “They worked and fought
shoulder to shoulder with their white comrades. The Negro men flew fighter planes,
commanded warships, fired artillery, and drove vehicles and so forth. . . . Seeing this,
Papuans asked themselves why can the Negroes do these things and the Papuans not? Is
not our skin color and hair the same?”
9
Papuan elites had to contend with the fact of Indonesia’s independence
declaration, issued two days after the Japanese surrender. Was merdeka (freedom) to be
realized in partnership with the new Republic of Indonesia, or in opposition to it? For
Indonesian nationalists, there was no question: Papua was part of the Dutch East Indies,
therefore part of Indonesia, and the proclamation settled the issue of self-determination
once and for all. Dutch officials proposed an eventual independent Papua in union with
the Netherlands. The proposal split the Papuan elite into two factions. Silas Papare
emerged as the leader of those who rejected it, while Markus Kaisiepo, Nicolaas Jouwe,
and others accepted it.
10
The idea of separating Papua from Indonesia went back to the
1930s, with some Dutch groups seeing it as a new tropical Holland to be carved out of the
wilderness. These groups included fascists who sought a “white New Guinea.”
11
In this
vision, Papuans were invisible, part of nature. Colonial race scholarship rendered them as
Melanesian rather than Indonesian, the anthropological catchall term for the rest of the
Indies (plus present-day Malaysia, the Philippines, and Madagascar). Anthropology
mapped race on lines of difference. Where the Indonesians were for the most part brown
skinned and straight haired, Papuans’ black skin and curly hair prompted their depiction
as “Oriental Negroes” by turn-of-the-century Dutch explorers.
12
Nineteenth-century
writers had speculated that Melanesians might be originally from Africa—they were “all
children of Ham.” As Gerald Horne has noted, a “blackbirding” trade in “Papuan
savages” went back to the nineteenth-century construction of a “white Pacific” in
Australia, the United States, and elsewhere.
13
Papuan nationalists renamed the territory Irian, a term coined by Markus Kaisiepo
meaning the hot land that rises out of the tropical haze. Silas Papare established the first
nationalist group, the Partai Kemerdekaan Irian Indonesia (PKII), the Irian Indonesian
Independence Party. After planning an anti-Dutch uprising, Papare was jailed for a time,
then founded the PKII in 1946 to seek independence from the Netherlands as an
autonomous component of the new decentralized Indonesian Republic. Papare stressed
that “the PKII will only recognize a government of its own choice, that is, constituted by
the people and for the people.”
14
If Papare represented one current in Papuan nationalism,
Markus Kaisiepo represented the other. Kaisiepo was foremost among the early Papuan
nationalists who rejected the path to independence as part of Indonesia. By the 1960s he
was, in the words of an Australian diplomat, “regarded by the Dutch as the doyen of the
Papuan elite.”
15
In the sense of newness and discovery, Papuan reactions echoed global feelings.
“A wind is rising,” wrote Walter White, who went on to head the NAACP—“a wind of
determination by the have-nots of the world to share the benefits of freedom and
prosperity which the haves of the earth have tried to keep exclusively for themselves.”
White deplored the return of such European holdings as Papua to their former colonial
ruler. “Colored peoples, particularly in the Pacific, believed, whether correctly or not,
that in its later stages the war was being fought to restore empire to Great Britain, France,
Holland, and Portugal,” he wrote. US policy, influenced by racialized thinking, tended to
preach self-determination but sympathize with European governments. Washington took
a pro-Dutch stance in the early stages of the Indonesian revolution, which drew the
condemnation of African American anticolonialists at home. It shifted only after the new
Republic of Indonesia proved its anticommunist bona fides by crushing a communist
uprising in 1948.
16
American and UN diplomacy saw the Netherlands accept Indonesian
independence in 1949. The Indonesian-Dutch negotiations leading to this deal
deadlocked over control of Papua. Papuan leaders complained that Papua’s fate was
being settled with no Papuans present, as if it was “a piece of merchandise.”
17
Papuan
nationalism was forming, with Indonesia defined as the “other.” This process gelled
under Dutch rule in the 1950s.
The postwar international climate made it necessary for the Netherlands to justify
its continued colonial presence in Papua. Dutch authorities insisted that there were two
different races in the Netherlands East Indies: on this, “we can trust the simple evidence
of our own eyes.”
18
By making race the reason for their presence in Papua, they set the
boundaries within which a new Papuan or Melanesian identity could emerge. As Danilyn
Rutherford has written, “the Papuan was born in a process of naming in which those
designated as such had little part.”
19
The result was a colonial government that gave an unusually large responsibility
to anthropologists. Plans drawn up in 1949 for a colonywide parliament were shelved for
a series of local councils. A gradualist approach stressed political training but avoided
firm target dates for independence. In the words of Governor Jan van Baal, himself a
distinguished anthropologist: “Real independence is dependent on economic
development.”
20
Dutch colonialists wanted to prove they could succeed next to an
Indonesia that was failing. At the United Nations, the Dutch government argued for a
“sacred mission” in West New Guinea that represented “the natural self-respect of a
guardian who has begun the upbringing of an infant and does not want to relinquish the
responsibility until the child can stand on its own legs.”
21
Not surprisingly, Indonesian leaders were unimpressed with Dutch efforts to
follow policies in New Guinea that they remembered all too well themselves. They
derided claims for a separate Papuan political unit as racial pseudoscience. One
Indonesian pamphlet argued that “no one can draw a distinct dividing line between the
so-called Papua and Malay areas!”
22
The struggle to gain control of Papua became
increasingly central to Indonesian political unity. Patriotic songs, for instance, harnessed
Indonesian nationalism to the campaign to “restore West Irian to the fold of the
motherland.”
23
Papuan nationalists again found themselves squeezed between these two states in
conflict. When in 1949 the Dutch government accepted Indonesian independence but
held on to Papua, Silas Papare and his followers moved to Indonesia to carry on the
anticolonial struggle. Papare was appointed as one of three Papuan representatives in
exile sitting in the Indonesian parliament. He founded the Irian Struggle Body, which
continued to assert his right to speak for the Papuan people in international forums. In
1953 he was named a member of the Indonesian government’s Irian Bureau, set up as an
embryo for a future provincial government. His key role, however, was to serve as a
concrete representation of Papuan pro-Indonesian sentiment—his story made regular
appearances in Indonesian pamphlets produced for international consumption. Papare
declared an autonomous province from exile in 1956, but the Indonesian government
ignored this, announcing its own “autonomous province” soon afterward under the
leadership of the Sultan of Tidore—best known for his dynasty’s history as slave-traders
along the Papuan coasts.
