Where the Discursive Meets the Practical: Nation-Building in West Papua by Kai Scott

Abstract

While the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement took hold across the US and the world during June of 2020, Indonesia experienced a divergent, localized version: Papuan Lives Matter (PLM). Much like their American relative, PLM protests galvanized the deep-rooted grievances of a long-mistreated minority population. Yet unlike BLM, PLM brought forth grievances long expressed as part of a nationalist movement. In this piece, I explore the roots of this West Papuan nationalism. When theorizing on nation-building, scholars often take discourse and social structure as distinct factors. Famously, Benedict Anderson argues that nations are “imagined communities” while, in contrast to this, prominent sociologist Charles Tilly argues that beliefs necessarily follow social structure. Who is right? While emphasizing social structure over discourse (or vice-versa) often enables parsimonious theory-building, this distinction is neither accurate nor helpful for understanding national-building processes. Instead, I argue that, in West Papua, social structure and discourse worked in tandem to drive national construction. As both of these factors are heavily interrelated, neither beliefs nor social structure should be seen as preceding their opposite. Contemporary notions of West Papuan nationhood thus neither result from discourse or from social structure, but rather from the interaction between the two.

Résumé

Alors que le mouvement Black Lives Matter (BLM) s’est implanté aux États-Unis et dans le monde entier en juin 2020, l’Indonésie a connu une version divergente et localisée : Papuan Lives Matter (PLM). Tout comme leur parent américain, les protestations du PLM ont galvanisé les griefs profondément enracinés d’une population minoritaire longtemps maltraitée. Pourtant, contrairement au BLM, le PLM a fait naître des griefs longtemps exprimés dans le cadre d’un mouvement nationaliste. Dans cet article, j’explore les racines de ce nationalisme de Papouasie occidentale. Lorsqu’ils élaborent des théories sur la construction de la nation, les universitaires considèrent souvent le discours et la structure sociale comme des facteurs distincts. Benedict Anderson affirme que les nations sont des “communautés imaginaires”, tandis que l’éminent sociologue Charles Tilly affirme que les croyances suivent nécessairement la structure sociale. Qui a raison ? Bien que l’accent mis sur la structure sociale plutôt que sur le discours (ou vice-versa) permette souvent de construire des théories parcimonieuses, cette distinction n’est ni exacte ni utile pour comprendre les processus de construction nationale. Au contraire, je soutiens qu’en Papouasie occidentale, la structure sociale et le discours ont travaillé en tandem pour conduire la construction nationale. Comme ces deux facteurs sont fortement liés, ni les croyances ni la structure sociale ne doivent être considérées comme précédant leur contraire. Les notions contemporaines de nation en Papouasie occidentale ne résultent donc ni du discours ni de la structure sociale, mais plutôt de l’interaction entre les deux.

