Since the onset of the U.S.-sanctioned Israeli genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023, we have witnessed a global rise in awareness of the pervasive violence of colonialism and how necessary it is for life on this planet to dismantle it. This momentum has also led to the emergence of new forms of organizing in solidarity with oppressed peoples worldwide.
West Papua, unjustly annexed by the Indonesian state beginning in 1961, is the site of one of many Indigenous freedom struggles fighting against settler violence today: an estimated 500,000 West Papuans have been killed by Indonesian occupation forces over the last sixty years.
In this interview, Koteka Wenda—a West Papuan storyteller and cultural performer living in exile with her family in the United Kingdom—speaks with maya finoh about the ongoing occupation of West Papua at the hands of Indonesia; the current state of the Free West Papua/Papua Merdeka Movement, which resists genocide, ecocide, and forced cultural assimilation; solidarity with other liberation fights; and what it means to her to be an artist-activist fighting for the autonomy of the West Papuan people in diaspora.
maya finoh: I’m grateful to you for raising my awareness of the West Papuan struggle. It made me think about the solidarity between Black Atlantic and Black Pacific liberation struggles. I’d love to know what your personal connection to West Papua is.
Koteka Wenda: My birth was political, because I was born in what was basically a refugee camp on the border of Papua New Guinea and West Papua. This is a border that was envisioned by white Western men sitting around a table, cutting our island as if it were a cake. I think of how difficult it was for my mother to have to leave her village, her family home, to cross the border and give birth in a settlement or in a town far away from her ancestral lands. And how Indonesian colonialism rips apart families. It displaces people and takes away the safety of community.
That being said, when I was born, I was surrounded by a lot of strangers, who sooner or later, became family. I can’t go back to my homeland. I’m 23 going on 24 and it’s been more than 20 years since I freely roamed my ancestral lands. West Papua is home to wildlife and imagination. We are a Pacific Island nation. Our people are melanated. We have curly hair. We are ethnically, linguistically, culturally, Melanesian. We are distinct from the population of our colonizers, who are Southeast Asian, Javanese. I’ve always felt proud to be West Papuan despite living in exile overseas. I’ve been raised to love my heritage, and I think it’s this love for my land that is the foundation for my activism. I give credit to my parents, who have had to raise West Papuan children away from their lands.
I say we live in exile because my father, Benny Wenda, was and is a well-respected West Papuan liberation leader in the Free West Papua movement. He was arrested in the early 2000s for mobilizing the people of West Papua to speak up about the injustices. And for that, he was arrested and charged with 25 years. Next year would be his “release date.” My early childhood memories are quite traumatic. I remember some of my family photo albums of me visiting my father behind prison bars. My mother and I would visit every now and then and my mother would smuggle food to my father because there were rumors of him being poisoned.
The West Papuan colonial history is textbook colonialism. West Papua, alongside Papua New Guinea, are the custodians of the world’s third largest rainforest. It’s pure, virgin rainforest, and so naturally it was and is ripe for colonial exploitation. We are still experiencing colonialism and imperialism in the modern century. During the ‘60s, our brothers and sisters in the African continent experienced decolonization and many nations were birthed. West Papua was meant to be amongst the nations that benefitted from the UN Special Committee on Decolonization. We were a nation in waiting, ready to be born. But Indonesia stole that from us. The western half the Island, New Guinea, attracted many European powers. The Germans came along at one point, the Australians took administrative control of the island. Then we had the Japanese invasion. And then the Dutch prior to Indonesia.
Indonesia, who are our current colonizers, have gone through their own independence story and their own struggles. They were colonized and oppressed by the Dutch. But in 1945 they were able to liberate themselves, and they are now the independent nation we know today. But during that period of transition, the Dutch had their own Empire, which extended from Indonesia to the Southeast Asian islands all the way to the western half of the island of West Papua. Once Indonesia declared independence, the Dutch recognized that Indonesia was not going to give them West Papua because they saw them as ethnically, linguistically, and culturally distinct, therefore they were going to keep them separate and aid them in their journey toward independence and sovereignty. I think that’s important to recognize. We fought for Indonesian independence. The Dutch were adamant that we had our own self-governing territory. The first West Papuan Congress was in 1961. This was when our national flag, the Morning Star flag, was created and when our national anthem came to be… and then the carving up of our territory happened.