24
If Papare had been squeezed out in the “autonomous province” episode, Markus
Kaisiepo also felt a sense of betrayal the same year as Dutch churches began to call for
talks with Indonesia. Kaisiepo shifted away from Christianity as a result, stressing instead
indigenous beliefs and unambiguous Papuan nationalism. With Jouwe, Bonay, and
fourteen other leaders, he signed a 1956 Papuan resolution that it must be Papuans who
maintained peace and stability in their country, given the call of the Dutch church for
Indonesian-Dutch talks.
25
Although Dutch categorizing of race was formative, Indonesian attitudes on race
also became decisive. The rejection of European racial classification was central to the
Indonesian nationalist project, which asserted a single nation embracing all indigenous
peoples throughout the archipelago.
Indonesian political depictions of Papua drew on ideas of center and periphery,
civilization and savagery. Territory mattered, and the lingering Dutch presence on part of
Indonesia’s “body” was painted as an “amputation” by Indonesian leaders. President
Sukarno, for instance, declared: “Compared to our archipelago, West Irian is the size of a
kelor (horseradish) leaf, yet West Irian is part of our body. Would anybody allow one of
his limbs to be amputated without putting up a fight? Does not a man cry out in pain if
even the tiniest finger of his hand is cut off?” The idea of all ethnicities in the archipelago
being Indonesian together was deeply rooted in Indonesian nationalism.
26
Nevertheless,
and unlike other regionally based ethnic minorities, Indonesian nationalist depictions of
Papuans tended toward racial caricature. One activist wrote about the need to “free”
Papuans from their “stone age civilization,” while noting their skills in music and sports;
Foreign Minister Subandrio spoke of the need to get Papuans “down out of the trees even
if we have to pull them down”; and Sukarno’s audience reportedly appeared in blackface
at one rally.
27
Indonesian nationalism, even as it extolled the struggle to gain control of
Papua, othered the Papuan people.
The Indonesian-Dutch struggle was over who would possess the land. In Jouwe’s
words: “Papua was like a virgin girl, being ready to be married by anyone strong enough
to get her.”
28
Gendered concepts had also been present from the beginnings of the
Indonesian nationalist movement, a project of freeing the feminine body of the
motherland (Ibu Pertiwi) from colonialism through dynamic action by nationalist men.
These gendered themes became stronger as the nationalist movement won its freedom in
a war of revolution that spawned heroic memories, and then inherited a state apparatus.
Dutch colonial rhetoric often feminized Indonesian men, and US colonial-period images
did the same.
29
That legacy remained postindependence: US images portrayed Sukarno as
a vain, emotional, and irrational ruler,. But Sukarno’s popularity at home only benefited
when he was criticized for womanizing on his foreign trips, and he was careful to bolster
his masculine image through the conjuring of national grandeur and the construction of
grand projects and symbols like the National Monument in Jakarta, a column locals
dubbed “Sukarno’s last erection.”
Throughout the 1950s, Western assumptions about Indonesian backwardness and
incapacity reinforced strategic calculations that privileged European concerns. One
typical note from a Western diplomat underlines this point:
Looked at objectively and realistically in the light of current conditions in
Indonesia, of course, acquisition of another vast stretch of primitive territory
would be like piling Ossia upon Pelion. . . . But emotion, pride and bitterness
compounded have expanded the issue of control over a rugged and backward
South Sea tract of land into a political problem of global impact, possibly fraught
with menace to the world’s peace and certainly to its peace of mind.
30
Only when this attitude began to shift, and racialized attitudes toward “primitive”
Papuans began to grow, did this change.
Papua as “New Africa,” 1960–1962
Racial categories in the Papuan-Indonesian conflict were very recent constructions. In
adopting “race” as a marker of difference, Papuan nationalists embraced a new mental
map of sharp division, rather than gradual shading, between Indonesia and Melanesia
(islands of dark-skinned people). A sharp racial divide was then painted as a sharp
ideological divide. “I don’t believe that in the future we will be friendly with Asiatic
people,” Jouwe wrote. “They will become more and more communistic. We are a Pacific
people.”
31
Nationalism surged as the Dutch government announced a ten-year plan for self-
government. In 1961, a semi-elected New Guinea Council with a Papuan majority took
office. With this step, Papuan nationalists became diplomatic actors. The council swiftly
staked a claim as the legitimate international voice of the Papuan people. It resolved, for
instance, that the Netherlands was “no longer free” to dispose of the territory without
council consent.
32
A Papuan National Congress convened in October 1961 to choose and deploy
images of nationhood—a new flag and anthem—in the global diplomatic arena. Within a
year, 95 percent of Papuan students could identify the new symbols. The Congress,
“knowing that we are united as a people and a nation,” demanded “our own position,
equal to that of the free nations and in the ranks of these nations.” Despite this,
Indonesians and Americans believed that the new flag, designed by Jouwe, was a Dutch
creation, and that the Dutch rather than a nationalist gathering had insisted on a name
change from Netherlands New Guinea to West Papua. This ascribed to colonial rulers
what was in fact the result of Papuan agency.
33
A group of young Papuans formed the National Party, Parna, which called for
tripartite Indonesian-Dutch-Papuan talks on the territory’s future. One Dutch official
dismissed their call as “naïve and infantile,” evoking images of a Dutch father toward his
Papuan children that still pervaded the Netherlands government.
34
Still, Parna was a
significant political force, founded in a rejection of “father-son dependency” and
complaints that the white minority was engaging in “apartheid,” and willing to criticize
the Dutch government for not moving quickly enough toward self-determination. It
seemed driven by typical anticolonial sentiments, noting that “even today there are
Netherlanders, and among those religious leaders in Papua country, who still regard the
people of New Guinea as a herd of animals, who cannot think, who can only eat.”
35
The
reference to apartheid, meanwhile, indicated a global awareness and a sense of
connection to decolonization struggles in Africa.
The initial space for Papuan race perceptions was Melanesia. In attempting to
move Papuan mental maps to a Pacific rather than Southeast Asian setting and to build
regional security partnerships, Dutch officials had sought to create links between their
colony and the decolonizing Pacific islands, especially the Australian-administered half
of the island (now Papua New Guinea). Papuan leaders used this opening presented by
Dutch strategic calculations for their own ends, pressing for a “Melanesian Federation”
including the whole island. At an Australian-Dutch administrative cooperation
conference in 1961, Jouwe hoped for “the distant day when all Papuans from Sorong in
West New Guinea to Samarai in East New Guinea will share common political
feelings.”
