Eben Kirksey first went to West Papua, the Indonesian-controlled half of New Guinea, as an exchange student in 1998. His later study of West Papua's resistance to the Indonesian occupiers and the forces of globalization morphed as he discovered that collaboration, rather than resistance, was the primary strategy of this dynamic social movement. Accompanying indigenous activists to Washington, London, and the offices of the oil giant BP, Kirksey saw the revolutionaries' knack for getting inside institutions of power and building coalitions with unlikely allies, including many Indonesians. He discovered that the West Papuans' pragmatic activism was based on visions of dramatic transformations on coming horizons, of a future in which they would give away their natural resources in grand humanitarian gestures, rather than watch their homeland be drained of timber, gold, copper, and natural gas. During a lengthy, brutal occupation, West Papuans have harbored a messianic spirit and channeled it in surprising directions. Kirksey studied West Papua's movement for freedom while a broad-based popular uprising gained traction from 1998 until 2008. Blending ethnographic research with indigenous parables, historical accounts, and narratives of his own experiences, he argues that seeking freedom in entangled worlds requires negotiating complex interdependencies.
Eben Kirksey is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Preface: Flying Fish, Flying Tourists, September 1994 ix List of Key Characters xv Introduction 1 Part I: Breakout, 1998-2000 Interlude: The King Has Left the Palace, Java, May 1998 23 1. The Messianic Multiple, July 1998 29 2. From the Rhizome to the Banyan, 1998- 2000 55 Part II: Plateau, 2000-2002 Interlude: Freeport Sweet Potato Distribution Inc. 83 3. Entangled Worlds at War, 2000-2001 90 4. Don't Use Your Data as a Pillow, June 13, 2001 125 5. Innocents Murdered, Innocent Murderers, August 31, 2002 138 Part III. Horizons, 2002-2028 Interlude: Bald Grandfather Willy 175 6. First Voice Honey Center, 2002-2008 182 Epilogue: The Tube, 2006-2028 210 Acknowledgments 221 Notes 225 Bibliography 283 Index 301
West Papua has been occupied by the Indonesian military for forty years. Anthropologist Eben Kirksey went there planning to study the resistance movements working for independence. Instead he was drawn into a different type of long-term campaign based on collaboration across enemy lines. Inadvertent witness to the massacre of teachers, including two Americans, by the Indonesian military, Kirksey became part of an international human rights effort in London and Washington, facing off as much against British Petroleum as the Indonesian government. In this lively ethnography, Kirksey narrates the complexities of West Papuan attitudes, including their unfulfilled expectations of freedom following the fall of Suharto.
"Here at last is the account I can unreservedly recommend to anyone interested in the courageous people and fragile geography of West Papua. Eben Kirksey makes accessible the unique imagery of West Papuans long subject to racism, corporate exploitation, and a brutal military. Marshalling impeccable scholarship, he transcends conventional political ideology to define a form of conflict resolution relevant to many 'entangled worlds.' Bravo!" Max White, Amnesty International USA "In a page-turning blend of cultural analysis, human-rights reportage, and biography, Eben Kirksey documents his participation in the West Papuan freedom struggle as an ethnographer. In the process, he provides keen insight into the movement's dynamics and the desires that have led West Papuans to rise up against seemingly insurmountable odds. Kirksey clarifies the possibilities and predicaments face by the Papuans, while making sense of the multiple times, mundane and messianic, in which many Papuans seem to live." Danilyn Rutherford, author of Laughing at Leviathan: Sovereignty and Audience in West Papua
