Irian Jaya - with its brooding jungles, untold riches and ancient tribal cultures - is one of the world’s last frontiers. Less than 60 years ago American explorer Richard Archbold made his historic flight over these jagged mountain peaks. As his great Catalina flying boat rose over yet another ridge .. an immense valley was revealed below. What it contained was breathtaking ... a civilisation some 75,000 strong totally unknown to the outside world ... the Dani of the Baliem Valley.
It wasn’t until the mid 1950s that there were any foreign presence here when small bands of missionaries began to arrive. The town of Wamena has now sprung up around the airstrip the missionaries built... that piece of asphalt is still the only link with the outside world.
Catholic priest Father Franz Lieshout came here as a young man ... he was part of the first wave Europeans to make contact with the Dani and has spent his adult life among them...
Father Franz Lieshout: In the beginning they did not accept anything of us. They didn’t need us, they didn’t ask for us. You cannot bring these people to something when they don’t see the need.
Priest:You can see after 35 years they haven’t changed anything the same at all.
The past few decades may not have brought much cultural change to the Valley but the forces which govern it have shifted dramatically. At the time these Dani mightn’t have known about it - but in the mid 1960s Indonesia wrested control of Irian Jaya away from the Dutch.
In a bountiful river valley Dani elder Yowino Itlai and his fellow villagers are digging a new vegetable garden.
Dani Elder: We work everyday. On large jobs like this we invite our neighbours to help. We work together for week or two weeks.
After we finish clearing the land, the women come here and plant sweet potatoes. Then we go and clear a new garden over there.
In Yowino’s language the expression for digging potatoes from the earth is the same as giving birth to a child.
Always handled gently ... some women say they can sometimes hear the unearthed potatoes calling out to them.
Woman 2: The woman’s role is to grow the potatoes, cook them and take some to market. We look after the babies, the pigs and the potatoes.
Like indigenous peoples everywhere, ties with their land transcend the merely practical .. the land and its bounty are a central part of the Danese spiritual life.
Father Franz Lieshout: Land is for these people like a mother who gives all what they need; all what they need they get from the their land, not only sweet potatoes but also the pigs and also themselves. They tell you that they in the beginning come from the earth. They have a very great respect for land.
Reporter: Michael Maher: What would happen if you took the Dani away from their land?
Father Franz Lieshout: Oh, they will die.
Despite the best efforts over the years of Missionaries, of Dutch and Indonesian bureaucrats to change these people, they’ve managed to survive with their culture still in tact. But now the Irianese are facing new pressures which they’ll find much tougher to withstand.
With its vast forests, fertile land and potential mineral wealth, the Highlands are an alluring but remote prize. The mountains which have shielded the people of Yowino’s village for so long are now drawing the world to them to reap the wealth those peaks contain.
Snaking its way in from the capital Jayapura in the North and the town of Merauke in the South, a Trans Irian road is expected to be completed in 2 years time. It will cut right through Dani land. In anticipation of the road’s completion logging and mining companies have already laid claim to massive concessions here.
Istogo Logo Siep: All these new things keep coming in. Now they’re bringing that road on and on and on until today you can get to Kurima by taxi. And they all come in to buy and sell. But still we have our sweet potatoes by the work of our own hands.
translator/reporter: If outsiders came in and offered money for your land, would you take it?
Istogo: What are you talking about?
translator/reporter: The land, the earth.
Istogo looks puzzled: The land is our own. When a newcomer says give some to me we wouldn’t agree to that. Our homelands are just for us. We deal with it amongst ourselves. We don’t do that sort of thing for newcomers. We wouldn’t agree to that.
But the Dani may not have much choice. You need only look across the mountain for a foretaste of what road access might bring to these people.
It’s in the coastal areas, which are more accessible, that the policies can be most clearly seen - in many of these areas indigenous people have already been overwhelmed by migrants and development. Some 700,000 migrants have settled here - making up between 30 to 40 % of the population. And still people are coming.
Irawan Abidan, Foreign Ministry Spokesman: The Indonesian government has undertaken a programme to transmigrate and move people from Java to the outer islands because Java is one of the most crowded or most densely populated areas in the world.
Transmigration camps like this one in Timika - carved out of traditional hunting grounds - dot the coastal areas of Irian Jaya.
Wherever there’s road or boat access migrants can be found.
Abdul Rosad: It’s been determined high up that we should become part of Irian Jaya and that we all become one.
The President sends us here so that we can unite with the people. And our children and their children will blend.
Michael: How do you get on with the Irianese?
Abdul: There’s no problem for me. There’s no one saying this is our land or that is your land. There’s no problem because the people understand that this is the government’s programme.