36
Kaisiepo attended South Pacific Commission meetings as a Papuan
representative, where he was able to convince “leading persons of the Polynesian,
Micronesian, and Melanesian peoples” to call on the United Nations to support “the unity
of the Melanesian people which cannot be destroyed and who cannot be compelled to
unite with any other people than the Melanesian people, based upon the unity of the
Island of New Guinea.”
37
Yet Melanesia was not enough to meet the need for international diplomatic
support. The nationalist mental map based on Melanesian racial identity therefore
expanded to include Africa.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana in particular seized the global pan-African
imagination. It was “a virile black republic headed by a disciple” of pan-Africanism, “the
African American Camelot.” Nkrumah declared: “For too long in our history Africa has
spoken through the voice of others. Now what I have called the African Personality in
international affairs will have a chance of making its proper impact and will let the world
know it through the voices of its sons.”
38
Sixteen more African countries joined the
United Nations in 1960, shifting the balance of voting power and making African support
a valuable asset. In the fall of 1961, the Papua case came to the United Nations as part of
the General Assembly’s declaration on how to implement the Declaration on the Granting
of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, passed the year before. Unlike the
other colonial powers, the Dutch government had supported that resolution and brought
forward a plan to end colonialism in Papua the following year, hoping its vote for rapid
decolonization had earned it some credibility. Foreign Minister Joseph Luns offered to
transfer sovereignty to the Papuans and administration to the United Nations, while still
paying the costs of administration. Indonesian foreign minister Subandrio called that “a
declaration of war,” while his ambassador in Washington declared that the Dutch meant
“not to give self-determination but to create separatism and finally to amputate Irian
Barat [Papua] from Indonesian territory.” Indonesian diplomats instead backed a proposal
from India for bilateral Indonesian-Dutch talks.
39
Into this battle entered the newly formed Brazzaville group, an association of
thirteen “moderate” African countries, most of them newly independent from France. In
their first joint diplomatic effort, the Brazzaville states offered a resolution endorsing
Papuan self-determination that married Indian and Dutch resolutions by calling for
bilateral talks, but also authorized implementation of the Luns plan if talks did not reach a
speedy agreement. This would include a UN mission to decide on the territory’s future.
The Brazzaville resolution was the product of the diplomacy and desires of its African
sponsors, who saw their own experience mirrored among Papuan nationalists. American
officials in Washington were seeking a resolution and willing to accept some of the
Indonesian arguments, but the US delegation to the United Nations rallied behind the
Brazzaville group’s efforts. “Real heroes were French-Africans who took on arduous task
out of belief in principle of self-determination,” the delegation reported. They had shown
the “courage of their convictions” and won a “moral victory due to their steadfastness in
resisting powerful pressures and blandishments to eliminate self-determination from their
resolution.”
40
In voting that followed bloc lines, the Brazzaville resolution fell short of
the two-thirds needed for adoption. Most significantly, the UN experience permitted the
expression of Papuan diplomacy.
The effort to identify with Africa trapped the Papuan leadership between two
African camps. With African politics polarized between Brazzaville group “moderates”
and Casablanca group “radicals,” appeals to pan-African sentiment from outside had less
space than they would after the formation of the Organization of African Unity in 1963.
The two camps were especially divided on attitudes toward the Congo civil war.
Indonesia backed Patrice Lumumba’s central government, and in doing so won the
support of African governments that sided with Lumumba. Indonesian officials argued
with some success that the Dutch were trying to split Indonesia through a separate
Papuan state, in the same way many African leaders thought Belgium was trying to split
the Congo by backing separatists. Here, Jakarta deployed a powerful argument grounded
in African-Asian solidarity and anticolonialism, recalling the 1955 Bandung conference
and appealing to the Casablanca group’s sympathy toward the new Non-Aligned
Movement formed in Belgrade in 1961. Sukarno’s notion of solidarity among the “new
emerging forces” of Africa and Asia appealed more to some governments than did
Papuan appeals to a putative pan-Africanism.
Papuan nationalists were further handicapped by the need to disarm Western
concerns that their country might become “another Congo,” fears that were already
motivating policy. The US State Department’s first study of the Papua problem evoked
images of “witchcraft, the cutting off of the finger-ends of widows, and headhunting,”
and determined that “premature independence” would be counter to American and
Western interests. Dutch officials warned of “a Congo situation” if they left Papua too
quickly. “Another Congo cannot happen here,” one Parna leader said, acknowledging the
comparison.
41
Policy makers already disposed to view such cases as Papua through racial
preconceptions did so all the more as Papuan diplomats stressed their identification with
Africa. For many in the West, Africa still evoked images of the primitive. It was “the
place of the savage, the natural abode of evil, the banquet hall of the cannibal, and the pit
of blackness itself.”
42
Yet the effort to disarm Western fears of another Congo alienated
key African governments. When a Dutch diplomat told officials at Ghana’s foreign
ministry that premature withdrawal risked “a vacuum which would permit a situation
similar to Congo to develop,” he evoked only anger at colonial meddling in the Congo
conflict.
43
Both Washington and Jakarta saw the Papuans as mired in the Stone Age, a factor
that eased American policy makers’ journey from neutrality to a more pro-Indonesian
stance on the Papua issue. There was no effort to ascertain Papuan views: ideas of Papua
as hopelessly primitive underpinned a strategic calculation. Ironically, this came even as
Papuan views were becoming clearer and more vocal in support of self-determination.
The New Guinea Council issued a note on self-determination in February 1962 that made
its stance crystal clear: “The Papuan people as an ethnological unit has the right to decide
its own fate in pursuance of item 2 of the decolonisation resolution 1514 (XV). . . . As set
out in item 6 of the Decolonisation Resolution of the United Nations No. 1514 (XV), an
insufficient economic or social development of the population should in itself not justify
the prevention of the right to self-determination from being exercised.”
44
This statement
was followed up with a decision to send missions overseas to African and Asian
countries, including Indonesia, a call for independence by 1970 at the latest, and an
acceptance of trusteeship by the United Nations or by any country other than Indonesia.
Similarly, Papuan exiles in Indonesia were moving toward a call for self-
determination. Silas Papare and his supporters had worked closely with Indonesian
authorities until their declaration of an autonomous provincial government-in-exile failed
to win Indonesian government support. In 1960, Papare was pensioned off, at age forty-
two, from his position as an ex officio member of the Indonesian parliament. After the
election of the New Guinea Council and the inauguration of new nationalist symbols,
Papare told the American ambassador that he faced arrest for being too critical of
Sukarno. Three New Guinea councilors had asked him to return and assist in an
independence declaration, he said. Papuan nationalists were simply “awaiting his return
before announcing independence.” He said he wanted to return to be part of a new
Papuan state, and asked for American aid to “assist and protect new nation.” This episode
came just days after Indonesian foreign minister Subandrio described Papare as “by far
the best” of the Papuans living in Indonesia, and the likely candidate for governor of a
future Indonesian province.
