Adat Institutionalisation, the State and the Quest for Self-Determination in West Papua

Abstract

In West Papua, which encompasses the Papua and West Papua provinces of Indonesia, adat has been codified as an integral part of decentralised governance and development policies. Unlike other places where adat has been institutionalised, the institutionalisation of adat governance in West Papua is marked by contestation not only between different forms of adat institutions but also by competing political ideologies of national liberation. By tracing the history of various institutional frameworks in which adat and ‘adat communities’ are accommodated by the state, and elucidating non-state institutionalisation, this article demonstrates how adat remains a political battleground for various political actors in West Papua, including the Indonesian central government and Papuan independence movements. My article argues that the case of West Papua sets the limit for Indonesian adat discourses particularly in addressing Papuan articulations of their indigeneity and in accommodating demands for sovereignty.

Keywords:

• Adat
• Custom
• West Papua
• State
• Indonesia
• Melanesia

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges with thanks the funding assistance provided by Leiden University's Asian Modernities and Traditions (ATM) towards the production of this special double issue.

Notes

1 I will use West Papua as a self-identifying term that refers to both the provinces of Papua and West Papua of Indonesia, thus the period after 1963. To refer to the Dutch period, I use the term Netherlands New Guinea or New Guinea for short. Under Indonesia, West Papua had been called Irian Barat during the Soekarno years (1963–71), Irian Jaya during the Soeharto years (1973–99), and then Papua (2000–07). I use the self-identifying term ‘Papuans’ to refer to the indigenous population (vis-à-vis Indonesians).

2 After the recognition of Indonesian independence in 1949, the Dutch ruled New Guinea directly from The Hague (see Drooglever 2009, specifically chapter 6).

3 See the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1961) and Marey (2005).

4 Soekarno used the term ‘Irian Barat’ (or West Irian) to refer to West Papua. When Soeharto came to power, he replaced the name ‘Irian Barat’ with Irian Jaya in 1973. Eliezer J. Bonay hailed from Yapen-Waropen Island in the western part of West Papua. The musyawarah was not only attended by the local autochthonous population but also by Indonesians who had been living in New Guinea (mainly teachers and government officials/bestuur) and 13 Indonesian officials from Jakarta.

5 Ondofolo is the highest authority in traditional Sentani polities.

6 Theys Hiyo Eluay was a member of the Pepera Council (1969), the local Parliament (DPRD) and later Golkar. His membership in these political bodies allowed him to access power until he was assassinated by the Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus) in 2001.

7 I thank an anonymous reviewer who suggested this line of inquiry. The data belong to her. See also the edited collection by Weiner and Glaskin (2007), Kirsch (2006) and Stead (2016) for the new development of Melanesian land tenure systems.

8 The Badan Musyawarah Adat Sentani became the Lembaga Musyawarah Adat Dafonsoro, on 18 October 1986, to accommodate a pressing issue that demanded more intensive and expansive attention from the body, namely transmigration.

9 After the proliferation of territorial re-division (I. pemekaran), adat institutions reach even to the smallest administrative units of the government. The persisting problem of land grab continues to be the major preoccupation of these adat institutions/bodies/councils. Due to the limitation of space, I cannot elaborate the importance and urgency of this problem, but I would like to refer to the works of Timmer (2005), Suryawan (2017), and other adat scholars as well as NGOs, human rights organisations, churches and journalists to understand specific cases or topics in West Papua.

10 With few exceptions, I use pseudonyms to protect Papuans’ identities. I use real names when the subject mentioned is a public figure.

11 MRP was formed as a cultural representative of the autochthonous Papuan population according to a mandate in the Law No. 21/2001 on the Special Autonomy Status of Papua Province. MRP members consist of Papuan natives (orang asli Papua) that come from three chambers: adat, women and religion (mainly churches).

12 In Hubula’s (Dani) social organisation, silimo is the smallest governing unit, which usually consists of several honai (Hubula’s male houses). Several silimo constitute a larger political unit that is based on a clan association. Each clan has a special honai called pilamo, which is dedicated to maintaining their kanéké (sacred objects that contain the spirit of the ancestors). In the post-2001 period, this honai is called honai adat.

13 The United Liberation Movement of West Papua was formed through the Saralana Declaration that was signed by the three largest resistance organisations, namely the Federal Republic for West Papua (NRFPB), the West Papua National Coalition of Liberation (WPNCL) and the West Papua National Parliament (WPNP). The Melanesian Spearhead Group is a sub-regional political grouping founded in 1986 whose members are Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front of New Caledonia (FLNAK). As a geopolitical group, the Melanesian Spearhead Group makes use of their Melanesian-ness as a political weapon against the dominance of Polynesians in Pacific political groupings such as the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

14 Some DAP activists have refused this separatist stereotype. In some of their discussions, they propose that the DAP becomes the Council for the Papuan Nation (I. Dewan Bangsa Papua) (see Gobai 2015, 46).

15 In June 2015, Indonesia was recognised as an associate member, and ULMWP as an observer. Indonesia has aggressively lobbied Fiji and Papua New Guinea to block the ULMWP’s bid for MSG membership.

16 John Gobai even argues that LMA is a ‘red and white’ adat institution (I. lembaga masyarakat adat merah putih). The term red and white refers to the Indonesian flag. In West Papua, this connotes any person or institution that supports Indonesia’s rule in the region. According to Gobai (2015, 6), the commander of the VIII Regional Military Command (Kodam) of Cenderawasih and the police chief of Papua attended the inauguration of the LMA in Jayapura in 2010.