Description
Eben Kirksey first went to West Papua, the Indonesian-controlled half of New Guinea, as an exchange student in 1998. His later study of West Papua's resistance to the Indonesian occupiers and the forces of globalization morphed as he discovered that collaboration, rather than resistance, was the primary strategy of this dynamic social movement. Accompanying indigenous activists to Washington, London, and the offices of the oil giant BP, Kirksey saw the revolutionaries' knack for getting inside institutions of power and building coalitions with unlikely allies, including many Indonesians. He discovered that the West Papuans' pragmatic activism was based on visions of dramatic transformations on coming horizons, of a future in which they would give away their natural resources in grand humanitarian gestures, rather than watch their homeland be drained of timber, gold, copper, and natural gas. During a lengthy, brutal occupation, West Papuans have harbored a messianic spirit and channeled it in surprising directions. Kirksey studied West Papua's movement for freedom while a broad-based popular uprising gained traction from 1998 until 2008. Blending ethnographic research with indigenous parables, historical accounts, and narratives of his own experiences, he argues that seeking freedom in entangled worlds requires negotiating complex interdependencies.
Chapter
Part I: Breakout, 1998–2000
Interlude: The King Has Left the Palace: Java, May 1998
1. The Messianic Multiple, July 1998
2. From the Rhizome to the Banyan, 1998–2000
Part II: Plateau, 2000–2002
Interlude: Freeport Sweet Potato Distribution Inc.
3. Entangled Worlds at War, 2000–2001
4. Don’t Use Your Data as a Pillow, June 13, 2001
5. Innocents Murdered, Innocent Murderers, August 31, 2002
Part III: Horizons, 2002–2028
Interlude: Bald Grandfather Willy
6. First Voice Honey Center, 2002–2008
Epilogue: The Tube, 2006–2028
Freedom in Entangled Worlds
：West Papua and the Architecture of Global Power
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