45
Papare’s back-channel negotiations with members of the
New Guinea Council were a sign that the two streams of Papuan nationalism, which had
diverged in 1945–1949, were converging. Those nationalists proved too weak, however,
to assert themselves as an international force independent of their respective patrons.
In Washington, Papua appeared as a land too hopelessly primitive to dream of
self-determination. “For those Americans who could find it on a map,” Bradley Simpson
points out, “West New Guinea was a blank slate upon which they could write their
fantasies about primitive people and the benefits of encounter with the West.”
46
Stone
Age images began to reach a wider American audience beginning with the 1961 Harvard-
Peabody anthropological expedition to the Dani people of the interior mountains, and the
many photographs of scantily clad Dani men and topless Dani women transmitted home.
From it came a series of books and films such as the anthropological classic Dead Birds,
often previewed in photographic spreads in US magazines.
47
Also prominent in Western
depictions were the Asmat, profiled in the 1960 film Le Ciel et la Boue (released in
English in 1961 as The Sky Above, the Earth Below). Michael Rockefeller, a promising
young anthropologist whose family name always conjured attention, added a fascination
with Asmat art, shipping large amounts of it home to New York. Asmat art, like “Negro
art,” allowed collectors to praise its beauty while still looking down on its makers as
primitive.
48
In early 1962, Rockefeller drowned on an expedition to the Asmat. The
search for his body, never found, featured the personal participation of his father, New
York governor Nelson Rockefeller. This made headlines, and underlined the image of
Papua as hopelessly exotic, hostile, and primitive.
Rockefeller’s romantic swim and the still more romantic search for signs of his
body (or even his miraculous survival) stirred American imaginations far more than did
his fascination with Asmat artistic “remnants of a marvelous past.”
49
Press accounts
stressed unchanging timelessness. A photograph used in 1940 coverage of an American
aircrew that crashed in the interior lands of the Dani peoples was used, as if current, in
1961—with “native of Shangri-La” now captioned instead as “Typical Native—More
Primitive Than Civilized.” If anything, the imagery had become less sympathetic to Dani
peoples over time. In the 1940s, comic-book stories like “WAC in Shangri-La”
celebrated adventure, but by the 1960s, the land and people seemed hostile. Helpful
natives who had been “good farmers” in the 1940s comic became “a savage tribe focused
on war” in a 1961 New York Times report.
50
The land merged with the people in explorers’ stories. Explorer Heinrich Harrer’s
1962 mission to the interior aimed at both conquering the last unclimbed mountain and
unearthing the secrets of the Dani people. His account combined with reports from the
Harvard anthropologists to make the Dani the predominant representatives of West New
Guinea in the US popular imagination: Harrer portrayed them as wild children,
unpredictable as puppies, capable of enormous and thoughtless cruelties as well as
“richly comic” moments.
51
A war over control of this land seemed absurd, yet one
nevertheless loomed as Indonesian troops began to infiltrate Papua in support of their
government’s claim. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy cited a book of
photographs, Les papous coupeurs de têtes [Papuan headhunters], as evidence that
Papuans were far from “ready” for self-determination.
52
As Indonesian-Dutch tensions
flared into jungle skirmishes and naval clashes, Indonesia began to receive significant
shipments of Soviet arms. US policy makers began to work to avoid a war in Southeast
Asia. Kennedy said “he had a couple of wars in Southeast Asia; and West New Guinea
was one he would like not to have to fight. . . . Laos and Vietnam were enough.”
53
Kennedy administration thinking on Papua was consciously racialized. A war
“would have been white men against the Africans, the Asians, and the Communists,”
Robert Kennedy recalled.
54
The administration already faced a divisive internal battle
over civil rights that raised issues of American identity and racial inclusion. Its foreign
policy aimed at winning over the global South, inhabited mainly by peoples of color.
Civil rights progress at home aimed, in Mary Dudziak’s telling, to recount “a story of
progress, a story of the triumph of good over evil, a story of US moral superiority.”
Racism was America’s “Achilles heel” in foreign policy.
55
That approach would have
been undermined by any conflict pitting Europeans against Third World countries along
racial lines. Papua policy was not a case of US government ignorance of the Papuan
political situation. With conceptions of the primitive in the background, the
administration acted on its own mental maps. Those privileged the global over the local
and saw autonomous regional developments mostly through Cold War lenses.
Visiting Indonesia, Robert Kennedy made remarks hinting at Papuan primitivism
that enraged Papuan leaders. Drawing parallels to American history, a group of New
Guinea councilors called those words “advice to Indonesia to eradicate Papuan people
just like in history other people have been almost eradicated because they were so
backwards not to know shotguns and firewater.” In a telegram to the White House, they
added: “Independence and democracy can be understood and practiced by common
people even if they have not seen Harvard.” This was filed with a State Department note
stating: “[T]here is no advantage to be gained in replying to these persons.” Papuan
resentment of the Kennedy administration role continues to linger. One recent nationalist
publication complains of Kennedy’s “Anti-Papua” feelings, arguing that the president’s
“disregard for West Papua” combined “America’s economic and political interests” with
“JFK’s revengeful attitude toward West Papua,” a result of the death of Michael
Rockefeller.
56
With few prospects of Western support, Papuan appeals to Africa seemed the only
hope of generating new international support for self-determination. They continued to
foster the Brazzaville connection, hosting a visit by the heads of the Upper Volta and
Dahomey UN delegations in April 1962. American officials tried at the last minute to
have the Dutch prevent this visit, expressing “qualms over this project” and worrying it
would encourage the New Guinea Council to declare independence. They sought and
obtained Dutch assurances that there would be no Papuan independence declaration in
April.
57
Dahomey’s delegate, Maxime-Léopold Zollner, returned to New York
“profoundly struck by the racial differences between the inhabitants of New Guinea and
those of Indonesia.” Ambassador Guirma of Upper Volta was also “deeply impressed by
the ethnical differences between Papuans and the inhabitants of Indonesia which led him
to disregard Djakarta’s contention that West Irians are Indonesians.” Papuan nationalists
toured Africa in the first half of 1962. Visits and appeals included the Brazzaville group,
with trips to Upper Volta, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Dahomey. But they aimed
especially at key states seen as having strong Third World nationalist credentials:
Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, the Congo, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Kaisiepo said
Papuans “did not want to be handed over to Indonesia like cattle” but would not declare a
premature independence. The key effort was to win support in Ghana. There, officials
were reportedly “struck not so much by the strength of the West New Guinea [Papua]
case as by the color and the physiognomy of the West New Guineans, whom they thought
would look like Indonesians. Their strong resemblance to Africans surprised the
Ghanaians and made at least one of the officials think that perhaps Ghana was supporting
the wrong side in the dispute.” That did not lead to any policy change, however: Ghana’s
alignment with Indonesia mattered more. “We share your views completely and stand
behind you,” the Papuans were told, “but Nkrumah is a great friend of Sukarno’s and
therefore we have to vote against.”
