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Papua Merdeka
Koteka Wenda on Resisting Occupation in Exile
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.
Keep reading:
Music is Political:
Sounds that Move Movements
Emel Mathlouthi, Collis Browne
Emel Mathlouthi
{
"article":
{
"title" : "Papua Merdeka: Koteka Wenda on Resisting Occupation in Exile",
"author" : "Koteka Wenda, maya finoh",
"category" : "interviews",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/papua-merdeka-koteka-wenda-resisting-occupation-in-exile",
"date" : "2025-06-17 14:26:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/IMG_3867.jpg",
"excerpt" : "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.",
"content" : "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."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Neptune Frost",
"author" : "Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman",
"category" : "screenings",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/eip-screening-neptune-frost",
"date" : "2025-07-12 16:00:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/netune-frost-movie-poster.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Join us on Saturday, July 12 for a special screening, followed by an exclusive Q&A with the directors of Neptune Frost. Part of our member screening series, tune in live or anytime in the next 24 hours, from anywhere in the world!",
"content" : "Join us on Saturday, July 12 for a special screening, followed by an exclusive Q&A with the directors of Neptune Frost. Part of our member screening series, tune in live or anytime in the next 24 hours, from anywhere in the world!Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends."
}
,
{
"title" : "Socialist Girl Summer: How Capitalism Spent Billions to Demonize Socialism — And Why That Spell Is Breaking",
"author" : "Céline Semaan",
"category" : "essays",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/socialist-girl-summer-demonize-socialism-why-spell-breaking",
"date" : "2025-07-03 22:00:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_SocialistGirlSummer.jpg",
"excerpt" : "As the founder of Slow Factory, I design everything you see—every typeface, every framework, every campaign. I don’t outsource the vision. I shape it. And I started Slow with one goal in mind: to rebrand socialism, justice, and environmentalism—not as niche causes, but as cultural movements essential to our survival. Design isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about power. And I use design as a tool to imagine, demand, and build better worlds.For nearly a century, the United States has spent billions of dollars, media bandwidth, and educational muscle to ensure one thing: that the word socialism would strike fear in the public imagination. That’s not because socialism failed. It’s because socialism threatens power—especially the kind of power that hoards land, labor, and life for profit.But something is shifting. The re-election of Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in New York—an openly socialist organizer who unapologetically defends tenants, workers, and Palestinians—marks a rupture in that narrative. A new generation no longer flinches at the word. They embrace it. They are building it. They are winning.But before we can move forward, we must understand what we are up against.",
"content" : "As the founder of Slow Factory, I design everything you see—every typeface, every framework, every campaign. I don’t outsource the vision. I shape it. And I started Slow with one goal in mind: to rebrand socialism, justice, and environmentalism—not as niche causes, but as cultural movements essential to our survival. Design isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about power. And I use design as a tool to imagine, demand, and build better worlds.For nearly a century, the United States has spent billions of dollars, media bandwidth, and educational muscle to ensure one thing: that the word socialism would strike fear in the public imagination. That’s not because socialism failed. It’s because socialism threatens power—especially the kind of power that hoards land, labor, and life for profit.But something is shifting. The re-election of Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in New York—an openly socialist organizer who unapologetically defends tenants, workers, and Palestinians—marks a rupture in that narrative. A new generation no longer flinches at the word. They embrace it. They are building it. They are winning.But before we can move forward, we must understand what we are up against.A Propaganda Empire Built on FearFrom Cold War cinema to first-grade civics books, socialism was rendered as the enemy. Not because it endangered democracy, but because it questioned private property, militarism, and capitalism’s sacred cow: unlimited profit.The U.S. government, backed by its capitalist elite, responded with a sweeping cultural war. The Red Scare and McCarthyism turned union leaders, civil rights activists, and artists into traitors. The FBI surveilled and imprisoned people for organizing against poverty and racial capitalism. Hollywood blacklists sanitized