West Papua and the Politics of Self-Determination

West Papuan activists asserted their right to self-determination and independence from both Dutch colonialism and Indonesian imperialism. The West Papuan campaign in the 1960s was deeply influenced by ideas circulating in Afro-Asian networks and at the United Nations. Through studying the campaign of West Papuan activists, this paper reveals new imagined networks of solidarity cultivated between Africa and Oceania, while also drawing attention to the ways in which Global South politics worked against the claims of colonial peoples such as the West Papuans. Focusing on the West Papuan movement offers a new perspective on a transformative moment in international history, revealing how ideas relating to self-determination and decolonization were critically engaged with by thinkers outside centers of power, such as the United Nations in New York. By drawing attention to the limits of decolonization in West Papua, this paper highlights the shift that occurred in the 1960s resulting in the foreclosure of Oceanic peoples’ claims to self-determination. Only by grappling with struggles that did not result in territorial decolonization can we understand decolonization in its fullness and begin to confront ongoing colonial situations in the present moment.