58
The imperatives of Afro-Asian solidarity trumped
Papuan appeals to pan-Africanism.
Sympathy was higher in newly independent Tanganyika, where Prime Minister
Julius Nyerere’s government proposed a ceasefire, a temporary Indonesian trusteeship
accountable to the United Nations, and a UN office in Papua empowered to hold free
elections on the territory’s future sponsored elections as soon as “the United Nations
thinks the time is ripe to do so.” Tanganyikan diplomats called for immediate talks and
offered to mediate. Tanganyika’s “first faltering step” into diplomacy should not be taken
seriously for its own sake, but simply as an example of poor planning in new African
foreign ministries, the US embassy’s report sniffed.
59
In the first half of 1962, Indonesian-Dutch talks mediated by American diplomat
Ellsworth Bunker led to a plan for transfer from Dutch to UN administration, followed by
a transfer to Indonesia soon afterward, then some form of self-determination to be carried
out by Indonesian authorities later on. This in effect accepted Indonesian arguments. US
government pressure finally managed to extract Dutch agreement as well, and a final deal
along those lines was signed in August 1962. Papuan nationalist leaders experienced that
as betrayal. One petition called the Bunker plan “a fire that will burn us citizens of West
Papua to death.” A group of leaders in the nationalist stronghold of Biak “reject[ed] Mr.
Bunker’s proposal, because it leads to the enslavement and destruction of the people of
Papua Barat by the modern imperialisme [sic] of Indonesia.” Citing the UN resolution on
ending colonialism in an appeal sent to the United Nations, Dutch authorities, and the
Brazzaville states, they declared that “the rights of small nations are the same as those of
the big nations. Thus the rights of the Papuans are the same as those of the Americans
and the rights of the Papuans are the same as those of the Burmese.” Based on the
promise of independence, Papuan nationalists had defined their nation in opposition to
Indonesia, but now they faced the prospect of early Indonesian rule.
60
Yet the cry for
independence persisted. Parna renewed its call for independence by 1970. The Papuan
National Council agreed to the Dutch-Indonesian deal but demanded that the UN
authority recognize their flag and anthem and that a plebiscite be held by the end of 1963.
A new Papuan National Front asked to send a delegation to UN headquarters to
renegotiate the Bunker plan, calling for a plebiscite on self-determination to be held
before the UN administration left, and for UN administrators to serve as deputies to
Papuan counterparts. Pro-independence rallies across the territory waved signs with such
messages as “We are not merchandise” and “How many Yankee dollars for selling
Papua?” Similar sentiments came from outlying regions. A group in Manokwari, at the
opposite end of Papua from the capital, announced: “[W]e stick to the flag of West Papua
which is the nationalist symbol of West Papua.”
61
From the Dani lands, only five years
after the arrival of Dutch colonial administrators, anthropologist Karl Heider reported that
“the enthusiasm for Papua Barat [West Papua] is great and, I think, mostly genuine. They
have a flag, a song, and a name, and now a growing sense of identification. If Sukarno
does take the country, he will be stuck with an area which is not only economically
useless, but politically resentful.”
62
Elite nationalism, driven by diplomatic imperatives,
was being widely embraced.
This did not alter the determination of UN officials to manage a smooth transition
to Indonesian rule. There was little knowledge of the situation on the ground, with UN
officials for instance exclaiming with surprise that Papua’s lingua franca was a version of
Malay, as was Indonesia’s (and, though this was not stated, Malaysia’s too).
63
Indonesian
officials stressed taking possession, more than liberation. Subandrio declared that
Indonesia would “introduce civilization” in the interior and made it “quite clear that they
have no intention of keeping . . . their agreement with the Netherlands” to hold a
plebiscite.”
64
Although Parna leader E. J. Bonay was appointed as the first governor of the
Indonesian province of West Irian, he was soon removed as untrustworthy, then arrested.
Silas Papare, passed over for governor, was arrested during the UN administration period
in 1962. One by one, Papuan leaders found their way into jail or exile. Nationalist groups
formed to lobby for independence from bases in the Netherlands, Senegal, Japan, and
elsewhere. The language of racial difference from Indonesia remained central. A heavily
documented appeal to U Thant and to the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1965, for
instance, concluded: “it is becoming clear to us that the Indonesians seriously intend to
wipe out the 750.000 Papuans, of the NEGROID RACE, of[f] the face of their native earth,
West Papua/West New Guinea, by brute force” and replace them with Indonesian
migrants. “Papuans belong to a Negroid race, not Indonesian,” a Papuan youth group
wrote the same year.
65
A flurry of international diplomacy in 1969 tried to ensure that the “act of free
choice” held by Indonesia in keeping with the terms of the 1962 agreement would be a
real act of self-determination, not a piece of political theater. Jouwe’s Freedom
Committee of West Papua–West New Guinea called on the United Nations to provide an
armed peacekeeping and protection force. It argued that the United Nations was “co-
responsible for the fate and future of the Papuan people,” given its role in handing the
territory over to Indonesian rule. The same call went out to key Western governments but
was met with silence or rejection. UN observers were said to have a stack of Papuan
protest letters “a foot thick” handed over by such clandestine methods as being hidden
inside seashells.
66
When the act saw the 1,023 electors chosen by Indonesian authorities
opt unanimously for integration into Indonesia, the majority of African governments
refused to endorse the UN report accepting this as valid. Lingering sympathy for Papuan
independence saw most Brazzaville states withhold their consent for Indonesian formal
annexation. Ghana, now more convinced of the logic of the Papuan case and less in
sympathy with General Suharto’s New Order regime in Indonesia, tried without success
to amend the UN resolution, taking note of the act to require a further chance for free
choice by 1975. Fifteen African states refused in the General Assembly voting to “take
note” of the UN representative’s report, a result of Papuan lobbying of African
governments.
67
Indonesian rule, among its other harshly repressive aspects, aimed at removing
the racial basis of Papuan identity. The “transmigration” program, for instance, aimed to
move large numbers of Indonesian peasants from densely populated Java into Papua.