Introduction

In the middle of 2020, the murder of George Floyd triggered protests across the US over systemic anti-black racism. In step with the movement’s growth, “Black Lives Matter” quickly became a common refrain over the world. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, one of the countries where the movement found significant groundswells of support was Indonesia. Here, Indonesian activists subtly reformed the “BLM” of Black Lives Matter as “PLM”: Papuan Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter protests in the US helped reinvigorate conversation both on the treatment of Papuan citizens in Indonesia and on the simmering West Papuan nationalist movement.1 In recent years, West Papuans have driven protests across Indonesia after a set of West Papuan students who had refused to join Indonesian National Day celebrations in 2019 were locked inside a building and surrounded by groups of Indonesians who chanted for the students’ massacre and the building’s torching.2 More broadly, protesters have focused on the inequalities between West Papua and the Indonesian archipelago, continued popular anti-Papuan racism, and police brutality directed at West Papuans.3 Discrimination and protest are not contemporary phenomena for West Papuans. In reality, West Papuans have voiced frustration over their treatment ever since the region’s inclusion into Indonesia following the 1969 Act of Free Choice.4 While the early 2000s saw the Indonesian central government reach solutions to ethnic separatist demands in East Timor and Aceh, violence, neglect, and derision have continued to define West Papuan-Indonesian relations since the transition away from Suharto’s New Order in 1998. Despite being granted greater regional autonomy in 2001, few West Papuans support even minimal levels of inclusion. Instead, the West Papuan nationalists (a widespread category across the West Papuan province) desire not simply local autonomy, but also the territorial sovereignty of nationhood. What, then, are the roots of West Papua’s persistent nationalism? Why has West Papuan incorporation into the Indonesian nation failed so miserably? Contrary to some authors, I argue that West Papuan exclusion is a product of both discursive nation-making and a response to practical Indonesian exclusion. While political actors worked to construct discourses that determined the coherent boundaries of political and social identities, the Indonesian exclusion of West Papuans has had genuine consequences that continue to elicit genuine reactions from the West Papuan population. I tell this story over three sections that discuss themes of Dutch colonialism, Indonesian exploitation, and the role of West Papuan nationalist actors. Beyond merely explaining the origins of West Papuan nation-building, I posit a broader argument: discourse and relational networks are inseparable when discussing the construction of salient political and social identities. In reference to my case, understanding West Papuan nationalism requires one to understand both the role of discourse and the role of relational networks in building identities to explain the development of West Papuan nationalism. Explanations empty of one of these two aspects are insufficient. In my theory section, I pit Benedict Anderson’s work on nationalism against Charles Tilly’s discussion of relational networks and use their shortcomings to present a synergistic theory. The following consists of two main sections: First, I discuss the role of discourse and relational networks in nationalism. Second, I use this to analyze the origins of West Papuan nationalism. I conclude by briefly returning to the present-day unrest.

Theory

In the following section, I have three goals. First, I lay out the arguments of Benedict Anderson and Charles Tilly and present their shortcomings. Second, I examine how scholars on West Papuan nationalism have approached questions of discourse and networks. Finally, I provide my own view that considers the contrasting perspectives of Anderson5 and Tilly.6

Anderson and the Imaginary

Written nearly forty years ago, Anderson’s ‘Imagined Communities’ stands as a canonical piece within the literature on the origins of nationalism. While he is often quoted for his description of nations as “imagined political communities,” such an emphasis often sells short the depth of his contribution to scholarship on nationalism. As his title might suggest, Anderson’s focus is on rooting the nation within the ‘imaginary’— how have we come to imagine ourselves as members of national communities? In his eyes, the nation is a product of the rapid transformation of the mediums through which one is able to experience the ‘simultaneity’ of one’s own life. By imagining ourselves as political, social, cultural, and economic actors who carry commonalities beyond our own person, we can assign an identity to ourselves and others. He argues that it was the proliferation of the printing press that enabled the spread of writing. This writing—in the form of novels and newspapers—allowed people to experience ‘simultaneity’ on huge scales. In essence, through the “sociological fixity that fuses the world inside the novel with the world outside,” the “national imagination” is able to spring alive.7 Further, “what made the new communities imaginable was a half-fortuitous but explosive, interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of linguistic diversity”.8 As he continues in his later work, this imagination is the axle on which national identity turns: museums, maps, censuses, newspapers, and onwards all are vehicles through which bound and unbound serialities—collective identities—have become expressed and reformed.9

Tilly and the Practical

This contrasts with the perspective of Charles Tilly as expressed in his 1998 book, Durable Inequality. As his title suggests, Tilly centres his discussion on the construction of lasting inequalities between “asymmetrical pairs”.10 He argues that inequalities between social groups are products of the relational networks that form as social actors interact. These networks thus shape how individuals are able to relate to one another, enabling people to build and concretize the inequalities that exist between groups. Given this, inequality between social groups is a product primarily of these networks, not the beliefs that people hold. As Tilly puts it: “Mistaken beliefs reinforce exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation but exercise little independent influence on their initiation”.11 Given this, Tilly does not see the national collective as deriving from the ‘imagination’ of social actors (as Anderson argues). Rather, nationhood grew from changes in the practical interrelational networks that developed between individuals. In Tilly’s eyes, the nation’s imagining is consequential to, rather than formative of, nationhood. Nations exist as expressions of the various ways in which groups seek to exclude others from resources while maintaining their own unfettered access. In short, the nation “embodies claims to prior control over a state, hence to the exclusion of others from that priority”.12 In view of this, Tilly outlines three scenarios where state-seeking nationalism—that is, nationalism that has yet to marry itself to a state structure—arises. These are: (1) when empire imposes obligations upon a previously protected minority; (2) when outside empires have supported the rebellion of peripheral populations within the empire; and (3) when expanding states have sought “expansion in the presence of well-connected populations possessing distinctive…institutions”.13

