Peter Bang: PAPUA BLOOD
A Photographer´s Eyewitness Account of West Papua Over 30 Years
© Copyright by Peter Bang 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark
/ Remote Frontlines - www.remotefrontlines.com
Publisher: Books on Demand GmbH, Copenhagen, Denmark
Manufacturing: Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany
The book is produced on-Demand-process
ISBN 978-87-430-0549-0
Photos:
Cover: Mountains in the central highland of West Papua.
Unknown photographer: p. → and →.
Carl Bang: p. →-→ (top), and p. →.
Photos showing the author are taken by various friends.
Other photos, cover, map and layout by Peter Bang.
To my indigenous friends
All rights reserved.
Photographic, mechanical, or other reproduction of this book or parts there of is prohibited without the author's permission.
Exceptions are brief quotes for use in reviews.
West Papuans holding placards, calling for UN assitance, after Indonesia’s invasion of West Papua in 1962. By 1969 there was widespread resistance to Indonesian rule. The Indonesian military had killed and imprisoned thousands of Papuans in the seven years it had occupied the country – yet it was under these conditions that the people were supposed to exercise their right to self determination. It was agreed that the UN should oversee a plebiscite of the people of West Papua, in which they would be given two choices: to remain part of Indonesia or to become an independent nation. This vote was to be called the ‘Act of Free Choice.’ But the Act was a sham. Instead of overseeing a free and fair election, the UN stood by while Indonesia rigged the vote. Declaring that the Papuans were too ‘primitive’ to cope with democracy, the Indonesian military hand-picked just 1,026 ‘representative’ people, out of a population of one million, bribed them and threatened to kill them and their families if they voted the wrong way. So strong was the intimidation that despite widespread opposition to Indonesian rule, all 1,026 voted to remain a part of Indonesia. Despite protests from the Papuans, a critical report by a UN official and condemnation of the vote in the international media, the UN shamefully sanctioned the result and West Papua has remained under control of the Indonesian state ever since. The Papuans now dub this episode ‘the Act of No Choice’.
“My people are still suffering. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, raped and tortured. All we want is to live without fear and for West Papua to become a free and independent country.”
Benny Wenda, independence leader
In 1526–27, the Portuguese explorer Jorge de Menezes accidentally came upon the second largest island in the world and named it Papua, from a Malay word pepuah, for the Melanesian curly hair.
West Papua refers to the western half of the island and smaller islands to its west. The region has had the official names of Netherlands New Guinea (1895–1962), West New Guinea (1962–63), West Irian (1963– 73), Irian Jaya (1973–2001), and Papua (2002–2003). In 2003 the Indonesian administration split the island's western half in two provinces: the province of West Papua on the west, and the province of Papua on the east. Indonesian officials and administrators refer to the province when they say "West Papua"; Papuans mean the whole of western New Guinea. In support and respect for the indigenous Papuans right to self-determination is West Papua therefore the name that is used in this book.
The journeys described in this book would never have been possible without lots of local help from many patient, hospitable, brave, committed and welcoming Papuans. Thank you to my indigenous friends and adoptive family. It was them who made the voyages behind the mountains possible.
Also I want to say thank you very much to Natalie Smith and my Tasmanian New Guinea wantoks, Mathew Bond and his partner Sarah for editing and rewriting my “Danish English” into Australian English.
Wa wa wa Nagor wa!
Peter Bang
The first time I arrived to New Guinea, I stood on the deck of a ship on an early morning and saw the island emerge from the sea in a foggy mist to starboard. Together with my girlfriend at the time I had traveled for six months through Asia, and the goal was now to enter New Guinea's central highlands, where I would try to gather material for a series of articles about some of the world's last indigenous people who still lived a traditional life.
The boat trip went through the Indonesian archipelago on a number of different passenger vessels from Sumatra to Java, past Borneo and on to Sulawesi, the Moluccas and New Guinea. It was a slow way to travel, though a few months earlier I had fallen on a staircase in Singapore and had broken my ankle, so the long sea voyage gave me a chance to rest the leg and make a good recovery.