Claims of racial difference nevertheless have been central to continued Papuan
independence campaigning. Testifying to the UN Commission on Human Rights, for
instance, the Free Papua Movement sought an end to “the obliteration of the Papuan
Negroid or Melanesian people in West Papua” and recalled Brazzaville group support of
the “Negroid people of West Papua.” This support network continues to linger, seen for
instance in recent lobbying for Papuan human rights by the US Congressional Black
Caucus.
68
Conclusion
There is nothing inevitable about the course of identity formation in Papua. It was driven
by the contingent needs of the various diplomatic actors, and by international rather than
domestic factors. The demands of diplomacy in the period from 1949 to 1962, however,
formed the basis for what is now a lasting and deeply held Papuan sense of nationalism.
Papuans were first equated with Africans in the nineteenth century, in the context
of European defining and ordering of races. Colonial rule then codified and entrenched
those perceived differences. Dutch rule over Papua continued after the rest of the Dutch
East Indies became independent as Indonesia. Once the territory had been split from
Indonesia, a justification was needed. Dutch rulers found it in a renewed mission of
tutelage over a people newly defined as Papuan or Melanesian through the work of
colonial anthropologists. What had been a political convenience to justify colonialism
became the rallying cry for a people coming to think of themselves as Papuans. To gain
international support, they sought allies who could be seen to share their new identity.
This meant in the first case ethnic Melanesian peoples in the South Pacific, and then the
African continent. Yet the same factors that led to identification with Melanesia and
Africa cost Papuan nationalists their prospects of new overseas support. The idea that
violence in the Congo was the result of “premature independence” forced Papuan leaders
to offer reassurances to the West that cost them the prospect of support from such key
African states as Ghana. The identification with Africa also reinforced Western policy
makers’ ideas that Papuans were “primitives” living in “the Stone Age” and thus not
ready for self-determination. Papuan nationalists were not able to overcome these
obstacles. For all their efforts to speak for themselves, they did not manage to make
themselves heard internationally. Nevertheless, the identity forged in a diplomatic contest
that peaked in the early 1960s continues to define the indigenous inhabitants of Papua.
The strength of this identity is, if anything, stronger after half a century of Indonesian
rule.
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Notes
1
Parts of this chapter were previously published as a journal article, “Regimes in Motion:
The Kennedy Administration and Indonesia’s New Frontier, 1960–1962,” Diplomatic
History 33(1) (January 2009): 95–123, and are republished with the permission of
Diplomatic History and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
2
The territory’s names are multitude. Papua is the oldest name for the island also known
as New Guinea. Both names appear in the current designation of the eastern half of the
island, Papua New Guinea. The western half became the colony of Netherlands New
Guinea (or West New Guinea). Papuan nationalists created the name Irian in the 1940s,
and the term was adopted in Indonesia as West Irian (Irian Barat) even as the Dutch
continued to use the name West New Guinea. Papuan nationalists selected the new name
West Papua in 1961. In 1963, the territory became the Indonesian province of West Irian,
and was then renamed Irian Jaya (Great Irian) in 1969. The Indonesian government
renamed the province as Papua in response to local demand in 2001. For convenience, the
name Papua is used throughout this chapter.
3
This and following quotes taken from Voice of the Negroids in the Pacific to the
Negroids throughout the World [Papuan nationalist pamphlet published in Hollandia,
1962].
4
Voice of the Negroids.
5
Papuan National Committee appeal to “all fellow-tribesmen of the Negroids throughout
the world,” March 19, 1962.
6
“Motion à Son Excellence le Secrétaire general des Nations Unies,” passed at meeting
of four thousand Papuans, Numfor Island, July 24, 1962, UN Archives, S-0884-23-1.
7
Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods, Black Geographies and the Politics of Place
(Toronto: Between the Lines/Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007), 4.
8
C.L.M. Penders, The West New Guinea Debacle: Dutch Decolonisation and Indonesia,
1945–1962 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 89–90.
9
E. J. Bonay, unpublished memoir, cited in Richard Chauvel, Constructing Papuan
Nationalism: History, Ethnicity and Adaptation (Washington: East-West Center, 2005),
40.
10
Onnie Lumintang et al., Biografi Pahlawan Nasional, Marthin Indey dan Silas Papare
{A Biography of National Heroes Marthin Indey and Silas Papare] (Jakarta: Proyek
Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Sejarah Nasional, Direktorat Jenderal Kebudayaan,
Departamen Pendidikian dan Kebudayaan, 1997); Richard Chauvel, “Decolonising
without the Colonised: The Liberation of West Irian,” in Las relaciones internacionales
en el Pacífico (Siglos XVIII–XX): Colonización, descolonización, y encuentro cultural
[International relations in the Pacific (XVIII-XX Centuries): Colonization,
decolonization, and cultural encounter], ed. M. Dolores Elizade: 553-574 (Madrid:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1997).
11
Danilyn Fox Rutherford, “Trekking to New Guinea: Dutch Colonial Fantasies of a
Virgin Land, 1900–1942,” in Domesticating the Empire, ed. Julia Clancy-Smith and
Frances Gouda (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 255–71; Frances
Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands East Indies, 1900–
1942 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995); Arend Lijphart, The Trauma of
Decolonization: The Dutch and West New Guinea (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1966); Justus van der Kroef, “The Eurasians of West New Guinea,” United Asia 14
(1962). 123-128.
12
Chris Ballard, Steven Vink, and Anton Ploeg, Race to the Snow: Photography and the
Exploration of Dutch New Guinea, 1907–1936 (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute,
2001), 7.
13
Gerald Horne, The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South
Seas after the Civil War (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 2, 63, 133.
14
Silas Papare, “The ‘Partai Kemerdekaan Indonesia Irian’ [Irian party for Indonesian
Independence],” in Ministry of Information, The Truth about West Irian (Jakarta:
Ministry of Information, 1956), 18–21; Wolas Krenak, “Mengenang Irian Barat 36 Tahun
Silam: Kisah ‘Orang-orang Merah’ dan ‘Tuan-tuan Merdeka [Commemorating West
Irian 36 Years Ago: ‘Reds’ and ‘Freedom Champions’],’” Suara Pemabaruan, April 30,
1999; “Keadaan Politik [The Political Situation],” unpublished document attributed to
Free Papua Movement; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Question of West Irian (Jakarta:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1955), 30–32; Nonie Sharp, The Morning Star in Papua
Barat (North Carlton, Australia: Arena, 1994), 94; PKII resolution, March 1949, in
Lumintang et al., Pahlawan Nasional, 86–87.
