ABSTRACT
In what is primarily an ethno-nationalist struggle for the recognition of West Papuan rights (including the right to political self-determination within Indonesia), the plight of ‘mixed race’ 1 West Papuan activists is currently caught up in an intersectional conflict involving colonial, neocolonial and post-colonial constructs and realities. These constructs include notions of indigeneity, race, ethnicity, colour, nation-statehood, primordiality and gender. Although abstract constructs at the discursive level, these notions have had very real and often devastating consequences for West Papuans (including those identifying or identified as mixed race) when used as discriminatory criteria. But, as I shall demonstrate, the liminal status of mixed race West Papuans (individuals with one indigenous West Papuan parent and one parent of ‘other’ Indonesian descent) within West Papua’s self-determination struggle can mean this population is subject to double discrimination, rendering their political affiliations suspect in the eyes of representatives of ‘both’ their ethnic heritages. That is, non-Papuan Indonesian nationalists generally see Melanesian Papuans as ‘separatists’, and phenotypically black, mixed race Papuans are not exempt from being treated accordingly (Tebay, 2015). Yet, a perduring strategic essentialism (Jouwe interview, 2015; Spivak, 2012a) has separated out mixed race West Papuans from (ab)“original” 2 Papuans within West Papua’s independence movement, resulting in discrimination within Papua and in the diaspora against politically active mixed race Papuans.