I stood at the railing and watched the steep jungle covered coastline and the wild mountains that meandered in green folds under heavy, low-hanging clouds. The sea was clear and blue. We found ourselves just south of the Equator and heading for Sorong, which was the next stop on the journey before we continued on to Port Numbay / Jayapura (former Hollandia). During the night we sailed north around Raja Ampat islands off the northwest tip of the Bird's Head, which makes up the large peninsula on the western part of New Guinea. Flying fish in large groups jumped up in front of the bow and hovered low over the waves and splashed down between playful dolphins while mighty whales migrated further out to sea. The sea we sailed was like earth’s underwater Amazon, and contained the planet's highest marine biodiversity.
My knowledge about the world that existed behind the mountains was limited. The Internet did not exist in 1986, so my information was based solely on articles, films and books, mainly referring to primitive tribes who lived in a stone-age culture.
The previous couple of days we had spent a lot of time talking with an Australian missionary couple who worked at a mission station in the central highlands west of Baliem Valley. All the others on board, about 1,200 people were poor Indonesians from Java on their way to western New Guinea to be resettled in the context of the Indonesian government's so-called "Transmigrassi" program.
The Australian missionaries gave us good advice and contacts to people they knew in the highlands, and also talked a bit about the tense political situation in the area, which at the time I did not know much about. When they heard that we wanted to go into the Yali tribe's territory, they believed that we could not get an entry permit. The Indonesian police authorities were extremely strict about who they allowed to travel in the highlands, because after a series of demonstrations less than two years earlier, thousands of freedom supporters had fled across the border to Papua New Guinea to escape the massacres committed by the Indonesian armed forces.
New Guinea was politically divided in two. The eastern part of the island, Papua New Guinea became independent in 1975 after having belonged to Australia, while the western part was previously under the Dutch colonial rule. But in 1963 Indonesia took over the western part of the island with UN approval - against the local population's wish.
From the very beginning a large number of Indonesian police and military forces were sent to West Papua, which contained vast natural resources including gold, oil and wood from the rainforest, as many places were becoming in short supply and therefore of great importance to Indonesia's economy. Most Indonesians considered from the beginning the Papuan tribes and their culture as hilarious and worthless. Police soldiers conducted frequent punitive expeditions with reference to violation of "laws" that the indigenous people neither understood or had heard about, partly because of language barriers and the huge cultural difference.
Among the new initiatives the Indonesian government in 1971–1972 launched "Operasi Koteka" ("Operation Penis Gourd") which consisted primarily of trying to encourage the indigenous people to wear shorts and shirts because such clothes were considered more "modern." But the people did not have changing clothes, did not have soap, and were unfamiliar with the care of such clothes so the unwashed clothing caused skin diseases. Some men were also wearing the shorts as hats and some women used the dresses as carrying bags.
The indigenous peoples of West Papua belong to the Melanesian race that is completely different from the Asian. There were examples of Papuans who had been captured, and thrown out alive from helicopters, strangled or drowned after being put into plastic bags. Pregnant women killed by bayonets. Prisoners forced to dig their own graves before they were killed. The Australian missionary couple lent us a book that was published the year before, which they had brought with them hidden in the luggage, as it was illegal to have in Indonesia. In the book "Indonesia's Secret War - The guerilla struggle in Irian Jaya" (published in 1985 by Allen & Unwin Australia Pty. Ltd., Sydney, Australia) documents the journalist Robin Osborne, former press secretary for Papua New Guinea's former prime minister, Sir Julius Chan, that 200,000 Papuan people had been murdered by the Indonesian government since 1963. Indigenous tribes that lived in Stone Age cultures (armed with stone axe’s, bows and arrows) were crushed by fighter aircrafts armed with machineguns and napalm bombs.
In fact, there had been a civil war in the area since the Indonesian army conducted a secret war against the indigenous population and OPM ("Organisasi Papua Merdeka": Free Papua Movement), especially in the border area near Papua New Guinea where there was a strong military presence - and on the other side of the border, there were refugee camps with thousands of refugees from West Papua. But it was very rarely that any word got out to the world press about all this. When there was turmoil in a region, it was immediately declared closed by the police and nothing got out.
