This book presents a fascinating account of the independence movement in Indonesian Papua, focusing on the period since the fall of Suharto in 1998. Its author first visited Papua while conducting research for an undergraduate thesis in mid-1998, a time of great turmoil in the territory. The account draws heavily on subsequent ethnographic fieldwork he conducted there, on his activist awakening and engagement with pro-Papuan lobbying in Britain and the United States, and the input and advice of some of Indonesian Papua's key activists and intellectuals, notably John Rumbiak and Benny Giay.
Readers with an interest in contemporary Indonesia will be keenly aware that we lack a serious, book-length account of the politics of Papua in the post-Suharto period. Freedom in entangled worlds does not completely fill this gap (it leaves certain topics, such as the government's special autonomy policy or electoral politics all but untouched) but it does cover many of the key events and players in the independence movement and does so with an insider's view and a sense of immediacy that is missing from many accounts.
Much of the interest of the book lies in Eben Kirksey's beautifully rendered accounts of his encounters with Papuan activists and leaders, and in his analysis of key events. Remarkably, on his very first visit, Kirksey was at the scene of one of the key — and bloodiest — events of post-Suharto Papua, arriving in Biak in July 1998 on a boat that was the focus of the messianic hopes of a group of pro-independence protestors who were killed by Indonesian troops before Kirksey disembarked. His analysis of this massacre is powerful. So too are his accounts of other events, such as the shooting of police mobile brigade troops in Wasior in 2001, in which Kirksey has one of those responsible recounting his group's links with the Indonesian military. A long chapter focusing on the killings of three teachers (two American, one Indonesian) on the road near the Freeport McMoRan copper mine in 2002 also includes remarkable material, including accounts of Kirksey's own encounters with FBI agents investigating the shooting (even if not all aspects of the interpretation in this chapter are entirely convincing). His meetings with legendary guerrilla leaders Thadius Yogi, and, especially, Melkianus Awom, make for gripping reading.
The bigger arguments Kirksey advances about the dynamics of the Papuan independence movement are also compelling. In analysing the underground movement that evolved under the Suharto regime, Kirksey uses a botanical metaphor borrowed from Deleuze and Guatarri: ‘When plants with rhizomes are mowed down, they grow back. When chopped up and left for dead, they resprout’ (p. 51). The major independence group of that era, the Organisasi Papua Merdeka, was thus far from unified (at one point, p. 52 he calls it ‘an organised anti-organisation’), but it was resilient.
In shifting to the dynamics of the independence movement in the post-Suharto period, Kirksey uses a different metaphor from the plant world: the banyan tree that was and remains the symbol of Suharto's Golkar party, but which is also, as Kirksey explains, a variety of strangler fig: ‘They grow up and around host trees, encircling them with a fused lattice of aerial roots’ (p. 60). Accordingly, ‘The strangler is a particularly powerful image for a political project that aims to overtake dominant structures’ (p. 60). Here he points to the entanglements evoked in the title, and which are the main theme of his book: the connections that many Papuan independence activists have with state authorities, both civilian and military. As Kirksey puts it: ‘Collaboration rather than resistance turned out to be the primary strategy of this political movement. West Papuan revolutionaries demonstrated an uncanny knack for getting inside institutions of power’ (p. 1).
The book presents a host of such entanglements. One focus early on is They Eluay, the former Golkar politician and member of Papua's Indonesian elite, who became a leading exponent of independence after the fall of Suharto, yet who retained all sorts of ambiguous connections with Indonesian authorities, even visiting Suharto at his home in August 1998. Other sections detail the connections between members of Indonesian military and intelligence services with leading members of the Papuan freedom movement and guerrillas. Arguably, Kirksey could be more systematic in detailing the modes and outcomes of such collaborations, but he provides strong evidence of what he calls ‘a politics of strategic engagement’ (p. 74) between independence supporters and their enemies.
Freedom in entangled worlds is written in a hip anthropological style that will not be to all readers’ tastes. There are plenty of invocations of post-structuralist cultural theorists like Derrida, Hall and Deleuze and Guatarri, but they rarely overshadow Kirksey's recounting of events in or concerning Papua. On the contrary, the passages that are based on his fieldwork observations and other experiences often have a powerful simplicity of prose. The author very much appears as the central actor in his own narrative, and he evinces a passionate sense of engagement with the Papuans’ plight, and with their politics. As he puts it: ‘When I set out to study the independence movement as a graduate student, I found myself in a conflict zone where I had to choose sides, allying myself either with the Indonesian government or with West Papuan independence activists’ (p. 62). The account makes no attempt to disguise how Kirksey resolved this dilemma, but it sets itself apart from much activist literature on Papua by virtue of its scholarly depth and the author's obvious direct knowledge of much of the material he relates. Some of the most engaging passages come when he wrestles with the ethics of conducting research on a place like Papua, or when he condemns global injustice and the ‘monstrous vampire assemblage’ (p. 215) that exploits West Papua. Some readers will find such an approach disconcerting; this one found it honest and engaging.