Synthesis

At this point, it is clear how these two perspectives stand at loggerheads with each other. On the one hand, Tilly insists upon the nature of relational networks as driving nation-formation. On the other, Anderson sees the nation primarily as a discursive construction produced via mediums that allow one to imagine oneself within a broader national community. I do not intend to pick sides in this piece. Rather, I want to synthesize these two perspectives: discourse and relational networks are closely related. Efforts to emphasize one as more important than the other will always provide a partial understanding of nationalism. Instead, analysis of nation formation should appreciate both sides of the coin: Discourse and practical inter-relational networks work together to drive national identity formation. If one applies Tilly’s argument to West Papua, one would immediately run into trouble fitting West Papuan nationalism to Tilly’s three drivers of state-seeking nationalism. West Papua certainly does not fit either the image of a “protected minority” within a larger empire, nor does it fit the cast of a peripheral population supported by an outside actor seeking independence. Further, given the diverse and relatively geographically disperse character of many parts of the Papuan population, it would also seem misplaced to typecast West Papua as “well-connected” with “distinctive institutions” prior to the eruption of nationalist sentiments. Nevertheless, many scholars try to shoehorn West Papuan nationalism into Tilly’s third category. Such efforts allow them to present arguments that centre solely on the practical manifestations of nationalist contestations between West Papua and Indonesia. Trajano, for instance, argues that “in some multiethnic states such as Indonesia, ethnic nationalism is the response of ethnic groups to situations of ethnic-structural inequality and uneven development.”14 Alternatively, as Elmslie posits, West Papuan “nationalist feelings… are a response to economic exploitation and political suppression.”15 For these scholars, West Papuan national identity today is a product of West Papuans’ continued exclusion from resources by the Indonesian. In contrast to Elmslie and Trajano, Anderson argues that the West Papuan nation is rooted in certain discursive elements. In ‘Imagined Communities’, Anderson argues that the Dutch mapping of West Papua defined its boundaries at the 141st parallel and sharply delineated West Papua from the nearby Maluku islands. This delimiting of the West Papuan territory produced West Papua as an easily understandable ‘national’ territory and thus provided a coherent national territory for West Papuan nationalists to rally around. Given the relatively disperse nature of the Papuan identity, the production of a territorial base for West Papuan nationalism allowed West Papuans to coalesce around a shared identity.16 In these ways, the Dutch colonialist’s mapping of the West Papuan territory brought the West Papuan nation into existence. In this estimation, the nation is primarily a discursive construction and is not built via the ‘relational networks’ to which Tilly refers. Overall, I believe that by themselves, Anderson’s or Tilly’s perspective fails to sufficiently account for West Papuan nationalist development. Viewed alone, Anderson’s view of the nation is, as Marx points out, ignorant of the manners in which nations also often work to exclude by ethnicity, class, race, and beyond.17 This failure is rooted in Anderson’s neglect of the crucial and evident practical drivers of nationalist sentiments in West Papua: socioeconomic exclusion, police brutality, and continued political repression. By focusing solely on the nationalist’s ‘imaginary,’ Anderson overlooks the ways in which nationalism—even when inclusive—practically works to exclude certain groups. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Tilly gives primacy to ‘relational networks’ and, as such, refuses to entertain the role of discourse in nation formation. As I shall argue, the notion that beliefs necessarily “result from categorical relations and practices’’18 belies the West Papuan experience with nationalism. Instead, colonial and West Papuan nationalist beliefs of innate differences between Papuan and archipelagic Indonesian individuals played important roles in shaping the construction of the West Papuan nation. In this sense, one requires a synergistic approach to adequately explain the development of West Papuan nationalism. By refusing Tilly’s efforts to declare relational networks as primordial to beliefs and refusing to neglect the practicalities of national construction as Anderson does, I proffer a theory of nation-making that emphasizes the constructive dynamics between discourse and relational networks. The construction of the nation is a process that involves the ‘imagination’ of the nation and response to extant relational networks. Discourse works in tandem with relational networks to shape how groups mobilize around inequality. As I discuss, West Papuan nationalism is both a discursive construct and a response to Indonesian exclusion. Socioeconomic pressures were filtered through discourse of identity, belonging, and exclusion, enabling West Papuan nationalism to become a viable contemporary identity. Yet, implicit within this, too, is the fact that nationalism is empty without reference to these provocateurs; the on-the-ground coercion of the West Papuan population by imposing Indonesian and Dutch actors is central to understanding the historical viability of West Papuan nationalism.

