The Threefold Logic of Papua‐Melanesia: Constitution‐writing in the Margins of the Indonesian Nation‐State

Abstract

Clashes over the status of West Papua and the political future of the territory proliferated markedly following the end of Indonesia's New Order regime in 1998. Amid a wide variety of demands for justice and independence, and a series of demonstrations, mass gatherings and prayers, only a few Papuans mused on how Papua could become a state and what would constitute its nature as being distinctly Papuan and/or Melanesian. One exception is the work put into the Constitution for West Papua entitled Basic Guidelines, State of West Papua, a document edited by Don A.L. Flassy, a bureaucrat, writer and thinker, with a preface by late Theys H. Eluay, then chairman of the Papuan Council. In this article I analyse this Constitution to show how a combination of Christianity and local customs, and a mimicry of elements of Indonesian nation building and symbols of the Indonesian nation‐state are reshaped to oppose Indonesian nation‐building agendas. The Constitution shows that when Papuans imagine an independent state, forms of vernacular legality play a central role. ‘The state’ has journeyed to Papua and encouraged faith in ‘the law,’ and Basic Guidelines is partly the effect of this growing vernacular legality. My analysis shows that it is essential to see how legal mobilisations and imaginations of the state articulate with other normative systems and practices – in particular Christianity and custom (adat) – and how they mutually allow for and invite strategies.

Papua Coming of Age: The Cycle of Man’s Civilisation and Two Other Papuan Histories

“…It was also necessary to analyse the intellectual effort and creativity involved in these undertakings (see Fisher andTimmer 2013, andTimmer 2013). This not only illuminates the different streams of knowledge that influenced the thinking behind these dissecting and overlapping histories, it also acknowledges the extent to which such histories are the product of competing segments of society that each tries to appropriate them and turn them to their own interests (Lincoln 1989: 38-50).…”

From ‘Stone-Age’ to ‘Real-Time’: Exploring Papuan Temporalities, Mobilities and Religiosities – An Introduction

“…What a regional comparison (Gingrich 2012) reveals here is that in Papua religion frequently enters the domain of political strategising for self-determination and for the purposes of differentiating 'Papuans' from 'Indonesians', of drawing boundaries between 'Christianity' and 'Islam'. However, as it can be observed throughout Melanesia, in Papua the domains of the state and religion, as well as custom, are in most contexts hard to conceptually separate (Timmer 2013;and Timmer in this volume). Moreover, a diverse set of linkages are mapped out connecting Papuan self-understandings to arguably 'foreign' content and imagery -Israel, American hip hop and ancient Javanese kingdoms, as we have seen above.…”

“…Among these broader patterns, another theme informs the chapters of this volume, revolving around the question of how Papuans are engaging with and imagining the state as a material and symbolic institution (see also Timmer 2013), and how the state positions Papuans in stone-age or real-time imaginaries. Stasch opens his chapter with a Korowai encounter with a new (if familiar) expression of state power, an official delegation from the Unit for Accelerated Development in Papua, not the first nor the last intervention of this sort, but an intervention that asks Korowai to once again suspend their prior knowledge and experience with the Indonesian state and to invest in this new iteration of the perpetual promise of development.…”

Wondrous geographies and historicity for state-building on Malaita, Solomon Islands

“…As the state is perceived as the New Jerusalem, these nuclei are to be run as the model for all the yet to be converted nations along the path back to Jerusalem. With pretensions to a world order and to firmly root nations in scripture, APCs are not just oppositions to the current state and nation of Solomon Islands, they are assemblages that make the thought of the state critical elements in people's life worlds (Barker 2013, Timmer 2013. Recognizing how the concepts of the state and nation are deployed allows us to show how they are seen as kastom, religious and aesthetically true Malaitan elements.…”