ABSTRACT
PNG consists of the eastern part of the main island of New Guinea, which is the largest tropical island in the world, and hundreds of archipelagos and islands. Inhabited by about 2,000 acephalous ‘tribes’, it was never united until European colonisers intruded during the nineteenth century. In 1828, the Netherlands claimed the areas west of 141 degrees on and around the island of New Guinea, and about one million Melanesians were incorporated into the Dutch East Indies.
This action, like others that were to follow, was done without concern for, consultation with, or even knowledge of the people concerned.
(Woolford 1976:2)