Reflecting on loss in Papua New Guinea (original) (raw)
Related papers
Anthropology in Papua New Guinea: History and Continuities
2010
The aim of this paper is to explore the history of anthropology in Melanesia with a particular attention to the territory of the current independent state of Papua New Guinea. Author analyzes the history of the anthropological research in Papua from the late 19th century until the sixties. The author distinguishes three phases of history of anthropology in Papua: a phase of the first anthropological contact in the late 19th century, a phase of the nidation until the middle of twentieth century and a phase of the gold age of the anthropology in Papua, from the middle to the sixties of the twentieth century. Author argues that the fieldworks conducted in Papua changed the face of anthropology in a profound way. In the last part of the paper author summarizes main achievements and progress in anthropology of Melanesia in the framework of anthropology as such.
The Routledge Companion to Global Indigenous History, 2022
During the early colonial era, collectors from Australia, Europe, and North America descended on the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea) in a rush to acquire ‘primitive’ artefacts for Western markets and institutions. The object hunters had a variety of intentions and approaches to acquiring artefacts from local Indigenous people. Field diaries, colonial records, and early ethnographic publications offer Western perspectives on the cross-cultural interactions that took place. In this essay, I explore contemporary Indigenous perspectives on the removal of material culture in the early 1900s. Narratives (oral and textual) told by the Kaivakovu and Larihairu village communities of Orokolo Bay in the Gulf of Papua describe a traumatic event: the extraction of a preserved ceremonial longhouse post (ive) at gunpoint by the anthropologist Francis Edgar Williams. I unpack these stories and relevant archival sources with reference to notions of remembering, trauma, and telescoping. For the inhabitants of Orokolo Bay, the silencing of materials of ancestral communal importance some 80–90 years ago has not caused forgetting. Rather, social memories of the now-absent ive and of violent acts of removal endure and inform Indigenous conceptions of museum institutions today.
Countering Imperialism: two intersecting anthropologies of Papuan histories
AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2022
Reflecting on the violence in Papua and how this is shaping Papuan lifeworlds and triggers attempts to disengage from Indonesian and Dutch imperialism, we, I Ngurah Suryawan and Jaap Timmer, position ourselves as nationals from colonising states-one current, Indonesia and one historic, Netherlands-in relation to our anthropological research in Papua. We came to the long-drawn-out conflict and growing affirmations of cultural autonomy in Papua from different backgrounds, and this has affected the way in which we try to contribute to remedy decades of violence. Yet, as we will show, we converge in the way we recognise that a key role we can play as anthropologists is to contribute to a better understanding of Papuan cultures and more appreciation of their creative expressions and to enable, for Papuans, a decolonial epistemology.
Reimagining life - Papua Decolonisation Part 2
Melanesian peoples have a very long history of both doing their own thing and doing it in a culturally resilient manner. While modern master narratives presume outcomes which are in keeping with their own conscious or unconscious specifications, Melanesian life, in various places, provides something of a counter to those presumptions Papuan people continue to assert their right to self-determination. T
Reimagining life - Papua Decolonisation Part 3
DUALITY, AN UNCONSCIOUS-IN-CULTURE, and the end of Society. "The myths show that when the relative superiority of one value over another gives way to and absolute superiority of one value, this means the end of society" (Pouwer 1992:96 in relation to Platenkamp 1988) The unconscious-in-culture of the modern nation-state, by contrast to many First Peoples Ways, consists of clusters of top-down metaphors. These metaphors systematically disguise the workings of social arrangements which concentrate power in the hands of a few the name of 'centralisation'. Things 'go up' to and 'come down from' the imaginary centres. Far too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few with corresponding systems of architecture. Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ministers of State, a single god, a priestly caste, 'the capital'; elaborate court buildings and so on.
Reimagining Life - Papua Decolonisation Part 1
The first part of a draft work on the need to go beyond the modern nation-state as a solution to the problems of Indonesian colonisation in West Papua. It takes up the work of Jan Pouwer and other scholars and activists.
Mimesis and pacification: the colonial legacy in Papua New Guinea
History and Anthropology, 1998
The fact that history has rolled over certain positions will be respected as a verdict on their truth content only by those who agree with Schiller that 'world history is the world tribunal.' What has been cast aside but not absorbed theoretically will often yield its truth content only later. It festers as a sore on the prevailing health; this will lead back to it in changed situations."-Adorno (1973:144