The Construction of West Papuan Nationalism

Given the cultural, geographical, and linguistic diversity found across the Papuan island, notions of collective identity were clearly not common within a West Papuan population preceding Dutch intervention in the early 20th century. In place of this, West Papuan cultural and social life proceeded on a more atomized basis, with mountainous terrain and a lack of transportation infrastructure preventing communities from different parts of the island from coming into contact with one another. In this sense, as Mote and Rutherford make clear, arguments that prima facie take primordialist identities as drivers of ethnic conflict between West Papuans and Indonesians for granted make little sense.19 Instead, West Papuan identity has been constructed—and this process has taken place almost completely within the 20th century. In this section, I outline how this process of construction took place. I emphasize three drivers of West Papuan nationalism:

1. Dutch colonialist support for West Papuan identity provided a basis out of which West Papuan nationalism developed.

2.Following the 1960s, Indonesian exclusion of the West Papuan provoked the response of West Papuan nationalists.

3.West Papuans responded to Indonesian abuse by constructing and projecting West Papuan nationalism. It was this agency that was the crucial factor in shaping contemporary West Papuan nationalism.

Dutch Colonialism

While the Dutch “claimed” sovereignty over West Papua in the 16th century, West Papua’s place within the Dutch Indies empire was extremely peripheral, save for the administration of several small outposts at Fakfak and Manokwari built near the ends of the 19th century.20 In fact, Dutch imperialists did not penetrate the highlands of the Papua until the 1930s. Nevertheless, the colonial Dutch played a central role in defining the West Papuan territory—and hence its people—as distinct from then developing Indonesia. As a result, throughout their period of control over West Papua, the Dutch fostered the growth of West Papuan nationalism. This development was a result of continued Dutch interest in the territory. Prior to leaving the territory, the Dutch remained in place for thirteen years following the formal decolonization of the rest of the Dutch East Indies. This Dutch interest provided space for a sense of West Papuan identity to emerge that was distinct from a budding Indonesian nationalist identity. In comparison to the bustling and relatively interconnected nearby archipelagic islands, New Guinea was pictured by Dutch colonists as an untouched backwater, distinct from other regional islands. To concerned Dutch imperialists, New Guinea did not “belong to the Indies Archipelago either geographically or geologically”.21 Throughout much of the most active periods of Dutch intervention in West New Guinea, the Dutch were at war with the Indonesians, seeking to prevent the decolonization of the Indonesian state. While the Dutch finally agreed to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to Indonesia at the UN-administered “Round Table Conference” of 1950, they insisted upon continued Dutch sovereignty over West New Guinea.22 The Dutch held onto control of West Papua until 1962, when the UN oversaw a transfer of control to the Indonesians, with the Indonesians promising to carry out a vote of “self-determination” at an indeterminate point in the future.23 To many authors writing on the conflict in West Papua, the exclusion of West Papua from Indonesia’s formative years played an important role in driving the high levels of conflict between West Papua and Indonesia. As Webster argues, “had West Papua become part of Indonesia in 1949… a different identity would likely have been formed”.24 However, the effect of Dutch interest in West Papua is more extensive than such a position implies. The Dutch had important roles in helping nationalist sentiments grow within West Papua prior to the 1960s. Penders highlights the role of Resident JPK van Eechoud, a Dutch colonial administrator in charge of the West New Guinean territory during the last years of the Pacific War.25 During his time in power, van Eechoud sought explicitly to foster a