storytelling and sold capitalist mythology as aspirational truth. CIA coups, from Chile to Iran to the Congo, dismantled democratically elected socialist governments because they dared to nationalize oil, land, and education. This wasn’t a fear of failure. It was a fear of redistribution.Why the Spell Is BreakingCapitalism made big promises. But it delivered gig work, burnout, debt, climate collapse, and endless war. A growing number of people—especially Gen Z and Millennials—aren’t buying the myth anymore.According to Pew Research (2023), 70% of younger Americans support some form of socialism.Mutual aid groups, public power campaigns, and tenant unions are taking root in cities across the U.S.And politicians like Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Summer Lee, and others are bringing these values to governance—publicly, unapologetically.This isn’t a rebrand. This is a return. A remembering.Designing LiberationDesign has always been political. It’s a tool used by empires—and also a tool of resistance. Every successful propaganda campaign used design to criminalize solidarity and glorify capitalism.Mid-century posters showed socialism as monstrous: Stalin as an octopus devouring the planet. Red flags engulfing American homes in flames. Inspectors peering through windows. These visuals weren’t neutral. They were weapons.But today, we’re flipping the frame.As a designer, I use visual culture to demystify and disrupt these fear-based narratives. We design not just what we see—but how we see. And when we shift that perspective, we make new futures possible.My work at Slow Factory has always been about this: telling stories rooted in care, equity, and ecological justice. Whether through open education, cultural programming, or climate justice campaigns, I’m reprogramming what power looks like—and who it belongs to.Zohran Mamdani and the Future of StorytellingMamdani’s victory isn’t just electoral. It’s cultural. He won while calling for an end to genocide in Gaza, organizing with workers instead of corporations, and speaking openly about the harms of capitalism and imperialism.He won while the establishment poured millions into defeating him.His win is proof: the old script is wearing thin.Reclaiming the Word, Reclaiming the WorldSocialism has always been about care—public housing, free healthcare, universal education, the right to rest and exist without fear. These are not fringe demands. These are the bare minimum for a livable planet.The villain was never socialism. The villain was the empire that told us we didn’t deserve care unless we could afford it.We are entering the Possible Futures era. And it’s being led by people who no longer fear justice—but are terrified of its absence.Designing that future means unlearning propaganda and replacing it with stories of survival, resistance, and imagination. We must reclaim the visual language of dignity—transforming symbols of domination into frameworks for liberation.We don’t just need to rebrand socialism.We need to remember it.And redesign everything."
}
,
{
"title" : "Who’s Profiting from Genocide? What Francesca Albanese’s Report Reveals—and Why It Matters for the Climate",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/profiting-from-genocide-what-francesca-albanese-report",
"date" : "2025-07-02 18:33:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Francesca_Report.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Let’s be clear: genocide is never just a military operation. It’s an economy.",
"content" : "Let’s be clear: genocide is never just a military operation. It’s an economy.This week, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese released a groundbreaking report—“From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide” naming dozens of global corporations complicit in and benefitting from Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The report makes what many of us have long known impossible to ignore: multinational corporations are not just “doing business” with Israel—they are profiting from displacement, resource theft, and mass death.And it’s not just harming people. It’s killing the planet.Albanese’s report lays out how corporations across defense, tech, finance, construction, and agriculture are directly enabling Israel’s assault on Gaza. This is not indirect. This is not abstract. These companies are not passive observers—they are profiteers. Weapon Manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, Boeing, BAE Systems, and General Dynamics are supplying the bombs raining down on hospitals and refugee camps. Tech Giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Palantir provide the cloud computing, AI surveillance, and targeting software that power Israel’s military intelligence. Construction Firms like Caterpillar, HD Hyundai, and Volvo provide bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes—often paid for with public funds or foreign aid. Hospitality Platforms like Booking.com and Airbnb list vacation rentals on stolen Palestinian land, laundering settler colonialism into leisure. Financial Institutions including BlackRock, Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Deutsche