The Activation of the Recent Past: National Identity Formation and Conflict in West Papua

Abstract

National histories, myths and collective memories, invented or constructed, have been viewed as integral parts of national identities. Moreover, numerous nationalist narratives and representations have attempted to gain legitimization and become dominant by referring to a glorious past and by constructing temporal continuities that link in an organic whole putative ancestors and contemporary groups. Although the employment of the national past has attracted considerable analysis in the literature of nationalism, there are certain aspects of this issue that have been understudied. For example, there are numerous accounts on the mobilization of the national past on behalf of collectivities that achieved statehood but there is less interest in systematically examining how non-state nationalisms, which lack the institutions that are necessary for the consolidation of national identities, conceive, construct and project their past. To a lesser degree, there is an unbalanced treatment in favor of the employment of the distant or mythical past, rather than of the impact of the recent past in the construction and/or reproduction of national identities. I argue that the case of the West Papuan nationalism, which remains rather unknown, offers us the opportunity to tackle with these two overlooked theoretical issues. West Papuans can be regarded as a “new” nation, since the process of national identity formation started in the post-war period and especially after 1961. The dominant narrative of West Papuan nationalism does not seek to construct an a-historical national continuity, but rather focuses on the recent past, namely on developments that are connected with the decolonization of the region and its integration in the Indonesian state. After presenting how these developments have been perceived and integrated in Papuan collective representations, the paper argues that the Papuan national past does not build on the activation of a myth, but is rather understood and represented through collective memories. Apart from analyzing the specific function that past plays in the formation of the Papuan national identity, the paper examines how the past is mobilized and activated as a guide for contemporary political action, since competing interpretations of this recent past between the official Indonesian nationalism and the Papuan nationalist movement has become one of the core issues of the ongoing separatist conflict.

Keywords: West Papua, nationalism, national identity, indigenous people, past, memories, Indonesia, modernism, ethnosymbolism