15
H. W. Bullock, “Netherlands New Guinea—Markus Kasiepo [sic],” memorandum for
Australian Department of External Affairs, November 4, 1960, copy on file at Library
and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 25/6149/50409-40[6.1].
16
Walter Francis White, A Rising Wind: A Report on the Negro Soldier in the European
Theater of War (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Doran, 1945), 155, 147; W.E.B. DuBois
memorandum to NAACP secretary and board, September 7, 1948, cited in David
Levering Lewis, W.E.B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century,
1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 534; Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and
the Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–
1949 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981).
17
Penders, Debacle, 155.
18
Western New Guinea and the Netherlands (The Hague: Netherlands Government State
Printing Office, 1954), 11.
19
Danilyn Fox Rutherford, “Trekking to New Guinea: Dutch Colonial Fantasies of a
Virgin Land, 1900–1942,” in Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender and Family Life
in French and Dutch Colonialism, ed. Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 268.
20
Penders, Debacle, 396.
21
Handbook on Netherlands New Guinea (Rotterdam: New Guinea Institute, 1958), 5.
22
Ministry of Information, The Truth about West Irian, 5–7; “West Irian and Pseudo-
Science,” Indonesian Spectator, May 15, 1958, 15.
23
“Bebaskan Irian” [Free Irian], in Irian Barat, ed. M. Silaban (Medan: Pustaka Sri,
n.d.), 56.
24
Lumintang et al., Pahlawan Nasional; Ministry of Information, The Autonomous
Province of West Irian (Jakarta: Ministry of Information, 1956); The Case of West Irian
(West New Guinea) (Cairo, Indonesian Embassy, n.d.), 37–38; Ministry of Information,
The Truth about West Irian, 13–17; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Question of West
Irian (Jakarta: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1955), 18, 30–32.
25
Kaisiepo oral history and letter to the Dutch Reformed Church in Sharp, The Morning
Star; Papuan public meeting resolution, July 1956, in Nieuw Guinea spruikt zich uit [New
Guinea Speaks Out] [<AU: pls provide translation>] (Hollandia: Netherlands New
Guinea administration, 1956), 15–18. [Hollandia listed alone in ‘Voice of the Negroids’
above – include ‘New Guinea’ after Hollandia in both or neither.]
26
R. E. Elson, The Idea of Indonesia: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), 63, 223; Arend Lijpart, “The Indonesian Idea of West Irian,” Asian Survey
1(5) (July 1961): 9–16. The idea of countries as “geo-bodies” is explored in Thongchai
Winichakul, Siam Mapped (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
27
Herlina, The Golden Buckle (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Gadjah Mada University Press,
1990) 82, 85, 292-3; Subandrio cited in Peter Hastings, “Double Dutch and Indons,” in
Melanesia: Beyond Diversity, ed. R. J. May and Hank Nelson (Canberra: Australian
National University Research School of Pacific Studies, 1982), 159; Justus van der
Kroef, The West New Guinea Dispute (New York: Institute for Pacific Relations, 1958),
41n116.
28
“Papuan Politicians Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” Free Papua Movement
summary document.
29
Frances Gouda, “Languages of Gender and Neurosis in the Indonesian Struggle for
Independence,” Indonesia 64 (October 1997): 45-76; Tineke Hellwig, “A Double Murder
in Batavia: Representations of Gender and Race in the Indies,” Review of Indonesian and
Malaysian Affairs 35(2) (Summer 2001): 1–32.
30
Canadian Embassy in Jakarta to Canadian DEA, April 25, 1960, LAC,
RG25/6148/50409-40[4.2].
31
Henry S. Albinski, “Australia and the Dutch New Guinea Dispute,” International
Journal 16 (1961): 379; Nicolaas Jouwe, “Conflict at the Meeting Point of Melanesia and
Asia,” Pacific Islands Monthly (PIM), April 1978, 12.
32
Justus van der Kroef, “Recent Developments in West New Guinea,” Pacific Affairs 34
(1961/1962): 281.
33
Manifesto of the First Papuan Congress, October 19, 1961; P. W. van der Veur,
“Questionnaire Survey among the Potential Papuan Elite in 1962 West New Guinea,”
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [Journal of the Humanities and Social
Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania]120 (1964), 445; “Ten Questions on the West
Irian Dispute between Indonesia and the Netherlands,” Report on Indonesia (ROI),
January 1962, 7; W. W. Rostow memorandum to John F. Kennedy, November 30, 1961,
John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), National Security Files (NSF), box 205.
34
Canadian Embassy in The Hague to DEA, December 16, 1960, and November 18,
1960, LAC, RG25/6149/50409[6.1].
35
Justus van der Kroef, “Nationalism and Politics in West New Guinea,” Pacific Affairs
31 (1961/1962): 42; Penders, Debacle, 401, 407–19; “Dutch New Guinea Has a Political
Party,” PIM, September 1960, 23; “They Want a Republic,” PIM, April 1961, 20; “Dutch
Plan Thwarted,” ROI, December 19, 1961.
36
June Verrier, “Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the West New Guinea Question,
1949–1969” (PhD diss., Monash University, 1976), 203; Bilveer Singh, Papua:
Geopolitics and the Quest for Nationhood (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
2008), 63–64.
37
Declaration of South Pacific nationalist leaders, 1962, UN Archives, S-0229-25-2.
38
James Campbell, Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005
(New York: Penguin, 2006), 317; Lewis, W.E.B. DuBois, 565; van Eschen, Race against
Empire, 139–40; Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (New York:
Vintage, 1991), 77.
39
Subandrio, An Opening Address to the UN Political Committee (Jakarta: Ministry of
Foreign Affairs [1957]), 8; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 2d ed. (London:
Verso, 1991), 170–78; Luns speech to UN General Assembly, September 26, 1961, UN
Office of Information, General Assembly Official Records, A/PV.1016, 90-1; US
delegation at UN to Rusk, October 11, 1961, JFKL, NSF box 205; Indonesian Observer,
October 12, 1961; “Nugroho Warns U.S. of Potential Danger in West Irian Dispute,”
ROI, May 1962, 11.
40
Secretary of State Dean Rusk to UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson, November 24, 1961;
Stevenson to Rusk, November 29, 1961, JFKL, NSF box 205; Howard P. Jones,
Indonesia: The Possible Dream (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 45.
41
Policy Planning Staff study, “The Problem of West New Guinea (West Irian),” October
12, 1960, JFKL, NSF box 205; Dutch Ambassador J. H. van Roijen to US Ambassador
Ellsworth Bunker, April 14, 1962, UN Archives, S-0884-22-5; Herman Wajoi, cited in
“Nationalist Stir Felt by Papuans,” New York Times, April 3, 1961.