West Papuan identity within West New Guinea, notably founding a civil service school for Papuans following the end of the war. It was from this school that some of the first West Papuan nationalists emerged. One of these emergent nationalists, Nicolaas Jouwe, recalls van Eechoud stating upon the school’s founding that “today, the New Papuan is being born”.26 Through these schools, Dutch colonial officers helped build a West Papuan identity and enabled West Papuan nationals to play a role in governance. Further, in 1946, van Eechoud implemented consultative councils throughout various central cities on the island. Through these, he hoped to bring awareness to democratic processes and “create a greater sense of Papuan national consciousness and unity”.27 Driven by views that West New Guinea was distinct from the rest of Indonesia; and enacted via activist administrators like van Eechoud, the Dutch helped provide the basis for West Papuan nationalism to grow. Throughout the Dutch colonial period, discontent and frustration with poor socioeconomic conditions and Dutch abuse were rife. Many see this reflected in ‘Koreri’ movements: Messianic revolts that predicted the return of a saviour called ‘Manseren Manggundi.’ As Kamma argues, these were reflective of the abuse and cultural degradation that locals continued to experience under Dutch colonialism.28;29 Given this, the efforts to cajole locals towards a form of nationalist identity were seen as a way of redirecting discontent with the hopes of benefitting Dutch interests. Out of fear that West Papuan discontent might lead them towards an Indonesian nationalism, one colonial administrator argued in 1948 that it was of paramount importance for the Dutch “to extend and improve education and the government information service in order to lead the Papuan national awakening in the right direction”.30 In these ways, the Dutch helped produce a West Papuan nationalism favourable to their interests. Influential separatist-nationalist leaders—like Nicolaas Jouwe and Markus Kaisiepo—spent their formative years in Dutch schools while their rise to prominence happened largely under Dutch patrons.31 However, Dutch colonialist interests were far from determinate; West Papuan nationalism during the lead-up to the 1960s was heterogeneous, with some supporting self-governance under Indonesia.32 Yet, the Dutch nevertheless worked to give space to those who shared their ideas and limited those who didn’t. For instance, a set of pro-Indonesian nationalists who formed the Independent Indonesian Party were discovered by the Dutch and thrown in jail in 1958.33 In these ways, Dutch interests shaped West Papuan nationalism. The Dutch provided the spaces in which West Papuan nationalists began to develop their ideas. More crucially, they also sought to shape how West Papuan nationalism would develop, seeking to “immunise the indigenous population as much as possible against … the radical-revolutionary ethos ruling the Indonesian political scene”.34

Indonesian Incorporation and Nationalist Resistance, 1960-present

While Indonesian political elite had expressed little interest in West Papua prior to their official independence in 1949, the growing revolutionary nature of the Indonesian leadership under Sukarno made West Papua—then referred to as West Irian—increasingly central for Indonesian nationalists. In a speech to the US Congress in 1956, Sukarno expressed indignance at the continued “colonial cancer” in West Irian. He insisted that West Irian was “an essential part of Indonesia” and that West Papuans were “true brothers” to the Indonesians.35 This indignance quickly led to Indonesian overreach. The supposed “Act of Free Choice” promised during the Dutch transfer of power came in 1969. Instead of ‘Free Choice’, the UN-mandated vote of self-determination consisted of the Indonesian regime handpicking 1025 individuals from across West Papua and coercing their unanimous support for incorporation.36 Through this period, growing West Papuan nationalism was driven by Indonesian exclusion and the agency of nationalist actors. I discuss this in two parts that address Indonesian exclusion and the role of West Papuan nationalists, respectively.

