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- Hacker News
- I personally know Benny Wenda and the Wenda family. Benny Wenda was the West Papuan President before his people were overthrown and violently ousted by the Indonesian government in part in order to gain full control of the largest gold mine in the world, Grasberg mine.
The family is still in exile in the UK, and are trying to raise awareness via the Free Papua Movement which aims to separate West Papua from Indonesia and create an independent state. If you care about injustice in the world, have a quick read up on the situation and maybe share the link if you feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Wenda
by alt227 - I used to watch https://www.youtube.com/@MissionaryBushPilot deliver stuff around PNG in a Kodiak. If you're into aviation, the videos are goldenby tthbalazs
- On the other hand, the MAF is a highly questionable organization that exists specifically to convert the local people away from their own belief systems into whatever brand of evangelical Christianity its supporters are peddling. There's plenty of bush plane videos from Alaska, Nunavut and other challenging places in the world from ordinary small commercial bush plane operators.
It's morally indefensible in my opinion for a bunch of random people from many thousands of km away to go off to some pre-technology rural villagers' home territory and basically say "everything you believe is wrong, here's our god, you must follow and believe in him or you're going to hell".
If people want to go do bush plane things in remote areas and work in very challenging environments as weird foreigners, there's plenty of ways to justify that in the form of a secular NGO (something like Medecins Sans Frontiers) without combining it with missionary work.
by walrus01 - I think it is overall a well written and engaging article on a topic I knew nothing about.
However, about half way through the author writes
> The only place on the whole island where the two worlds nearly collide is the Markham valley […]
Author then goes into a bit of detail on that place before giving two reasons why he believes “that”. Two reasons I cannot for the life of me parse
> The reason why I believe that, despite the minimal trade that existed, the highlands were functionally cut off, is that when the Europeans occupied New Guinea, they themselves did not ever speak of or show knowledge of the highlanders. Similarly, when the highlanders first encountered Australians, they had no concept of the coastal people, or where the shells came from, or any further concept of the broader world.
So the reason the highlanders world nearly collided with the coastal dwellers at Markham Valley is because the Europeans didn’t meet the highlanders when they occupied the island?
The other reason is to do with genetics, which I find equally detached from the core subject of those paragraphs.
by wodenokoto - Jared Diamond (not sure which book - perhaps Guns, Germs and Steel) makes the claim that it was because areas were productive enough that people didn't need to move and also heavily protected from other incursion from other tribes - travelling outside your groups territory or meeting a group of people you didn't know was effectively suicide. So although there was occasional trade - no people or knowledge was transferred - which explains why there's over 1000 (very different) languages.
- If it helps, he's saying those two reasons are the evidence that the highlands were completely cut off, not that those are the cause of the highlands being cut off. As opposed to an alternate history where there was significant trade or interaction between the highlands and coastal peoples.
> The reasons why I believe that ... the highlands were functionally cut off is ...
by npilk - No, the reason it occurred in the Markham Valley is because of the bit immediately after that sentence:
> a 1,000 metre climb over about 30 km takes you straight up onto the edge of the eastern highlands
i.e. because the Markham River provides a pathway from the Lowlands into the Highlands.
The paragraph you quote concerns a different proposition, as may be clearer if some of the subordinate clauses are elided:
> The reason why I believe that […] the highlands were functionally cut off, is that […] they themselves did not ever speak of or show knowledge of the highlanders. Similarly, when the highlanders first encountered Australians, they had no concept of the coastal people, or where the shells came from, or any further concept of the broader world.
by bradrn - I was there in '84, I have a page here with pictures and recordings of an interesting encounter. The subjects are from a coastal town though, not the highlands, but they were at the "Highlands Show". https://vin-dit.org/amyours.htmlby jtotheh
- Almost forgot - I was at the annual highlands "sing-sing" competition and took a lot of pix, but only really recently got them digitized. They're not that well-preserved etc but there's a ton of them here: https://vin-dit.org/goroka84/gallery1.htmlby jtotheh
- A friend (now a very fine lawyer in London) travelled PNG during an election assisting in some fashion for several weeks if not months. She came home with a crimp in her hair and ridges on all her toe and fingernails from nutritional deficiencies. This is when I realised differences in standards of living were not theoretical.by ggm
- > A friend travelled PNG during for several weeks if not months. She came home with a crimp in her hair and ridges on all her toe and fingernails from nutritional deficiencies.
Gonna press X to doubt on that one, bro.
by avazhi - if she was eating sweet potatoes how can that be ? unless she wasn't eating the sweet potatoes at all ?by dzonga
- Malnutrition after 3 weeks? I mean, pack 21 multivitamins.by hackernud3s
- Random PNG fun facts: their most watched sporting event is State of Origin, a rugby league competition between two Australian states, over which many people have died in PNG. Australia recently allowed them a team in the NRL, its premier rugby league competition, essentially in exchange for PNG not signing a security agreement with China like the Solomon Islands did.by broodbucket
- This does not make sense I love it. Why State of Origin and not just simply the NRL?by amunozo
- > This was fuelled by what is known as moka, a system of competitive gift giving, where you give someone in your tribe goods like a pile of pigs and shells, and they are then obligated to give you back more later, and you them more again after that. Whoever gives the most, publicly, becomes the big man.
