New Guinea

New Guinea, located north of Australia, is the world's second-largest island having become separated from the Australian mainland when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded around 5000 B.C.E. The name "papua" has also been long-associated with the island: this is discussed further under History below.

Political divisions

The island is divided politically along east-west lines, roughly into equal halves:

• The portions of the island of New Guinea ("Irian" in Bahasa Indonesia) located west of 141°E longitude are incorporated into Indonesia as the provinces:
  • West Irian Jaya (Irian Jaya Barat) with Manokwari as its capital
  • Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) with the city of Jayapura as its capital. A proposal to split this into Central Papua (Papua Tengah) and East Papua ("Papua Timur") has not been implemented.

Papuans actively have supported a broad-based independence movement, the Organisasi Papua Merdeka or OPM, against Indonesia since 1962. Its military arm is the TPN, or the Liberation Army of Free Papua. The Indonesian authorities view this as a separatist and terrorist movement, the members of which are guilty of high treason. The OPM has charged the Indonesian government with racism, genocide, political assassination, torture and terrorism. Amnesty International has estimated more than 100,000 Papuans have died as a result of government-sponsored violence against Papuans, while others have set the number at more than 200,000.

• The eastern part forms the primary part of the nation of Papua New Guinea, which has been an independent country since 1975.

People

Populated by very nearly a thousand different Papua Melanesian tribal groups since 45,000 B.C.E., New Guinea is the home of the world's oldest independent societies and a staggering number of separate languages, the Papuan languages. The separation was not merely linguistic; warfare among societies was a factor in the evolution of the men's house: separate housing of groups of adult men, from the single-family houses of the women and children, for mutual protection against the other groups. Pig-based trade between the groups and pig-based feasts are a common theme with the other peoples of Southeast Asia and Oceania. Most societies practice agriculture, supplemented by hunting and gathering.

The island's population is comprised of roughly two indigenous ethnic groups: Papuans and Austronesians. Current evidence (archaeological, linguistic and biological) indicates that the Papuans are the oldest human residents of New Guinea, and that they constitute the majority of the population of New Guinea. Austronesians are a group who originated in Taiwan and spread from there through the Philippines and Indonesia and on into the Pacific. These seafaring peoples reached New Guinea many thousands of years after the arrival of the Papuans. They have colonised many offshore islands in the north and east of New Guinea, and in some places have settled on the mainland. The many thousands of years of human occupation of New Guinea has led to a great deal of ethnic diversity, which has been increased by the arrival of the Austronesians and the more recent history of European and Asian colonization. The Indonesian government which controls the western half of New Guinea has instituted an aggressive transmigration program designed to bring chiefly Sumatran and Javanese immigrants to Indonesian New Guinea to tip the largely black population toward a more Asian "balance." To date, more than 1 million Asian immigrants have settled in western New Guinea as part of the transmigration program.

Ecology

With some 786,000 km of tropical land, New Guinea has an immense ecological value: 11,000 plant species; nearly 600 unique bird species, including the bird of paradise, cassowaries; over 400 amphibians; 455 butterfly species; marsupials including bondegezou, Goodfellow's tree kangaroo, Huon tree kangaroo, long-beaked the echidna, tenkile, agile wallaby, alpine wallaby, cuscus and possum; and various other mammal species. Most of these species are shared, at least in their origin, with the continent of Australia, which was until fairly recent geological times, part of the same landmass.

History

The first inhabitants of New Guinea arrived at least 60,000 years ago, having travelled through the Malay peninsula. These first inhabitants, from whom the Papuan people are probably descended, adapted to the range of ecologies and in time developed one of the earliest known agricultures. Remains of this agricultural system, in the form of ancient irrigation systems in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, are being studied by archaeologists. This work is still in its early stages so there is still uncertainty as to precisely what crop was being grown, or when/where agriculture arose.

The gardens of the New Guinea highlands are ancient, intensive permacultures, adapted to high population densities, very high rainfalls (as high as 10,000 mm/yr (400 in/yr)), earthquakes, hilly land, and occasional frost. Complex mulches, crop rotations and tillages are used in rotation on terraces with complex irrigation systems. Western agronomists still do not understand all practices, and native gardeners are notably more successful than most scientific farmers. Some authorities believe that New Guinea gardeners invented crop rotation well before western europeans. A unique feature of New Guinea permaculture is the silviculture of "Casuarina oligodon," a tall, sturdy native ironwood tree, suited to use for timber and fuel, with root nodules that fix nitrogen. Pollen studies show that it was adopted during an ancient period of extreme deforestation.

In more recent millennia another wave of people arrived on the shores of New Guinea. These were the Austronesian people, who had spread down from Taiwan, through the south-east Asian archipelago, colonising many of the islands on the way. The Austronesian people had technology and skills extremely well adapted to ocean voyaging, and Austronesian language-speaking people are present along much of the coastal areas and islands of New Guinea.