The indigenous people of West Papua regarded their land as a sacred heritage and turned against the Indonesian government's destructive management of their land, particularly the so-called "Transmigrasi"-program, which consisted of a massive population transfer to uncultivated parts of Indonesia, to decrease the overpopulated Java. The total population of West Papua in 1986 was about 1.2 million people, of whom about 220,000 were Indonesian migrants who had been allocated plots of land in the jungle that they could cultivate. This massive migration of Indonesians was not only a disaster for the Papuan people, but also a catastrophe for the rain forest, earth and wildlife.
The Australian missionaries gave us lots of information on the political situation in the area, but did not know much about the conditions in the Yali tribes area, besides that they told us that the American missionary Don Richardson, in the book "Lords of the Earth" (published in 1977, Regal Books, California, USA), had described how two missionaries in 1968 were killed by Yali people in the area.
I was young and very determined to do that I could to visit the Yali tribe. As a freelance travel writer and photographer with a special interest in indigenous peoples, it was my purpose of the trip to document the changes that had occurred since the first missionaries 25 years earlier had entered the area. I had read an article by the American anthropologist Klaus-Friedrich Koch, and later his book "War and Peace in Jalémó - The Management of Conflict in Highland New Guinea" (published in 1974, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) that inspired me to try to find out how the Yali tribe had integrated with the outside world since the book had been published. According to Klaus-Friedrich Koch, the Yali tribe was one of the world's most bellicose peoples. Until the first contact with the outside world in 1961, the Yali tribe had lived isolated in the mountains for millennia. The standards for solutions to conflicts were killing and war, verbal solutions were unknown. Hostilities were going on involving tribe against tribe, valley towards valley, village against village, family against family, even family members who lived in the same village could be at war with each other. Cannibalism was common as there was a tradition of eating their enemies' flesh as an extreme demonstration of hatred and revenge, but no one ate the meat of people whose faces were familiar.
When we finally arrived at the coastal town of Jayapura, we waited a few days before we were permitted fly to Wamena, which was a government outpost in the highlands and a very small town. The only hotel was an aluminum barrack by a runway, where stood an army of naked black men with long koteka´s (penis sheath’s) looking seriously at the plane as we landed.
The fact that we managed to proceed from Wamena and into the Yali tribe's territory was entirely due to fortunate circumstances that led us to come into contact with some extremely helpful Papuans with connections to the freedom movement, who after a few days in Wamena, helped us illegally to Angguruk with a small mission aircraft and a couple of influential missionaries blessings. The Indonesian police had previously confiscated our passports and we were only allowed to dwell in the Baliem Valley, where there were no roads or cars.
It was a breathtaking scenic flight to Angguruk. We flew over dense and impenetrable jungle above beautiful pristine mountains with steep, deep gorges and cascading rivers at the bottom, snaking off in the green jungle below us. Now and then we caught sight of small clearings with round huts that lay in the middle of the jungle far away from other inhabited areas.
The Australian pilot showed me some of his maps, which were the latest that existed at the time, based on recordings from satellite cameras. I confirmed with my own eyes that West Papua was the last place on Earth where there were still blanks on the map, as some areas were constantly covered in fog and dense cloud cover, so not even the most modern satellite cameras had been able to photograph these unknown "pockets" that on the map were specified as white areas with the inscription "Relief data incomplete".
New Guinea is 2,400 kilometers in length and 740 km in width, the world's second largest island after Greenland. The island is covered by rainforest, of which a similar size is equaled only by that of the Amazonian wilderness and Congo. The mountains, several of which have snow on top, reach an altitude of 4-5 km and stretch like a dragons jagged back in chains across the island's length. People have lived here for the past 60,000 years, probably even longer.
On this Island exists no less than 800 different tribes, each with their own cultural identity and way of life. 15% of the world's known languages are spoken here, some as different as English and Chinese, despite the fact that only 0,1% of the world's population reside here.