Bank fund Israeli military bonds and invest in all the above sectors. This is what an economy of genocide looks like: global, profitable, and deeply entrenched in the status quo.Genocide and Ecocide Are Two Sides of the Same CoinThe same companies enabling genocide are actively destroying ecosystems. This isn’t a coincidence—it’s a pattern.Caterpillar, already infamous for displacing Palestinian families, is a major contributor to fossil fuel extraction and mining projects that poison Indigenous lands in the Global South.Palantir, which boasts about using AI to “optimize” military surveillance, is also deployed by ICE in the United States to track, detain, and deport climate refugees and migrants.Netafim, an Israeli irrigation company profiting off stolen Palestinian water, is celebrated as “sustainable innovation” in the ag-tech world—masking eco-apartheid as green tech.In short: genocide and ecocide share a supply chain. And we need to cut the cord.Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer, supplies drones and surveillance tech to police at the U.S.-Mexico border—and to ICE.HP and Google provide AI and cloud infrastructure for the Israeli military while also marketing themselves as “green tech” leaders.Chevron and ExxonMobil continue to fund and extract from the Eastern Mediterranean, leveraging Israel’s military occupation to secure infrastructure.This is greenwashing meets genocide—a deadly symbiosis between environmental harm and militarized violence.What This Means for UsThis moment calls for more than statements. It calls for a total redefinition of what sustainability means—because there is nothing sustainable about silence in the face of genocide.If you are a brand, an artist, a designer, a policymaker, a curator, or a student: you are being called in. Your work, your budget, your institution may be entangled—knowingly or not—with the companies Albanese has exposed. Now is the time to do the work.What We Must Do—Now1. Follow the MoneyStudy the companies listed in Albanese’s report. If you work with—or fund—any of them, ask questions. Divest. Cut ties.2. Demand Institutional AccountabilityMuseums, universities, nonprofits, and sustainability conferences are often quietly sponsored by companies profiting from Israeli apartheid. Push for transparency. Refuse complicity. Call it what it is.3. Connect the StrugglesThe fight for Palestinian liberation is not separate from climate justice. This is all one system: extraction, occupation, militarization, profit. As we say often: everything is political—because everything is connected.4. Build and Invest in AlternativesMutual aid, abolitionist design, food sovereignty, fossil-free infrastructure, and Indigenous stewardship—these are not just buzzwords. They are the way forward. Center Global South leadership. Fund frontline communities.5. Say PalestineRefuse the pressure to sanitize. Refuse the pressure to stay neutral. In the face of genocide, neutrality is complicity. If your liberation practice does not include Palestine, it is incomplete.A Propaganda Crisis, TooThese companies aren’t just selling tools of war—they’re shaping narratives. They sponsor art exhibitions, climate conferences, design summits. They greenwash occupation and brand apartheid as “security innovation.”The most dangerous lie today is that “sustainability” can coexist with genocide. It can’t.No climate justice without Palestinian liberation. No sustainable future while apartheid is profitable.So What Can We Do?DivestCampaign for your workplace, university, or city to divest from the companies named in the report. Check your retirement funds. Audit your donors. Pull the receipts.ExposeIf your favorite brand or cultural institution is collaborating with Amazon, Palantir, or Caterpillar—say something. Publicly. Email them. Call it what it is: complicity.Cut the Narrative LoopRefuse to use language that normalizes occupation: “conflict,” “both sides,” “retaliation.” This is genocide.Build AlternativesSupport community-owned energy, Palestinian agricultural cooperatives, and local solidarity economies. Join land back and degrowth movements—they are connected.Organize for PolicyPush for legislation that bans military trade with apartheid regimes and prohibits companies from profiting off human rights abuses.Tell the Truth, ConsistentlyUse your platform to amplify the names, the facts, the systems. Share this report. Write your own version. Make the invisible visible.The Link Between Genocide and Climate HarmWe can’t talk about genocide without talking about resource theft, land colonization, and environmental destruction. The same weapons being used to bomb hospitals and schools in Gaza are being manufactured by companies who also profit from climate collapse—polluting ecosystems, propping up fossil fuel economies, and creating the conditions for displacement that militarized borders are then built to contain.We must hold the line. Genocide is not inevitable—it is designed. And anything that is designed can be dismantled. If we want to build a just, livable future, we must start by divesting from the machinery of death—and investing in life.Let this be the beginning."
}
]
}