This reminds me of the Reciprocity and Re-Distribution system in the Inca Empire. There wasn't a system of currency or markets. But there was an Ayni (mutual aid) and Minka (collective work) system, paired with a Mita system: work done for the Sapa Inca which was in return "paid" by the Sapa Inca in feasts, food and goods/gifts. This was all glued together by the concept of Ayllu (family), where these obligations were established through family connections and of course the Sapa Inca had marriage connections with subordinate chiefs.
I myself can't stop thinking about the Inca Empire Economy and how it shows in reality that currency is not about the paper nor number nor symbols, and more about the "I owe you"s that move in the economy.
by DanielVZ - See also Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice.by juujian
- I’d recommend reading the late David Graeber’s “Debt” which does a good job illustrating exactly what you described, which is how currency is at its core an IOUby weakfish
- Indonesia's dictator Suharto (who was put into power by the US) annexed West Papua in the 60's on behalf of US corporations. Indigenous groups united together to form the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and wage a guerilla war of resistance. The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua (which is basically a colony) and PNG (which is basically a banana republic) want reunificationby culi
- > Suharto (who was put into power by the US)
Suharto was responsible for his own rise. He took money and intel from wherever he liked and was basically an independent & ruthless strongman. Neither he nor other Indonesians need to be infantilized by lazy neocolonial narratives.
by hitekker - Carved open whole mountains: https://imgsrv2.voi.id/kn25_PwLY-AF-WW29WhOyKglpuHx95_W7T90y...
In regards to Suharto, it seems the 1965 coup attempt that got him into power was a surprise even to the US embassy in Jakarta, but of course they welcomed it, considering the previous president (Sukarno) was anti-imperialist and was flirting with the 3rd largest communist party in the world (after USSR's and China's).
Somewhat relatedly, a documentary moviemaker realized what was behind the curtain of Indonesian society and said "it's as if I had wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power.". He made a documentary following a man who was sanctioned by the Suharto regime to kill a lot of "communists" in 1960's Indonesia: The Act of Killing (available at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q ).
A review:
> Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a challenging documentary. It is not only difficult to watch, but it also probes into one of the most grotesque aspects of human nature: the capacity for self-delusion in the face of horrific atrocities. This isn’t a film about history, facts, or statistics; it’s about the memories of the men who killed, the stories they tell themselves, and how they continue to live with the horrors they’ve inflicted on others. The film’s power lies in its ability to take the viewer beyond a surface-level understanding of evil and into the psychological abyss of those who have committed atrocities—and seemingly moved on with their lives.
From: https://docthisway.com/2024/09/23/the-act-of-killing-review/
by netsharc - Paradise Broadcasting also made an incredible documentary[0] on the bombing of OPM by the Indonesian government. The follow up videos are great as well.by whou
- > The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua
I'm unsure if that's an accurate description. I would say it is more accurate to say that West Papua is being genocided. Indigenous West Papuans are being genocided by settlers from Java. More than 500,000 West Papuans have been killed according to estimates by indigenous groups. It is hard to verify since Javanese settlers (Prabowo is Javanese) control the army and no media or journalists, and not even Indonesians are allowed to enter West Papua. This year, thousands of excavators were shipped on barges into West Papua. Western corporations like Freeport McMoran are complicit. It is horrific to see videos that have come out. There is one which I saw, I still get nightmares. It is an indigenous Papuan man being skinned alive in a drum of water. The name that was spread was Defianus Kogoya. It is so sad... West Papua was one of the most beautiful places on this planet with inland seawater lakes that had non-venomous jellyfish in Misool. Cave systems with handprints said to pre-date the Toba erruption. All of this being destroyed.
- My parents lived in the highlands in PNG in the late 70s and early 80s and my dad still speaks pidgin (mostly with his current neighbours who are from Port Moresby the capital). I've heard of lot of amazing (and pretty wild!) stories over the years. And met some interesting folk who up were up there with them - locals, missionaries and others. But despite our childhood being fairly steeped in PNG culture - and my name being from there, after a local who used to work with my dad - the closest I've been myself is the Torres Strait :/by som
- I would bet $20 your parents were either evangelical missionaries or working with something directly adjacent to their efforts. Now at the risk of over generalizing, there's basically three major reasons why (presumably white, foreign) people go up into the highland of PNG to live for extended periods of time:
1. Mining
2. Missionary work and ancillary things related to it.
3. Anthropological and linguistic research, biology/ecosystem related research and similar.
by walrus01 - Share some stories with us!by dyzone
- Would love to hear some of the wild stories...by hermitcrab
- That was an amazing introduction to your stories. I would love to hear them.by yitchelle
- > People still shoot arrows at each other in urban centres
My mother (who is a doctor, although she's retired now) was part of the medical team who worked on this case: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arrow-attack-attempted-rape-in-...
My mother isn't mentioned in that article, but the "Allan Mason" it mentions is her husband
by skissane - Im fully on the spectrum, but my first thought when I hear about stuff like this is what would be the moral implication of "recreational gang war" experience. I.e you pay a lot of money, you get guns and armor, you go into gang territory, they shoot arrows at you, you defend yourself. Seems like you would have the right to use deadly force, but you would obviously be at a big advantage.by ActorNightly