Papuans recognize the 1st of December as our should-have-been Independence Day. This National Day was attended by Dutch and other European observers, but it was literally a few weeks later that the Indonesian military invaded our land using paratroopers. Indonesia dropped hundreds of paratroopers onto West Papuan soil, and that’s when we essentially got into a short war with the Dutch and the Indonesians. The result of this was various agreements, the most significant agreement being the New York agreement of 1962 which, by the way, no West Papuans were consulted about. This agreement was signed by Indonesia and the Netherlands in a conference in New York. The agreement was that West Papua wouldn’t give away our sovereignty, but we would be under temporary administrative control by Indonesia. In the transitioning from the Dutch to Indonesia, a promise was made that there would be a referendum which would give the people of West Papua the right to self-determination, in other words, one man, one vote.
It was during that same time that multinational companies like Freeport Sulfur, a US company, came along and were given licenses to begin mining operations in West Papua. In 1969, during the so-called Act of Free Choice, the people of West Papua were denied the freedom to truly decide the fate of their land. Indonesia, instead of using the one man, one vote referendum procedure, adopted their own version called the Mushawarat system, which is completely different from what was decided in the New York agreement. Essentially, they hand-picked over 1000 elders and community leaders and forced them at gunpoint to agree to sell their land and integrate with Indonesia. Many of them were threatened and told that they would have their tongues cut out, or that they’d be killed if they voted against integration with Indonesia. I mention this because the sham referendum was witnessed by the United Nations, and by many Western observers, and yet they all turned a blind eye. Indonesia’s claiming of West Papua is completely illegal. It was essentially the theft of our land, of our sovereignty.
I do want to highlight the fact that it was during this whole colonial transfer that the licenses for the mines were given to US and British companies like British Petroleum.
It was never really about the people of West Papua getting their rights of determination. The main reason for our land being given to Indonesia was so that multinational companies could profit by exploiting our beautiful, beautiful land.
maya: This is incredibly heavy. I was really struck emotionally when you said that West Papua was supposed to be among the nations to be decolonized and liberated during the 1960s African liberation movement.
Koteka: Many of the newly born African nations, including Ghana, were very vocal about this. They were the ones who were pushing West Papua to be next. They brought West Papua up at UN meetings. I also want to speak to institutionalized racism and the mindset of Papuans. I think of how West Papuans weren’t even allowed in these big meetings, the New York agreement meetings or the round table conferences in the Netherlands, or any these big meetings that were deciding the fate of our land. Papuans were never consulted or invited into the rooms. It was because of racist ideologies around Black Melanesians, that we couldn’t be trusted to govern our own affairs, we needed Western intervention. I think as a young West Papuan descendant, I found myself having to prove my intellect, to prove my capabilities in in in the world. There is still a narrative that we West Papuans are primitive, living in the Stone Age.
maya: Could you speak to some of the historical and ongoing ways in which Indonesia continues to infringe upon West Papuans freedom and sovereignty. As you said, your father was a political prisoner. But I wonder if you could speak to some of the other tools and strategies they use against Papuans.
Koteka: I can use my name as an example. Koteka was a name that was gifted to me by my father. And when most Papuans hear my name, they’re shocked, because my name means penis gourd; it’s a traditional covering worn by the men from the highlands, which is where I’m from. It’s a covering for the male private parts, mostly worn as an ornamental piece. It’s aggressively anti-European, anti-Western. It’s aggressively indigenous. In looking into the history of my name, and Indonesia’s relationship with this piece of clothing, I came across a campaign that was led by colonial powers in the 1960s called Operation Koteka, or Operasi Koteka.
Indonesian forces would come into the highlands and force the men in our villages to swap their kotekas for Western European clothing. Operasi koteka, which was enforced in the ‘60s, is like a metaphor for what is still ongoing today. We’re now living in a modern Operasi Koteka era, where we can only wear traditional clothes during festivals, which are mostly sponsored by BP and mining groups. They basically only want us to wear our clothes when it suits their agenda. Or it paints a picture of a peaceful, happy West Papua, which is why it’s beautiful as an act of resistance. West Papuan men, when they protest in the capital Jayapura, will wear kotekas. They will go into the streets wearing penis gourds, and traditional headdresses. They paint their bodies and bring their bows and arrows. I’ve seen it, and I think it’s beautiful.
Bear in mind, I did get bullied and teased at school for having this name, but I’ve learned to love and embrace it, and it just shows that West Papuan people are not only facing genocide, ecocide, but also ethnicide. With the sudden influx of Japanese migrants through the Indonesian Asian transmigration program, we’re becoming a minority in our own land. This raises other issues such as cultural appropriation. Our culture being seen as more beautiful when it’s on the bodies of Japanese Indonesian migrants.
maya: Could you speak to the current state of the ongoing Free West Papuan movement.
