The year was 1972. Following her venture into the jungle of Borneo to record the lives of the Dayak people, a Californian photojournalist Wyn Sargent traveled in the remote Baliem Valley of West Irian—formerly Netherlands New Guinea, known as West Papua today.  

Dressing her lanky six-foot frame in a safari hat, shirt, denim jeans and heavy boots, the American self-described journalist and media-dubbed anthropologist, spent months among the Dani people, who like the Dayak, are one of the indigenous communities in Indonesia. 

During four and half months living with them, she acquired a very intimate knowledge of their behavior, folk history and religion—including the war between tribes. One day, Obahorok, one of the most powerful of the Dani chiefs, sent 30 of his soldiers to intercept Wyn's group who were traveling around the villages. Obahorok's actions angered two other tribes, Analaga and Wiyogoba

Sargent stepped forward to mediate the conflict and one of her endeavors involved a symbolic marriage with Obahorok to settle the conflict. More than 20  pigs were slaughtered and 5,000 Dani people got together to celebrate the wedding. 

But the problems began when Sargent filed complaints on the maltreatment of the Dani by Indonesian officials  who beat, tortured, and kidnapped their children for Western-style education. The Indonesian government responded by kicking her out, using the pretext of her “marriage” for the purpose of studying primitive sexual practices. 

In February 1973, she was expelled by the Indonesian administration and the story of her marriage to the chief of a cannibal tribe in West Irian was in headlines all over the world. Tempo magazine even made a special report on her expulsion in June 1973. 

Sargent argued that her marriage helped make “peace” since it brought together three rival tribes in villages she had lived while studying and photographing the Dani people. It is a Dani custom, she said, that one’s friends get together and celebrate on such big occasions. 

The "marriage" was done for the sake of humanity, she said. She also believed that her expulsion was due the fact that she was a white witness to the increasingly savagery of the police to the villagers, than to the official complaints made against her. But the public knew her as an American woman  who took advantage of her marriage with the tribal chief to “study primitive sex practices”. 

She then published People of the Valley, her testimony of her endeavors to break down long-standing animosities between clans in Baliem Valley and strengthen their ability to cope with the racist administration. 

She then filed a complaint of “the brutal treatment of Indonesian officials and police, also church missionaries” against indigenous people in Baliem valley to the United Nations.

Sargent was praised for her totality of participation by academic anthropologists and The West. But  for Els Tieneke Katmo, a Papuan lecturer focusing on feminist ecology, her action was one example of how Western researchers or journalists justify any means to steal knowledge from indigenous people. 

In this case, Sargent used marriage for personal gain and as her journalistic approach, said Els Katmo in a session of Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan, or School of Women’s Thought, that I attended. The topic was about decolonial feminism. 

Els highlighted the bias in the production of knowledge by researchers and journalists, and too often, they disregard the owners of knowledge itself—the indigenous community in Papua. 

As a journalist who frequently covers indigenous communities and Papua, Els' words struck me. I feel the need to interrogate my journalistic approach on indigenous peoples issues.

Is my spirit clear while doing the journalistic work with the indigenous people I encountered? What other baggage am I carrying? Am I useful to them? Can I actually do anything?

“Who produces knowledge? In what language? With what purpose? For whose benefit?" - Els Tieneke Katmo

Els’ arguments resonate with Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s. The latter is a professor of indigenous education in New Zealand and a critic of persistent colonialism in academic teaching and research. 

In her 1999 book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Smith argued that the term “research” is linked to European imperialism and colonialism. The word itself, “research”, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary. 

This book, as Smith puts it,  is a “counter-story to Western ideas about the benefits of the pursuit of knowledge”.

Smith claimed many researchers, academics and project workers may see the benefits of their particular research projects as serving a greater good ‘for mankind’, or serving a specific emancipatory goal for an oppressed community. 

But it has become so taken for granted that many researchers simply assume that they as individuals embody this ideal and are natural representatives of it when they work with other communities. 

On the other hand, from some indigenous perspectives the gathering of information by scientists was as random, ad hoc and damaging as that undertaken by amateurs. There was no difference, from these perspectives, between ‘real’ or scientific research and any other visits by inquisitive and acquisitive strangers.

“Indigenous peoples across the world have other stories to tell which not only question the assumed nature of those ideals and the practices that they generate, but also serve to tell an alternative story: the history of Western research through the eyes of the colonized.” - Linda Tuhiwai Smith 

While the researchers or journalists might receive recognition and fame after their work is published, many indigenous communities continue to live within political and social conditions that perpetuate extreme levels of poverty, chronic ill health and poor educational opportunities.

The Dani—indigenous community which became the subject of Wyn's study in Baliem Valley, for example. Following her expulsion, Obahorok was interrogated by Indonesian police about their “marriage” for days, often with violence. 

And did the welfare of the Dani improve after Sargent's arrival? not necessarily.

Reflecting on Wyn Sargent's experiences in Papua, and earlier in Borneo, her story was generally observations of white travelers whose interactions with indigenous people were constructed around their own cultural views of gender and sexuality. 

Observations made of indigenous women, for example, resonated with views about the role of women in European societies based on Western notions of culture, religion, race and class. 

In a very real sense, her research has been an encounter between the West and the Other. 

The Dutch colonial had indeed left Indonesia for decades, but indigenous communities in Papua—and in Indonesia in general—are increasingly experiencing criminalisation and violence, often related to investments in indigenous territories. 

Late 2020, I co-produced a documentary on how a South Korean palm oil giant is buying up swathes of Asia's largest remaining rainforests in Papua. The company arrived with permits from the government and wanted a "quick transaction" with indigenous landholders in Merauke. And the promise of development was coupled with subtle intimidation, according to an elder in the Mandobo tribe that I interviewed. 

Several months prior, I wrote an article about the Besipae-Pubabu indigenous community in Catholic-majority East Nusa Tenggara, who were being criminalized by the local authorities for defending their customary forest from being cleared to create space for a corn plantation and cattle raising. Dozen families were violently evicted from the area and had their houses demolished in August. 2020.

In the same month, the chief of the Laman Kinipan indigenous community, Effendi Buhing, was arrested by Central Kalimantan Provincial Police over a dispute with a palm oil company. The customary leader was prosecuted for leading the community struggle to defend his community’s forest. The scene of the chief’s arrest went viral in Indonesian social media. 

To this day, there has been no significant effort to systematically stop acts of violence against indigenous peoples. It only gets more complicated, especially with the conflicts related to infrastructure, and military/police intervention in such violence and criminalisation. 

It is important to think about layers and complexity of social issues regarding indigenous people—particularly in Papua, as Intan Paramaditha puts it. It’s not merely a dichotomy of colonial and colonized, or east and west. Our position also needs to be interrogated.

Are we, the Indonesian people who were once colonized, become colonials to indigenous people?