[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Papua: Bows, arrows and a tense gold mine
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- Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 11:39:45 +0200
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Sep 8, 2006
Papua: Bows, arrows and a tense gold mine
By John McBeth
TIMIKA, Papua - For centuries, Papua's warlike mountain tribesmen have used
bows and arrows, spears and knives to settle their differences over women and
pigs - and not necessarily in that order of priority.
But a recent pitched battle on the outskirts of the lowland boom town of Timika
on the south coast of the Indonesian province has underlined what can happen
when urban migration and traditional
practices collide. The resultant clashes - and an influx of illegal highland
miners - represent the latest headache for US mining giant Freeport McMoRan
Copper & Gold, far and away Indonesia's largest foreign taxpayer.
The battle stemmed from the drowning of the epileptic seven-year-old son of a
Dani tribal headman. Angry that better care had not been taken, the boy's
hot-tempered uncle - a member of the closely related Damal tribe - killed one
the headman's brothers and wounded another with a bow and arrow.
In the days that followed, tribesmen from both sides engaged in a week-long
series of running skirmishes that left 12 of the combatants dead and another
150 wounded from arrow and spear wounds. Then, true to tradition, the two sides
held pig roasts and an arrow-breaking ceremony in a show of reconciliation and
agreed to let matters rest.
Three weeks later, fighting erupted again in Kwamki Lama, a largely Dani
settlement. Three more tribesmen died and another 80 were hurt before security
forces managed to separate the two sides. But with a third tribe, the Ekari,
now joining in the clashes, community workers are wondering how to bring an end
to the continuing spiral of violence.
This, after all, isn't Papua's rugged mountains, where deep valleys separate
tribes and provide the space needed to calm emotions and work out peace deals.
In the villages scattered around Timika, a town of 60,000 people, seven
different tribal groups - some of them harboring age-old grudges - live in
uncommon and uncomfortable proximity.
Once a clapboard settlement serving only ethnic-Javanese transmigrants, Timika
owes its lifeblood to the Freeport Indonesia copper and gold mine, which has
acted as a magnet for thousands of highland tribesmen and migrants from other
parts of Indonesia looking for jobs and economic opportunities unavailable on
other more crowded islands. With more than 18,000 workers, Freeport is one of
Indonesia's biggest employers.
By the time Freeport's Grasberg operation goes underground, scheduled for
2012-14, Papuans will have become the core of the company's workforce, rather
than the minority that they are now. But the recent outbreak in ethnic tensions
adds a new complication to the planned changeover.
The attraction Timika holds for the highlanders, in particular, underlines the
fact that for all their isolation and ancient customs, they are just as
interested in money and an education for their children as anyone else. But it
may take more than a generation for them to come to terms with an urban
environment where historic grievances have no place.
Money also creates its own problems. "There's a lot of social jealousy," said
anthropologist and author Kal Muller, who has spent three decades in Papua. "In
many highlands societies the basic ethic has been egalitarian, with respect
gained not by accumulating capital, but by distributing capital. Here, a lot of
money is spread around and the distribution is very uneven."
Tribe on tribe
There has also been a dramatic change in the demographic balance. Mimika, the
district surrounding Timika, was once home to only the highland Amungme and the
lowland Kamoro tribes, who lived in relative harmony. But Freeport's rich
Grasberg mine, into which the company has poured more than US$12 billion in
investment over the decades, has drawn an increasing number of Dani, the
dominant Papuan tribe that now makes up 60% of Timika's highland population.
Dani migration is nothing new. Originally from the Balien Valley, 200
kilometers northeast of Timika, they have been pushing westward for centuries.
Indeed, those who have settled on the more fertile northern slopes, well to the
north and west of Freeport's high-altitude mine, are now known as the Western
Dani, or the Lani as they like to call themselves. Even their language is
different in a region with 250 different dialects.
The only reason thousands of Amungme tribesmen ended up where they are now is
that the Dani expelled them from their original home before the turn of the
20th century. There was no mine then, but since it opened in the early 1970s
the Amungme have found themselves under pressure again from the same tribe that
pushed them out of the more fertile northern side of the highlands.
In 1997, with over-aggressive Dani settlers intruding on their hillsides and
sweet-potato gardens and taking the virginity of young girls whose bridal
bounties had already been paid, the Amungme hit back. Eleven people died in the
fighting, which ended with authorities relocating most of the more than 3,000
Dani to a new lowland area west of Timika.
Although they continue to populate 17 valleys, the 10,000 Amungme still feel
increasingly like strangers in their own land. Those who have settled in the
lowlands have been nudged out of Kwamki Lama, and the tribe itself now faces
the prospect of losing the privileged position it once enjoyed as the original
benefactor of Freeport's largesse.
The Damal may have fared even worse. Enforced inter-marriage with the dominant
Western Dani has, over the years, in essence reduced them to little more than a
sub-clan - even if the recent clashes suggest that old enmities remain a lot
closer to the surface in an urban setting than they do in the highlands.
Added to Timika's melting pot have been settlers from the Nduga, Ekari and
Moni, three other highland groups. There are also stragglers from the Asmat and
Senpan tribes who have drifted in from further down the swampy southeast coast,
which borders the shallow waters of the Arafura Sea separating Indonesia and
Australia.
The town itself has a similar yet different mix. Old-time Javanese migrants mix
with tens of thousands of native Buginese - traders from distant South Sulawesi
- and lowland Papuan settlers from as far away as Maureke, on the Papua New
Guinea border in the east, to the island of Biak and the provincial capital
Jayapura on the north coast and the former oil center of Sorong in the west.
With the world gold price rocketing from $250 to $650 an ounce in just two
years, hundreds more Dani have been trekking south to join an army of illegal
gold miners now working in the tailings, or waste rock, flowing downstream from
the Freeport mill. The number of gold panners has grown from several hundred to
more than 3,000, most of whom sell the gold to military middlemen who then pass
it on to dealers in Timika.
There are concerns that with the gold running out in an alluvial deposit near
Nabire, on Papua's north coast, more fortune hunters will head across the
highlands to Timika, potentially adding more ethnic tension to a problem
authorities seem unable or unwilling to solve.
John McBeth is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review. He
is currently a Jakarta-based freelance journalist.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
about sales, syndication and republishing .)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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