Koteka: With the new Indonesian President Prabowo, who is guilty of crimes against humanity, there’s a big fear that with his new rule 1000s of hectares of our land is going to be sold to companies to make way for palm oil plantations, to make way for deforestation, to make way for sugar cane plantations. It’s heartbreaking because a lot of our people have a deep ancestral connection to their land. And a lot of our stories, our songs are connected to our land. When you displace and remove indigenous people from the land; you destroy that sacred relationship.
That’s why we have a boycott campaign, and that’s why we have the Green State Vision. My father came up with the Green State Vision to challenge the world to look to indigenous leaders for ideas about climate justice. When we’re fighting for climate justice, we also have to include indigenous liberation struggles, because once you liberate the people, you liberate new ideas and new visions, like the Green State Vision. When West Papua is an independent nation, we hope to become the world’s first green state, which will make ecocide a crime.
Our nation will be built based around Indigenous ideas and knowledge and Melanesian philosophies, which the world hasn’t seen before. When we liberate indigenous people, we liberate new visions of how to make the world a better, more sustainable place.
More than 500,000 men, women and children have been killed by the Indonesian state since the initial invasion. It’s been more than 60 years now, and nothing’s changed. Our people are still dying. Our children are still being murdered and kidnapped. Our women are still being raped and buried alive. The dramatic stories we heard our grandparents tell are still the headlines of papers today in West Papua. Media is still banned, and journalists are still banned from reporting freely. And what’s even worse is that the United Nations Human Rights Office cannot enter freely and do a thorough investigation into the human rights abuses. The stories we hear from inside West Papua are so valuable and so important, but they don’t have mainstream attention, and that’s why I think my platform is really important, because it does. It packages the struggle to wider audiences, modern audiences, in a more digestible, holistic way. I talk about my struggle through storytelling, visuals, music, songs, and dance.
maya: What does it mean to be an artist in the face of your people’s ongoing occupation at the hands of Indonesia?
Koteka: I think growing up, I thought stories were primitive mediums of activism. I thought that I had to use big, fancy words and be able to give a one-hour PowerPoint presentation with graphs and statistics to convince audiences to listen to the Message. Those are obviously useful and important in the struggle. But I felt really worried about young people not feeling empowered. I didn’t want them to feel apathetic and then just leave the freedom fight to the elders. I realized that storytelling could be a good tool… and music, dance and art could be useful tools to encourage my brothers and sisters to not feel intimidated to enter into this space when I sit down and play freedom songs.
My mother is a phenomenal songwriter. I was literally sung freedom songs from a very early age in my mother tongue, thanks to my mum. My father has a belief that music contains the human spirit. That’s why I often share these songs on social media. I do series or clips, and a lot of our old people are surprised. ‘How does she know our old songs? How can she can sing in our language?’ I love it because my accent disappears when I’m singing in my language, and people can’t tell that I’m living in the belly of colonial abuse. My sisters and I are dancers as well. We have performed at cultural festivals, music festivals, our school’s international evening, people’s weddings, and people’s birthday parties. It’s healing for us. It’s the best feeling when you can turn something traumatic into something beautiful. Music is a universal language. Even though some people can’t understand the freedom songs I sing, they can feel it.
maya: Like you said, I think that the cultural aspect of revolution, of our movement, is also how we build an identity outside of what our colonizers, our occupiers have said we are. I’m so mindful of the necessity of uplifting this ongoing freedom movement. During this time, we’re also seeing this genocidal campaign against Gaza and Palestinians. Israel is employing some of these same strategies that Indonesia is employing, like ecocide, cultural genocide, as well as the genociding of life.
Koteka: Gaza is the world’s most well documented genocide. And West Papua is the least well documented genocide. It’s really concerning when we see the world turning a blind eye to the suffering of our Palestinian brothers. It’s concerning… but it’s actually really beautiful to see the world and the West stand up for oppressed and colonized people, despite the leaders turning a blind eye.
maya: I don’t see a world in which we can have solidarity or liberation for just one colonized people. It’s necessary for us to see our liberation, our lives, as intertwined with one another.
Koteka: That’s why I also want to take time to acknowledge other liberation struggles in the Pacific. Besides West Papua, there’s the French, who obviously have their foot in the Pacific. We had our first ever protest outside the French Embassy in solidarity with our Kanaki brothers and sisters. The territory is called New Caledonia, and the indigenous people are fighting for a referendum for their own liberation. We have other territories in the Pacific, like Rapa Nui, which is currently a territory of Chile. And then we also have Bougainville, which is a Papua Guinean province. They are hoping to get their referendum soon. The Pacific has some really cool Black liberation struggles, movements that need more attention. West Papua deserves attention, but then we have these other minority struggles in the region. We do have a cross-solidarity relationship with our other island brothers and sisters. Black liberation struggles matter in the Pacific as much as they do in the in the rest of the world.