After a half hour flight the pilot made ready to land, and flew close by some vertical mountain sides in through a gorge, where Angguruk was situated on the edge of a steep mountain slope. When I looked at the rock wall, it was like time stood still. When the pilot turned the plane, it was positioned all the way over on side so that at one point we looked straight down into a wild river in the bottom of a gorge.
Upon a bumpy landing on the airstrip in Angguruk, I felt almost as if I stepped out of a time machine that had brought me back 5,000 years in time. Along the airstrip - an approximately 300 meter long lawn - stood hundreds of naked people looking at us. There were no white missionaries on the mission, besides a female Dutch missionary who was only there for a short visit. She had previously worked 12 years at the mission station and spoke fluent Yali. After only three days, she left, but during that time we were given lots of information and she helped us to get in touch with Pilemon who was Yali and spoke a little German and Indonesian, he was also willing to be our guide on tours around the area. Furthermore she told us that we were the first tourists - or rather, non missionaries - who visited Angguruk. Before she was picked up by plane, she inspired me to gather material for a photo documentary book about a Yali boy and his first contact with the outside world.
When I visited Angguruk the first time, the only wheels I saw at the mission station were punctured and sat on a wheelbarrow, which was parked in high grass. It was only seven years ago that human flesh had been eaten in the area. The first Yali was baptized in 1972. The German and Dutch missionaries had gradually been successful in their efforts to convert the Yali people to Christianity and tribal wars did not occur as frequently as before.
At the mission station, which was a Protestant mission, a church, school and housing had been built for the permanent staff who worked on site, as well as a small hospital. Furthermore, there was also a shop which sold items like salt, sugar, plastic pearls, mirrors, steel axes and knives, etc. In return, the indigenous people traded stone axes, bows, arrows and the like for resale.
In the nearest villages around Angguruk steel axes had become common, but only a few hours walk away from the mission station time stood still, and the stone axe was still an important tool. I quickly got the impression that everything I saw around me would probably be lost history in a few years, I quickly gave up the intention to immerse myself in how the Yali tribe had been integrated with the outside world and began instead to document what I saw around me with my camera.
Based at the mission stations guesthouse we walked around in the area where we visited some of the villages. Now and then we crossed rivers over primitive bridges made of logs lashed together with lianas, or we balanced across tree trunks that were laid out individually. We walked through wild and unspoiled landscapes with almost impenetrable jungle and steep mountains, up and down the narrow rocky paths and along rivers in the bottom of deep canyons, where nature was almost paradise with cascading waterfalls, beautiful flowers and colorful butterflies.
Portrait of a Yali chief.
Savilivi village, Jaxólé Valley.
Yalimo area, West Papua 1986.
Boys and men at the entrance to a mens house in the village Elintam.
Hunters in landscape near Angguruk.
Boys practicing archery.
Family huts in Pasikni village.
people in Savilivi village.
The Yali people were adapted to life in the mountains and had their own language and culture.
Men and boys lived in the mens house. Boys slept on the first floor above the fireplace.
Using mouse teeth for spiritual carving in a arrowhead for warfare.
Hunter in the jungle near Jaxólé River. Yalimo area, West Papua 1986.
Cutting with stone axe.
Yali woman and child wearing a rain hood made of pandanus leaves.
Woman plants sweet potatoes with digging stick.
Girls clean taro roots on a river bank in the jungle.
Portrait of woman and child.
Women, girls and young children lived in family huts where the pigs slept as well.
Children in Pasikni village.
Boys bathing in Jaxólé river.
View of Jaxólé Valley. The Yali people had lived in these mountains for centuries.
Boys make a waterproof dish of bark in the jungle.
The following pages (→-→): Yali portraits, Jaxólé Valley 1986.
A meal cooked in an earth oven near a river in the jungle.
It was rare we encountered anything beside kindness, only twice did I experienced being threatened with a bow and arrow. The first time it was a mentally disabled man who in his confusion over my presence stood before me in the middle of the village and in the sight of everyone was aiming at me with bow and arrow, to which he was tremendously scolded by the village chief. The poor deranged man then had to apologize, and the next hour or so he followed me everywhere I went while he occasionally held my hand.