Indonesian Exclusion

Indonesian control over West Papua has led to what has been termed by different scholars as a “cold genocide,” a “slow-motion genocide,” and a “cultural genocide”.37As Benedict Anderson puts it, to Jakarta, “Irian mattered, not the people who lived there”.38 During the post-1960 period, Indonesian state abuse of the West Papuan population was of three types: (1) cultural erasure via Indonesianization, (2) socioeconomic exclusion, and (3) abuse by the Indonesian military. By shaping how the West Papuan population interacted with the Indonesian state, these above forms of state-perpetrated abuse provoked separatist sentiments within West Papua and drove support for West Papuan nationalism throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Despite Indonesian president Sukarno’s insistence that “West Irian is part of [Indonesia’s] body”39, the central government pursued policy that sought to subsume the West Papuan within an Indonesian identity. They did this through ‘Indonesianization,’ which referred to a set of policies that proffered that assimilation would “strengthen the unity of the nation”.40 This process was highly paternalistic; Indonesian Foreign Minister Subriando insisted that policy was designed to “get [the Papuans] down from the trees, even if we have to pull them down”.41 Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, ‘Indonesianization’ consisted of efforts like ‘Operasi Koteka,’ a programme implemented in 1971 designed to force highland villagers to stop using traditional penis gourds (referred to as Koteka) and instead wear clothes.42. This was also supported by ‘Transmigrasi,’ a program that promoted Javanese migration to peripheral islands, with West Papua being a prime target.43 Through transmigration, the central government hoped that “the different ethnic groups would, in the long run, disappear because of integration … and there will be one kind of man”.44 Estimates from 1990 put the number of transmigrants in West Papua at 414,210, accounting for nearly a quarter of the population. In urban regencies, this percentage rose to upwards of 60%.45 Transmigration and cultural erasure were coupled with economic exploitation as “government strategy was designed to maximize national development through exploiting the rich natural resources of the outer islands and plentiful supply of labour in Java.46 The discovery of gold and copper deposits in 1967 led to the development of the largest gold and copper mine in the world, contracted out to the American corporation Freeport-McMoRan Mining.47 This was complemented by significant plans for investment in infrastructure, all designed to facilitate “modernization” and economic growth. However, over periods of growing economic development in Indonesia, few efforts were made to bring returns to West Papuans on the ground. Instead, transmigration and economic development have been to the detriment of the locals. While the contract with Freeport-McMoRan brought millions of US dollars into Indonesian coffers annually, West Papuans received little from this. Instead, it is reported that up to 700,000 hectares of land were appropriated from local Papuans to accommodate both large mining corporations and newly arriving migrants.48 As two-time Papuan Governor Bas Suebu aptly puts it, “The people in the house called Irian Jaya feed those in other houses but are themselves starving”.49 Indonesia has leaned heavily on the national military, known as the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI), to enforce local compliance to these projects. Some put estimates of the death toll due to military repression over the latter half of the 20th century as high as 500,000.50 While the complexity of the conflict in West Papua belies such cut and dry estimates, it is nevertheless clear that the military has (1) been prominent within West Papua since the Indonesian takeover and (2) played a role in repeatedly violently repressing resistance to Indonesian rule. In 1977, when a group of 15,000 tribal group members rose in opposition to Indonesian presence in the region, TNI forces napalmed the entire villages of protesting groups. The Indonesian state used tactics to suppress revolt in response to the presence of mining companies. Later, after a group of West Papuans damaged a Freeport-McMoRan pipeline, the TNI strafed entire villages in the region in retaliation.51 This aggression has repeatedly forced refugee flows into adjacent Papua New Guinea, with 11,000 leaving following one particular crackdown in the mid-1980s, for instance.52

