Constructing Papuan Nationalism: History, Ethnicity ... - ScholarSpace

Constructing Papuan NationalismixExecutive SummaryPapuan nationalism is stronger today than it was in 1961, when theMorning Star flag was first raised. Its evolution as a political force is acrucial factor in any analysis of relations between the Indonesian governmentand Papuan society. This study shows that Papuan nationalismtoday has been shaped by four primary factors. First, many Papuansshare a historical grievance about the manner in which their homelandwas integrated into Indonesia. Second, the Papuan elite feels a rivalrywith the Indonesian officials who have dominated their country’s administrationboth in the early Dutch period and since the Indonesiantakeover of 1963. It is the Papuan participants in this political andbureaucratic competition who have also been the principal formulatorsand articulators of Papuan nationalism. Third, the territory’s economicand administrative development, together with Papuans’ continued senseof difference from Indonesians, has fostered a sense of pan-Papuan identitywhose popular roots are much broader today than they were duringthe first efflorescence of nationalism in the early 1960s. Fourth, thedemographic transformation of society in Papua, with its great influx ofIndonesian settlers, has engendered a widespread feeling that Papuanshave been dispossessed and marginalized. The most extreme, though byno means uncommon, expression of this conviction is the assertion thatPapuans face extinction in their own land.