But the local people aren’t so sanguine. The land used for the transmigration camps here once belonged to them. Their former nomadic existence - living off fishing and sago palms - gave them no rights under Indonesian Land Law nor did the Komorro have access to compensation for their traditional lands now being used by outsiders.
Marcus Okarnapoka and his family have been consigned to resettlement villages like this one.
Marcus Okarnapoka: In our former village we had vast lands and were very well off with fish and sago. Now we are scraping for food.
It’s not just farmers that the Komorro have just lost their land to, but also to the thousands of migrants drawn to the area in search of work at nearby Freeport gold and copper mine.
Hironimus Mapeko: When the government and Freeport came they just cut down the trees at random. And they never negotiated with the families who owned the forest. In the end they intimidated the people so that they became afraid.
Looming high above the Komorro’s village is Mount Grasberg and these spectacular equatorial glaciers are home to the American mining giant Freeport McMoran.
This is the largest single deposit of copper and gold in the world. It’s a multi billion dollar bonanza for Freeport and the Indonesian Government. And.. it looks like this is just the beginning. Much of the mountain spine of Irian Jaya appears to contain rich mineral deposits and Freeport has recently expanded its concessions to cover 2 and half million hectares. Other companies are now prospecting as well.
Tom Beanal’s tribe, the Aumungme are the traditional owners of the Freeport site and like the Komorro they too have lost much of their land - this time to the mine. Most of his people have been relocated from the mountains down to the coastal town of Timika.
Tom Beanal: We are living now in the land of the government not in the land of our people.
Michael Maher (Reporter): Were you given any payment for that land?
Tom Beanal: No, no. They didn’t give any.
Paul Murphy, Vice President of Freeport: Under Indonesian regulation direct money to individuals is not paid for hunting grounds - traditional lands used for hunting and gathering. Rather compensation is in the form of a community benefit - a water well, a bridge, a community centre, a school, or a health clinic - something which will benefit the entire community itself or the entire clan or tribe. All of which we have done and we try very hard to be sensitive to the local people. Whether the laws are appropriate or not is not really up to me to address.
The Aumungme can make requests, they can write letters but they have no real redress on land issues. To assert land ownership or protest can carry grave risks.
These Aumungme people in the remote hamlet of Tsinge have been caught up in guerrilla war between the military and those people fighting back against the loss of their land.
In June last year the outlawed OPM’s leader Kelly Kwalik began appearing in the district, sparking a swift and harsh crackdown from the Armed Forces.
Jem Kum - Village Leader: The big war started when Kelly Kwalik came here and raised the West Papuan flag to proclaim our independence. All of the people here became victims and Tsinge was virtually wiped out.
According to the Catholic Church houses were burned down, vegetable gardens were destroyed and people killed and beaten - most of the villagers fled into the jungle and stayed there for months.
Jem Kum: We realised that people had been killed and we were afraid that we would all be killed if we stayed. So we decided to return and surrender.
The people of Tsinge now live under military occupation. Like other Aumungme tribes the army wants to move them away from their traditional land to the more densely populated lowlands.
In a climate where the people are loathe to speak out for fear of retaliation ... the village leader put his case to us.
Jem Kum: When we came back we spoke to the military commander. I said ‘Father, you have already killed us and now the rest of us do not want to go to the coastal area. If you need to take us away, then you must first remove our mountains, which you have already exploited and become rich on - and then move our rivers - and then take all the landscape from here down to this place on the coast - THEN you can take us there.’
But the authorities have made plain that their plan to relocate these people will go ahead.
When the OPM raised another flag some months later at the mine site itself, the military’s reaction was just as harsh... leading to reprisals which the Catholic Church says has resulted in the death of 16 people - including women and children. Others were tortured and still more have disappeared.
Paul Murphy - Executive Vice President Freeport: The army has a legitimate role of providing security throughout Indonesia and including our operation here.
Michael Maher (Reporter): Does that include shooting people if they raise the OPM flag?
I think you’d better talk to the army about that. The army has an obligation to provide security for operations such as this. That’s their job. Our job is to mine this Freeport deposit here in the most effective way possible and we’re doing that.
The Indonesian Human Rights commission has since begun an investigation and the Government is awaiting their report before drawing any conclusions.
Irawan Abidan - Foreign Ministry spokesperson: This may be, you know, a very investigative reporting and we are very, very interested to know what really happened. The commander of the army has also made a statement earlier that he will certainly punish those perpetrators who are the cause of this problem.
But these haven’t been isolated events... church and aid groups argue that too often genuine grievances over development - especially land rights issues - are dismissed by the Armed Forces as seditious.
The Dani and people from other remote areas of Irian Jaya are facing major changes over the coming years....
