NOT A BLANK CANVAS
Asmat is a group of people residing in southern coasts of West Papua. In 1961, the Asmat were notorious for the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, and so forth widely labelled cannibals, headhunters, and savages. In the same period, Indonesia annexed West Papua from The Netherlands. It followed with the arrival of transmigrants from other parts of Indonesia, immediately setting forth the journey of the Asmat to a diabolical course. Ever since, Indonesia have reinstated government and military control of the area, leading to construction projects, severe deforestation, and Asmat economy overpowered by the transmigrants. The Asmat, despite all advancements, continue to celebrate their ancestral feasts. Since the turn of the century, Catholicism – brought by Dutch and American (and now Indonesian) missionaries – and Islam – brought by Indonesian transmigrants – have gradually challenge the very existence of Asmat customs and ritual feasts and, to an extension the Asmat way of life: the subsistence that has sustained them for centuries. Among its last defenders is an American priest, the last Catholic American priest in West Papua, who have served Asmat for 40 years. Given all the difficulties, effectively the Asmat is orphaned in their own land, barred access from health, education and welfare.
By 2030, less than 17% Papuans will remain in West Papua. Asmat people are a minute fraction of Papuans currently in existence.
Through this project, I investigate the consequences of development and progress. I track the scope of influence that has transformed Asmat. I take on the challenges of keeping traditions against new youth generation. I am curious as to how and who the Asmat people will shift into, given how they were previously portrayed, photographed, and stereotyped as cannibals and noble savages, in this new landscape that is so unlike the Stone Age that they have been dubbed to come from. A change of perception on the Asmat is long overdue.
While what will come of the Asmat are difficult to predict, the Asmat have their own responses. They are the real authors of their own destiny. As an Indonesian documentary photographer who was embedded year-long as museum staff at the local Asmat Museum in Agats, Asmat, and still being involved for six years now, this is what I find. I realise I am only a ghost-writer, an understudy to the master carver of whom the Asmat are famously known for. And from whom a new future may just be created out of fresh, rapid imaginations. The Asmat is not a blank canvas.