Foreword
I have not been in Papua when I was asked to write a book about Sentani in the Jayapura Regency of Papua, the Indonesian part of New Guinea. I heard things, though negative ones, from afar. Tribal wars, riots, killings, uprisings, as well as backbiting disintegration attempts by the so-called Free Papua Movement. I have questioned people who have been in Papua; have often turned up handicrafts from this easternmost place in the Indonesian archipelago a koteka (a Papuan penis sheath), a painted bark cloth, and a carved wooden oar.
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I have read about Papua, of course, have discussed about Papua, have been writing leaflets and videoprofile scripts about tourism in Sentani and the Lake Sentani Festival and, in the last two years, have watched events in progress, or apparently in progress, on the television screen. I have seen a good deal of Papua in magazines, and documentary films, some of them convincingly authentic, as well as much dramatized feature film and countless static images of Papua: photographs and paintings of a varying degree of realism. But I have never been in Papua before this. And I grew increasingly convinced that I have very little idea of what the place can be like.
Page 3: The view of Lake Sentani seen from Mount Ifar.
Neither of these statements and none of this experience are in the least remarkable. For very, very few Indonesians, let alone expatriates, have learned at first
hand that knowledge of Papua, and Sentani in particular, which epitomized the splendor of their native soil. I needed, however, to come into contact with Papua personally before I could start writing this book. At the same time as I stepped my feet on Sentani, like anyone else who have never been there before, I had the feeling that I had opened the doors to the unknown. Spending a week among the Papuans living in the Lake Sentani area as well as in other parts of the Jayapura Regency unexpectedly made me realize that I had come in contact with many things I hadn t know they existed. I studied history while in college, reading mainly the history of battles occurred in Indonesia during the Japanese occupation (1942-1945) and the nation s War of Independence (1945-1949), none of which puts me in the picture of what happened in parts of the archipelago other than Java and Sumatra. This is so because possibly the history of Indonesia is intentionally designed to be Java-centric , since the first two presidents of Indonesia are Javanese. So, there I stood a guy of Javanese and Sumatran descent, which has never before been to a part of the Indonesian territory farther than Java, Bali, East and Central Kalimantan. This place, popularly known as Irian Jaya (Glorious Irian) was ever the largest province of Indonesia, yet hardly any Indonesians are on familiar