High levels of repression, economic exclusion, and efforts at cultural erasure have driven West Papuan nationalism. As Gietzelt (1989, 208) argues, “Resentment against the Indonesians is exacerbated by the Papuan belief that Jakarta is ‘siphoning off the wealth of West Papua, in return for the mere fraction it injects back into local development”.53 These grievances stretch even to some of the more remote corners of West Papua. Chauvel discusses the case of the Korowai people who have had relatively low levels of contact with the Indonesian state.54 Even without this interaction, notions of Papuan identity and anti-Indonesian sentiments have filtered downwards to the group. Acculturated through trips to nearby villages and bigger cities, some have even become professed Papuan nationalists. Resistance has crystallized in separatist uprisings united under the OPM (Free Papua Movement), each working in support of the Papuan identity. As one OPM member is quoted as saying, “Other people have no right … to come and take over this land, while the native is forced out from our own land and chased into the jungle. This is my own nation and my own land. I will die.”55 The first act of rebellion came in response to efforts to restrict West Papuan access to governance. In 1965, after Indonesia announced their intentions to cancel the UN-mandated vote of self-determination, a rebellion set off in Arfak, which declared a free Papuan state centred in Manokwari.56 The Arfak revolt is largely seen as the formative moment for the OPM. Since then, revolt by the OPM has mostly been dispersed in nature. As many point out, the OPM does not coordinate collectively across West Papua. Rather, as one journalist recalls a pastor telling him, “we are all OPM”.57 In this sense, the fledgling armed separatist group was not centrally-organized but instead a dispersed concept that West Papuans of all stripes would use to denote anti-Indonesian grievances and desires for independence. Further, as Gietzelt notes, “It appears that an upsurge in active membership in the OPM follows the intensification of Indonesian military oppression.”58 It was, for instance, the public murder and rape of a pair of women in one village, followed by the massacre of 500 Papuans in a separate district in 1970, that convinced many that the Indonesians had little intention of showing goodwill in governance in West Papua. Heinous acts like this drove, at the least, sympathy for the OPM, and in many cases, membership within the group.59 Overall, there is a clear link between the Indonesian exclusion of the West Papuan and the local support for West Papuan nationalism. As the Indonesians time and again proved their disinterest in respecting West Papuans, opposition and West Papuan nationalist tendencies grew. West Papuan Nationalists While exclusion via assimilation, militarization, and economic exploitation might have driven Papuan nationalist support, the ways in which West Papuan nationalists have sought to frame the nationalist struggle have determined the construction of West Papuan nationalism. Through the 1960s, the Dutch continued supporting claims for independence while Indonesian overreach soured support for reincorporation. As King argues, “pro-Indonesian nationalism more or less died with Indonesia’s ‘locust’ occupation in 1963.”60 Through this period, West Papuan nationalists responded to Dutch support for independence by reshaping discourses of nationalism. In periods following, this nation-building process has functioned in tandem with the practical exclusion of West Papuans, framing abuse within discourses of race and human rights. Throughout the 1960s, efforts to distinguish West Papua from Indonesia brought nationalist leaders to both emphasize racial differences between themselves and the Indonesians and place themselves within pan-national discourses of race. Simply put, this was an effort to drive home the point that “the Papuans are not Indonesians”.61 Yet more broadly, the goal of West Papuan nationalists was to demonstrate distinctive cultural and ethnic roots while placing themselves within a broader discourse of anti-colonialism. Under the Indonesians, the West Papuans were projected as a nation that needed to shake off the yoke of an oppressive and abusive colonial overlord. These nationalists sought connections with groups like the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), seeking to include themselves in “a global anti-colonial quest based on skin colour”.62 Nicolaas Jouwe, one of the first Papuan nationalists to emerge under Dutch rule, was active in petitioning African nations for support for West Papua. In a letter to the Organization of African Unity, for instance, Jouwe wrote “Have you… ever thought of … the 1 million Papuan Negroes … who are engaged in a grim fight for their FREEDOM against their oppressors, the INDONESIANS?”