The first European contact with New Guinea was by Portuguese and/or Spanish sailors in the 16th century. In 1526-27 Don Jorge de Meneses saw the western tip of New Guinea and named it "ilhas dos Papuas." The word "papua" is most commonly said to derive from a Malay word — sometimes pronounced "pua-pua" — meaning "frizzly-haired," a reference to the frizzled hair of the inhabitants of these areas. Another possibility (put forward by Sollewijn Gelpke in 1993) is that it comes from the Biak phrase sup i papwa which means ‘the land below [the sunset]’ and refers to the islands west of the Bird's Head, as far as Halmahera.

Whatever the origin of the name, it came to be associated with this area, and more especially with Halmahera, which was known to the Portuguese by this name during the era of their colonization in this part of the world.

In 1545 the Spaniard Yñigo Ortiz de Retez sailed along the north coast of New Guinea as far as the Mamberamo River, near which he landed, naming the island "Nueva Guinea." The first map showing the whole island (as an island) was published in 1600 and shows it with this island.

The first European claim occurred in 1828, when the Netherlands formally claimed the western half of the island as Netherlands New Guinea. In 1883, following a short-lived French annexation of New Ireland, the British colony of Queensland annexed south-eastern New Guinea. However, the Queensland government's superiors in the United Kingdom revoked the claim, and (formally) assumed direct responsibility in 1884, when Germany claimed north-eastern New Guinea as the protectorate of German New Guinea (also styled "Kaiser-Wilhelmsland"). The first Dutch government posts were established in 1898 and in 1902 Manokwari on the North coast, Fak-Fak in the West and Merauke in the South at the border with British New Guinea.

Both the Dutch and the British tried to suppress warfare and headhunting once common between the villages of the populace.

In 1905 the British government renamed their territory to Papua and in 1906 transferred total responsibility for it to Australia. During World War I, Australian forces seized German New Guinea, which in 1920 became a League of Nations mandated territory of Australia. The Australian territories became collectively known as The "Territories of Papua and New Guinea" (until February 1942).

Before about 1930, most European maps showed the highlands as uninhabited forests. When first flown over by aircraft, numerous settlements with agricultural terraces and stockades were observed.

Netherlands New Guinea and the Australian territories were invaded in 1942 by the Japanese. The Australian territories were put under military administration and were known simply as New Guinea. The highlands, northern and eastern parts of the island became key battlefields in the South West Pacific Theatre of World War II. Papuans often gave vital assistance to the Allies, fighting alongside Australian and US troops, and carrying equipment and injured men across New Guinea. Following the return to civil administration, the Australian section was known as the "Territory of Papua-New Guinea" (1945-49) and then as "Papua and New Guinea." Although the rest of the Dutch East Indies achieved independence as Indonesia in 1949, the Netherlands regained control of western New Guinea.

During the 1950s the Dutch government began to prepare Netherlands New Guinea for full independence and allowed elections in 1959; an elected Papuan Council, the New Guinea Council (Nieuw Guinea Raad) took office in 1961. The Council decided on the name of "West Papua," a national emblem, a flag called the Morning Star or Bintang Kejora, and a national anthem; the flag was first raised — next to the Dutch flag — later that year. However, Indonesia threatened with an invasion, after full mobilisation of its army, in 1962. It had received military help from the Soviet Union. Under strong pressure of the Kennedy administration the Dutch, who were prepared to resist an Indonesian attack, had to go to the conference table. That year the Dutch handed over the territory to a temporary UN administration (UNTEA). Indonesia took control in 1963. The territory was renamed "West Irian" and then "Irian Jaya." In 1969 Indonesia, under the 1962 New York Agreement, had to organize a plebiscite to seek the consent of the Papuans for Indonesian rule. This so-called Act of Free Choice ("Pepera") resulted under strong threats and intimidations of the Indonesian army in a 100% vote for continued Indonesian rule.

From 1971, the name Papua New Guinea was used for the Australian territory. In 1975, Australia granted full independence to Papua New Guinea.

In 2000, amid increasing discontent and opposition to Indonesian rule, Irian Jaya was formally renamed the "Province of Papua" and a large measure of "special autonomy" was granted in 2001. This law on special autonomy, however, was never implemented. On the contrary, early in 2003 President Megawati Sukarnoputri announced the division of the province into three parts, while the name "Papua" for the province would again revert to Irian. With strong public protest by Papuans, only the province of West Irian Jaya, with Manokwari as its capital, covering the Bird's Head peninsula was split from Papua Province. In 2005 a new proposal came from Jakarta to split the province into five provinces, with the clear purpose to eliminate all anti-Indonesian and pro-independence action.

External links

• The Intoxicating Birds of New Guinea by John Tidwell
• Online documentaries re OPM sponsored by West German-based Friends of Peoples Close to Nature
• Facsimile of material from "The Discovery of New Guinea" by George Collingridge

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