Countering imperialism: two intersecting anthropologies of Papuan histories

Abstract

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.