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I. The Mimika region: History Historiography, in the western sense, begins with the first encounters between the local populations and white outsiders. Before that period, however, there had already been contacts with Chinese merchants, and with people from the Malayan archipelago and the Moluccas. In 1623 the contact between crew members of two ships from a Dutch East India Company (VOC) expedition, captained by Jan Carstensz [4] and the Kamoro, led to a skirmish resulting in the death of two of Carstensz' crew.[5] In 1636 the expedition led by Gerrit Pool [6] made contact with the eastern Kamoro, after which almost two centuries were to elapse before outsiders visited the region again, when members of the Triton Expedition [7] spent eleven peaceful days in a Kamoro village in 1828. It was only in 1910-11 and 1912 that westerners succeeded in penetrating through to the hinterland. During their attempts to reach the Carstensz peaks [8] via the Mimika region, members of the Wolloston Expeditions [9] sent by the British Ornothologists' Union and the Royal Geographical Society were given a friendly reception by the Kamoro.
In 1926 the Dutch established their first administrative post in the region, at Kokonao and in the following year the Roman Catholic Church set up a mission in the same place.[10] The region was governed by the Dutch between 1926 and 1963, a period that witnessed great changes in the socio-economic pattern, as a result of - among others - the establishment of 'model villages'. The Dutch government also acted as a protective buffer against the attacks mounted by the neighbouring Asmat. Between 1942 and 1945 over a thousand Japanese soldiers occupied the Kamoro region. One result of this occupation was the construction of an airfield at Timuka, now better known as Timika Pantai. The people of the area adopted a position of passive resistance to the Japanese occupying forces, neither helping nor hindering their activities. In 1963 the Dutch transferred the region to Indonesia, as part of what was Dutch New Guinea at that time, and it became part of the province of Irian Jaya. Recently, in October 2001, the Indonesian parliament decided to grant Irian Jaya a certain degree of autonomy, this province henceforth to be known as "Papua". In 1967 the multinational giant mining company Freeport [11] reached an agreement with the Indonesian government that it could establish gold and copper mines in the Mimika region. This development has had a marked influence on the natural world, and human society, in the area, including environmental damage and the forced relocation of Kamoro hamlets. Besides these negative effects, there has also been some positive side effects. Freeport, after financing a new wing for the Asmat Museum in the neighbouring Asmat region, has also now become the chief sponsor of the Kamoro Art Festival organised every year since 1998. Since the period of Dutch rule, there has been a certain degree of coexistence between the traditional and imported ways of life. To all appearances, local people try to keep the two worlds separate, and to profit from both. In other words, as Pouwer has observed: "Behind a smoke screen of acceptance, toleration and resignation where the domination of foreigners is concerned, they nevertheless maintain their own life style wherever possible".[12] | |