The second episode happened on a path on a steep mountainside in the jungle where an oncoming man was so shocked and surprised to see me that in a moment out of pure reflex aimed at me with his bow and arrow as we rounded a sharp corner on the path where we suddenly met. Then he beat repeatedly his arrows bundle on the bow while he jumped and danced around by himself singing. Then we shook each others hands and smiled broadly. When I offered him tobacco he clicked his fingers on his long koteta, after which we sat squatting in the middle of the path smoking. When we were finished, we shook each others hand again and said "Wa nare", which was the obligatory Yali greeting man to man.
On another occasion there were a group of older men who opposed the idea that I be invited into the village's sacred mens house, but otherwise we met only kindness. People were very hospitable and interested in helping and usually we had a tail of people behind us.
A meeting with a Yali chief.
The village of Savilivi, Yaxólé Valley 1986.
Everyone gathered around us when we arrived at a village and apart from a couple of small children who were frightened and continued to howl, everyone came to us and wanted to shake our hands. They greeted in the most gracious manner: raised eyebrows and nodding once with the head and opened their eyes up into a big smile. Sometimes it happened that both children and adults, touched the light skin on our arms curiously, but when we looked at them, they were shy and took their hands up to their mouth while they cast down their eyes and smiled. Afterwards they howled with laughter, we also came to laugh a lot. When I handed over the gift we had brought along, a small bag of salt, banana leaves were immediately torn into small pieces, and all gathered with separate pieces, on which they got a little salt, as they blissfully licked in themselves immediately. It was teeming with adorable toddlers. Almost all the children had a cold with long green noses, some also had big, exuding tropical ulcers on the hips and thighs, and several had swollen bellies due to intestinal worms.
Most often I was invited into the mens house, where I handed over the chief a small packet of tobacco which, in great jubilation were given out to those present, who were all heavy smokers. People from the Yali tribe had always grown and smoked tobacco, even children of 4-5 years were smokers. Often I saw the adults rolling cigarettes of dried green leaves and given to the kids before they rolled up themselves. Smoking was an ancient part of their culture. In return for tobacco the men began to sing loudly, so it resounded. They loved to sing, and often their songs were improvised and expressed a common experience, for example - about the meeting with me and the tobacco I had brought as a gift. Their song could have been heard several kilometers away.
The villages lay on steep mountain slopes and consisted of small family huts that were built around a mens house. Plural marriage was common, and women and young children lived in the family huts where the pigs also slept. In the bigger mens house lived the village's adult men and initiated boys. There was no access for women and young children. On the outside the traditional mens house was richly decorated with sacred signs and patterns painted in red and white clay, which, according to the missionaries were associated with devil worship. It was here that the sacred stones were kept in the "black nets", and in some mens houses there were still smoked body parts stored from dead enemies etc.
All men and initiated boys wore "koteka" (penis sheath), which were prepared from the fruit of a special kind of gourd-species, which they cultivated. There was nothing sexual involved with wearing koteka, it was an ancient form of clothing and covering for the penis. The koteka was a sign of dignity and was kept upright using a string around the waist. Among people from the Yali tribe adult men moreover wore hundreds of rattan rings around the body. Women's clothing consisted only of short grass skirts, and their "noken" (nets bags) that hung down at the back and were carried with a strap over the forehead.
On the loft in the men house slept the boys, who from around 7-8 years of age were initiated to live in the men house. Until the initiation boys lived almost exclusively together with their mothers, but after the initiation, they had virtually nothing to do with the world of women.
After a week in the area I chose a small village where I would concentrate on collecting material for my photo documentary book. The book's main character was a nine year old boy called Puwul, he was the son of the village chief. In the days that followed my girlfriend stayed at the mission station, as she had inflammation in a wisdom tooth and had to take penicillin. Flight in and out did not occur every day.
The village was situated around a 2 ½ hour walk but from the mission station, which was far to walk every day back and forth. I usually left the mission station before sunrise.
The reason I chose that village in particularly was that it was a small and very traditional village, where none of the children had seen white men before and people lived a traditional life. They did not know what