Be it migration, mining or logging, development is fast rolling back the frontiers of Irian Jaya and placing ever greater pressure on a fragile local culture. It’s a process which has had disastrous consequences for indigenous people in places like Australia and the United States. Now in Irian Jaya it seems many of the same mistakes are being made again.
It wasn’t until the mid 1950s that there were any foreign presence here when small bands of missionaries began to arrive. The town of Wamena has now sprung up around the airstrip the missionaries built... that piece of asphalt is still the only link with the outside world.
Catholic priest Father Franz Lieshout came here as a young man ... he was part of the first wave Europeans to make contact with the Dani and has spent his adult life among them...
Father Franz Lieshout: In the beginning they did not accept anything of us. They didn’t need us, they didn’t ask for us. You cannot bring these people to something when they don’t see the need.
Priest:You can see after 35 years they haven’t changed anything the same at all.
The past few decades may not have brought much cultural change to the Valley but the forces which govern it have shifted dramatically. At the time these Dani mightn’t have known about it - but in the mid 1960s Indonesia wrested control of Irian Jaya away from the Dutch.
In a bountiful river valley Dani elder Yowino Itlai and his fellow villagers are digging a new vegetable garden.
Dani Elder: We work everyday. On large jobs like this we invite our neighbours to help. We work together for week or two weeks.
After we finish clearing the land, the women come here and plant sweet potatoes. Then we go and clear a new garden over there.
In Yowino’s language the expression for digging potatoes from the earth is the same as giving birth to a child.
Always handled gently ... some women say they can sometimes hear the unearthed potatoes calling out to them.
Woman 2: The woman’s role is to grow the potatoes, cook them and take some to market. We look after the babies, the pigs and the potatoes.
Like indigenous peoples everywhere, ties with their land transcend the merely practical .. the land and its bounty are a central part of the Danese spiritual life.
Father Franz Lieshout: Land is for these people like a mother who gives all what they need; all what they need they get from the their land, not only sweet potatoes but also the pigs and also themselves. They tell you that they in the beginning come from the earth. They have a very great respect for land.
Reporter: Michael Maher: What would happen if you took the Dani away from their land?
Father Franz Lieshout: Oh, they will die.
Despite the best efforts over the years of Missionaries, of Dutch and Indonesian bureaucrats to change these people, they’ve managed to survive with their culture still in tact. But now the Irianese are facing new pressures which they’ll find much tougher to withstand.
With its vast forests, fertile land and potential mineral wealth, the Highlands are an alluring but remote prize. The mountains which have shielded the people of Yowino’s village for so long are now drawing the world to them to reap the wealth those peaks contain.
Snaking its way in from the capital Jayapura in the North and the town of Merauke in the South, a Trans Irian road is expected to be completed in 2 years time. It will cut right through Dani land. In anticipation of the road’s completion logging and mining companies have already laid claim to massive concessions here.
Istogo Logo Siep: All these new things keep coming in. Now they’re bringing that road on and on and on until today you can get to Kurima by taxi. And they all come in to buy and sell. But still we have our sweet potatoes by the work of our own hands.
translator/reporter: If outsiders came in and offered money for your land, would you take it?
Istogo: What are you talking about?
translator/reporter: The land, the earth.
Istogo looks puzzled: The land is our own. When a newcomer says give some to me we wouldn’t agree to that. Our homelands are just for us. We deal with it amongst ourselves. We don’t do that sort of thing for newcomers. We wouldn’t agree to that.
But the Dani may not have much choice. You need only look across the mountain for a foretaste of what road access might bring to these people.
It’s in the coastal areas, which are more accessible, that the policies can be most clearly seen - in many of these areas indigenous people have already been overwhelmed by migrants and development. Some 700,000 migrants have settled here - making up between 30 to 40 % of the population. And still people are coming.
Irawan Abidan, Foreign Ministry Spokesman: The Indonesian government has undertaken a programme to transmigrate and move people from Java to the outer islands because Java is one of the most crowded or most densely populated areas in the world.
Transmigration camps like this one in Timika - carved out of traditional hunting grounds - dot the coastal areas of Irian Jaya.
Wherever there’s road or boat access migrants can be found.
Abdul Rosad: It’s been determined high up that we should become part of Irian Jaya and that we all become one.
The President sends us here so that we can unite with the people. And our children and their children will blend.
Michael: How do you get on with the Irianese?
Abdul: There’s no problem for me. There’s no one saying this is our land or that is your land. There’s no problem because the people understand that this is the government’s programme.
But the local people aren’t so sanguine. The land used for the transmigration camps here once belonged to them. Their former nomadic existence - living off fishing and sago palms - gave them no rights under Indonesian Land Law nor did the Komorro have access to compensation for their traditional lands now being used by outsiders.
