In Indonesian-controlled West Papua, the National Strategic Projects for food and energy estates—framed by the Indonesian state as strategies for climate mitigation and national food self-sufficiency—have instead reinforced colonial practices through land dispossession, ecological degradation, settler and military occupation, and direct and indirect rule over Indigenous peoples and their territories.

This talk examines Gerakan Palang Adat dan Salib Merah as an Indigenous response to these renewed colonial formations. It also reflects on the production of the film Pesta Babi: Colonialism in our time as a site of contemporary anticolonial worldmaking in West Papua and Indonesia: a collective practice through which Indigenous Papuans and their allies—including NGOs, researchers, journalists, filmmakers, and solidarity collectives across Indonesia—enact alternative social, political, ecological, and spiritual horizons that contest colonial domination while affirming Indigenous forms of life, coexistence, and sovereign futures.

Speaker

Cypri Paju Dale is an anthropologist working on the politics of development and indigenous self-determination in West Papua. He is the  co-director of Pesta Babi together with Dandhy Dwi Laksono.

Discussants

Grace Cheng  is the Founding Director of the Center for Human Rights at San Diego State University.  She is currently an affiliated fellow at KITLV, doing research on the construction of West Papua as a space in which external and internal powers, both state and commercial, have come to operate largely with impunity.

Fadjar Schouten-Korwa is a human rights lawyer with Papuan roots. She is also the co-initiator of Papoeahuis (Papua House), currently a digital platform that provides information on the shared history of West Papua and the Netherlands, as well as the current situation in West Papua.

Moderator

Hatib Kadir is an environmental humanities researcher specializing in ecological crises in peripheral regions at KITLV. Over the past seven years, he has conducted research in coastal areas of the Eastern Indonesian archipelago, spanning from Maluku to West Papua. His work delves into the intersections of the Anthropocene, human and non-human interactions, and ecological disruptions caused by resource exploitation, infrastructure projects, political policies, human activities, settler colonialism, and invasive species.

Format, date, time & venue

This seminar is an online event via Zoom and will take place on Thursday 16 July from 15.30–17.00 PM (CET).  

Time for Papua seminar series

A seminar series on the legacies and contemporary realities of West Papua. Papoea Huis, KITLV and the Wereldmuseum Leiden proudly present Time for Papua - an interdisciplinary seminar series dedicated to exploring the shared histories between the Netherlands and West Papua, and the ways these histories continue to shape the present. Read more.

Image

Salib merah (red cross). Photo: Cypri Dale.

Flyer

PDF format (A3)