42
Charles J. Patterson, “What Is Africa to Me?” Transition 15 (1964): 20.
43
Canadian High Commission in Accra to DEA, January 10, 1962, LAC, RG
25/6149/50409-40[9].
44
New Guinea Council advisory note concerning the use of the right to self-
determination, February 16, 1962, Appendix to Viktor Kaisiepo, “The Case of West
Papua Sovereignty,” background paper for expert seminar on treaties, agreements and
other constructive arrangements between states and indigenous peoples, Geneva,
December 15–17, 2003, UN document HR/GENEVA/TSIP/SEM/2003/BP.16.
45
US Embassy in Jakarta to State Department, December 15, 1961, and January 8, 1962,
JFKL, NSF box 205; Lumintang, Pahlawan Nasional.
46
Bradley R. Simpson, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-
Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 45.
47
Robert F. Gardner and Karl G. Heider, Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New
Guinea Stone Age (London: Andre Deutsch, 1969); “The Ancient World of a War-Torn
Tribe,” Life, September 28, 1962; Peter Matthiesson, Under the Mountain Wall (New
York: Ballantine, 1962); Robert Gardner, Making Dead Birds: Chronicle of a Film
(Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press, 2007).
48
George Schuyler wrote that “Negro Art” reassured whites that Negro meant savage:
“even when he appears to be civilized, it is only necessary to beat a tom tom or wave a
rabbit’s foot and he is ready to strip off his Hart Shaffner & Marx suit, grab a spear and
ride off wild-eyed on the back of a crocodile.” Cited in Campbell, Middle Passages, 205.
49
Rockefeller letter, July 10, 1961, in The Asmat: The Journal of Michael Clark
Rockefeller (New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1967), 43; Milt Machlin, The Search
for Michael Rockefeller (New York: Putnam, 1972).
50
Undated press clipping from scrapbook and “WAC in Shangri La” (1945), reprinted in
Susan Meiselas, Encounters with the Dani (New York: International Center of
Photography, 2003), 21, 29–31; “Rocky Son Lost in N. Guinea,” Boston Record
American, November 20, 1961, reprinted in Gardner, Making Dead Birds, 108; Homer
Bigart, “Harvard Expedition Discovers a Warrior Tribe in New Guinea,” New York
Times, April 5, 1961.
51
Heinrich Harrer, I Come from the Stone Age (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964), 255.
52
Robert P. Martin, “War over This—?” US News and World Report, February 5, 1962
McGeorge Bundy to Robert Gardner, August 18, 1962, reprinted in Meiselas, Encounters
with the Dani, 114. Transmittal slips on file at JFKL indicate that Komer passed this
book to Bundy as evidence of the primitiveness of all Papuans, not just the Dani.
53
Walter W. Rostow (interviewee), recorded interview by Richard Neustadt
(interviewer), April 11, 1964 (pp. 88–89), JFKL Oral History Program.
54
Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Schulman, eds., Robert Kennedy in His Own Words
(Toronto: Bantam, 1988), 315–16.
55
Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 13, 29.
56
New Guinea councillors group telegram to President Kennedy, March 6, 1962; State
Department Executive Secretary L. D. Battle to McGeorge Bundy of National Security
staff, March 8, 1962, JFKL, NSF box 206; West Papuan Community, West Papua: The
Case We Knew/Papua Barat: Yang Kami Tahu (West Papua Community, 2000).
57
US Embassy in Jakarta to State Dept., March 31, 1962, and March 23, 1961, JFKL,
NSF box 206; Rusk to US Embassy in the Hague, March 23, 1961, March 31, 1962, and
April 1, 1962, JFKL, NSF box 206.
58
Canadian delegation to UN memorandum, June 7, 1962, LAC, RG25/6150/50409-
40[12.2]; Canadian Embassy in Accra to DEA, June 13, 1962, LAC, RG25/6150/50409-
40[12.2]; Canadian Embassy in Accra to DEA, January 10, 1962, LAC, RG
25/6149/50409-40[9].
59
Tanganyikan delegation to UN proposals to U Thant, April 9, 1962, UN Archives, S-
0884-22-5; US Embassy in Dar es Salaam to State Dept., April 11, 1962, JFKL NSF box
206.
60
Resolution signed by twenty-six Papuan leaders, cited in Penders, Debacle, 429;
undated [1962] Biak-Numfor declarations on file at UN Archives, S-0884-23-1.
61
Robin Osborne, Indonesia’s Secret War: The Guerrilla Struggle in Irian Jaya (Sydney:
Allen and Unwin, 1985), 31–2; Peter Savage, “Irian Jaya: Reluctant Colony,” in Politics
in Melanesia, ed. R. G. Crocombe and Ahmed Ali (Suva: University of the South Pacific,
1982), 90; Papuan National Front proposals, August 31, 1962, UN Archives, S-0279-25-
5; “Mass Protests by Papuans,” Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), August 10, 1962.
62
Heider to Robert Gardner, January 11, 1962, in Gardner, Making Dead Birds, 111.
63
Note on declaration of Sorong Doom leaders, UN Archives, S-0884-23-1.
64
British Embassy in Jakarta to Foreign Office, June 7, 1963, LAC , RG25/6150/50409-
40[13].
65
Freedom Committee of West Papua/West New Guinea, memorandum handed to UN
Secretary-General’s chef de cabinet, C. V. Narasimhan, November 19, 1965, UN
Archives, S-0279-31-2; Papuan Independent Movement, “The Exclamation from Jungle,”
June 1965.
66
Freedom Committee of West Papua/West New Guinea to U Thant, May 21, 1969, UN
Archives, S-0279-25-12; “Irians Seek UN ‘Protection’ Force,” SMH, May 27, 1969;
“Papuan Asks If Canada Will Help,” Auckland Star, June 26, 1969; “’Free Choice’—As
Long As You Vote ‘Yes,’” Auckland Star editorial, July 19, 1969; “Strong Opposition to
Irian Vote,” New Zealand Herald, July 14, 1969. The 1969 “act of free choice” is
covered in detail in John Saltford, The United Nations and the Indonesian Takeover of
West Papua, 1962–1969: The Anatomy of Betrayal. (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).
67
UN Office of Information, Official Records of the General Assembly, A/PV.1127,
A/PV.1150.
68
I have discussed later Papuan nationalism in David Webster, “‘Already Sovereign As a
People’: A Foundational Moment in Papuan Nationalism,” Pacific Affairs 74(4) (Winter
2001–2002): 507–28.