Marcus Okarnapoka and his family have been consigned to resettlement villages like this one.
Marcus Okarnapoka: In our former village we had vast lands and were very well off with fish and sago. Now we are scraping for food.
It’s not just farmers that the Komorro have just lost their land to, but also to the thousands of migrants drawn to the area in search of work at nearby Freeport gold and copper mine.
Hironimus Mapeko: When the government and Freeport came they just cut down the trees at random. And they never negotiated with the families who owned the forest. In the end they intimidated the people so that they became afraid.
Looming high above the Komorro’s village is Mount Grasberg and these spectacular equatorial glaciers are home to the American mining giant Freeport McMoran.
This is the largest single deposit of copper and gold in the world. It’s a multi billion dollar bonanza for Freeport and the Indonesian Government. And.. it looks like this is just the beginning. Much of the mountain spine of Irian Jaya appears to contain rich mineral deposits and Freeport has recently expanded its concessions to cover 2 and half million hectares. Other companies are now prospecting as well.
Tom Beanal’s tribe, the Aumungme are the traditional owners of the Freeport site and like the Komorro they too have lost much of their land - this time to the mine. Most of his people have been relocated from the mountains down to the coastal town of Timika.
Tom Beanal: We are living now in the land of the government not in the land of our people.
Michael Maher (Reporter): Were you given any payment for that land?
Tom Beanal: No, no. They didn’t give any.
Paul Murphy, Vice President of Freeport: Under Indonesian regulation direct money to individuals is not paid for hunting grounds - traditional lands used for hunting and gathering. Rather compensation is in the form of a community benefit - a water well, a bridge, a community centre, a school, or a health clinic - something which will benefit the entire community itself or the entire clan or tribe. All of which we have done and we try very hard to be sensitive to the local people. Whether the laws are appropriate or not is not really up to me to address.
The Aumungme can make requests, they can write letters but they have no real redress on land issues. To assert land ownership or protest can carry grave risks.
These Aumungme people in the remote hamlet of Tsinge have been caught up in guerrilla war between the military and those people fighting back against the loss of their land.
In June last year the outlawed OPM’s leader Kelly Kwalik began appearing in the district, sparking a swift and harsh crackdown from the Armed Forces.
Jem Kum - Village Leader: The big war started when Kelly Kwalik came here and raised the West Papuan flag to proclaim our independence. All of the people here became victims and Tsinge was virtually wiped out.
According to the Catholic Church houses were burned down, vegetable gardens were destroyed and people killed and beaten - most of the villagers fled into the jungle and stayed there for months.
Jem Kum: We realised that people had been killed and we were afraid that we would all be killed if we stayed. So we decided to return and surrender.
The people of Tsinge now live under military occupation. Like other Aumungme tribes the army wants to move them away from their traditional land to the more densely populated lowlands.
In a climate where the people are loathe to speak out for fear of retaliation ... the village leader put his case to us.
Jem Kum: When we came back we spoke to the military commander. I said ‘Father, you have already killed us and now the rest of us do not want to go to the coastal area. If you need to take us away, then you must first remove our mountains, which you have already exploited and become rich on - and then move our rivers - and then take all the landscape from here down to this place on the coast - THEN you can take us there.’
But the authorities have made plain that their plan to relocate these people will go ahead.
When the OPM raised another flag some months later at the mine site itself, the military’s reaction was just as harsh... leading to reprisals which the Catholic Church says has resulted in the death of 16 people - including women and children. Others were tortured and still more have disappeared.
Paul Murphy - Executive Vice President Freeport: The army has a legitimate role of providing security throughout Indonesia and including our operation here.
Michael Maher (Reporter): Does that include shooting people if they raise the OPM flag?
I think you’d better talk to the army about that. The army has an obligation to provide security for operations such as this. That’s their job. Our job is to mine this Freeport deposit here in the most effective way possible and we’re doing that.
The Indonesian Human Rights commission has since begun an investigation and the Government is awaiting their report before drawing any conclusions.
Irawan Abidan - Foreign Ministry spokesperson: This may be, you know, a very investigative reporting and we are very, very interested to know what really happened. The commander of the army has also made a statement earlier that he will certainly punish those perpetrators who are the cause of this problem.
But these haven’t been isolated events... church and aid groups argue that too often genuine grievances over development - especially land rights issues - are dismissed by the Armed Forces as seditious.
The Dani and people from other remote areas of Irian Jaya are facing major changes over the coming years....
Be it migration, mining or logging, development is fast rolling back the frontiers of Irian Jaya and placing ever greater pressure on a fragile local culture. It’s a process which has had disastrous consequences for indigenous people in places like Australia and the United States. Now in Irian Jaya it seems many of the same mistakes are being made again.