.63 In this sense, Papuan nationalism was “constructed internationally”.64 As a result of its outward-facing nature, Papuan nationalism was built in the interstitial space between international discourses of race and rights. Consequently, the Papuan identity was presented as a distinct, cultural and racial group whose rights were under mortal threat from an assimilatory colonial power. It is through this framing which the years of abuse and exploitation that followed the ‘Act of Free Choice’ in 1969 were brought into the Papuan national narrative. Years later, one might find the same discursive undertones in the rhetoric of contemporary West Papuan activists. In 2000, Benny Giay, a prominent present-day nationalist, stated that, “They are Indonesians and we are Papuans. We are murdered, enslaved, and colonized by Indonesians. In another ten years’ time Papuans will be finished, murdered by the Indonesian military. Because of that it is better that we just become independent”.65 On the ground, nationalists used a set of symbols to cohere West Papuan nationalism. While the years of abuse that followed through the latter half of the 20th century were scarring, West Papuans see the establishment of West Papuan sovereignty as happening on December 1st, 1961. On this date, nationalists announced their political manifesto for independence while raising the Morning Star flag in central Hollandia (now Jayapura).66 In 1971, following the derided ‘Act of Free Choice’ of 1969, OPM operative Seth Rumkorem declared West Papuan independence, stating, “Let it be known to the world that the sincere wish of the West Papuan people to be free and independent in their own country is hereby fulfilled”.67 In the sense that national independence includes gaining control over a set of governing institutions and recognition by other nations worldwide, neither of these events brought de facto independence to West Papua. These are nevertheless central in the West Papuan memory. In the face of Indonesian repression, the act of raising the Papuan flag and singing the national anthem, ‘Hai Tanaku Papua’ (O Papua, My Homeland) have become assertions of West Papuan identity. In 1988, intellectual Thomas Wanggai once more declared West Papuan independence, signalling the declaration with the singing of the Papuan national anthem.68 During the period of ‘Reformasi’ and political opening following the fall of Suharto’s New Order regime, the most symbolically loaded moments came when West Papuan protestors gathered en masse in the capital, demanding ‘Merdeka’ (freedom), and raising the Morning Star flag in the city centre.69 Correspondingly, it was then Indonesian President Abdhurrahmin Wahid’s legalization of the flying of the Morning Star flag which signalled the Indonesian government’s willingness to reform through this period. While democratization opened space and eventually led to greater regional autonomy for West Papua in 2001, discontent and the sense that a West Papuan nation remains oppressed by a foreboding Indonesian monolith reigns supreme. The fight for independence, then, has continued onwards into the present day, with West Papuan nationalists continually working to reemphasize both the historical legitimacy of the West Papuan nation and the ongoing struggle of the West Papuan people. As Philpott argues, West Papuan activists today use social media to collapse the complexities of conflict and trauma in West Papua “into a simple narrative of a noble people struggling against a cold and brutal state”.70 Meanwhile, as Viartasiwi discusses, contemporary West Papuan writers have continued to uphold a West Papuan history that emphasizes many of the points made above.71 In the present day, the West Papuan nation is made real through discourses of race, struggle, and politics.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have sought to demonstrate the constructive nature of discourse and practical exclusion in West Papua. By examining the roots of West Papuan identity, I emphasized the ways in which nationalism came as a result of the interplay between the exclusionary nature of the Indonesian state and the agency of actors who sought West Papuan independence. In contrast to Tilly and the many others who have followed his analysis of nationalist construction, West Papuan nationalism has not simply been built on the clear, abhorrent, and wanton violence and abuse that the Indonesian state directed at the West Papuan throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Rather, exclusion has been filtered through discourses of identity. West Papuan nationalism is, in part, rooted in the manners in which the beliefs of some Dutch colonialists and West Papuan nationalists of the present day and yesteryear have constructed discourses of nationalism. Yet to make myself clear once more: discourse does not wholly explain the construction of nationalism (it is necessary but not sufficient, to be cliché). Instead, both violence and the continually poor development outcomes for West Papuans have produced a shared experience for West Papuan identity to build on. Regardless of whether nationalist discourse aggrandizes or hyperbolizes the violence experienced, efforts made by the central government to both physically and culturally erase the West Papuan during the heart of the New Order (1965-1998) clearly produced a deep-lying fear and resentment of the Indonesian state. Today, the Papuan Lives Matter protests capture this dynamic perfectly. While the historical links between a West Papuan and a pan-African identity helped make Black Lives Matter protests resonant amongst West Papuans, such protests were also continuations of a more localized exasperation at enduring racism, exclusion, and military abuse directed at the West Papuan both within West Papua and throughout Indonesia. At the intersection of the international and the local, these protests are demonstrative of the multitude of ways that West Papuans have engaged with nationalism over their short history. In short, as I have argued, discourse and relational networks have worked together to drive national construction. In the West Papuan nation, the discursive has met with the practical.72

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