‘Menjadi Manusia’ (Becoming Somebody)

Abstract

The Marind live in the southeast corner of Indonesian Papua, traditionally relying on sago cultivation, gardening, hunting and foraging for their daily subsistence. Like many Indigenous People, they have been subject to a series of unsought and often devastating incursions – of disease, sedentarization, cultural dislocation, the theft of traditional economic resources, the occupation of their land by large numbers of transmigrants, and the depredations of a massive agri-business development. Multiple observers have predicted their annihilation over more than a century. Against this dire backdrop, it is important to study the aspirations and experiences of Marind youth. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, the article examines the meanings of the ubiquitous and hopeful expression, the desire to ‘menjadi manusia’, to ‘become somebody’, as a measure of human-ness, and of Marind, and Papuan identity. Parents admonish their children to go to school so that they can ‘become somebody’ – thereby challenging the stigmatizing perception that the Marind are backward and inferior to non-Papuan Indonesians. The article analyses the life stories of several Marind young people, showing their aspirations and the precariousness and unpredictability of their life pathways, but also their adaptability and resilience. Show more