Irian Jaya: de papoea’s van het Centrale Bergland

The audiovisual programme ‘The Papuans of the Central Highlands” completes the photographic documentary project “A ROAD TO NOWHERE’   This  programme was used in addition by the six Dutch and German museums that displayed the exposition from the start of 1993 until the end of 1994. It shows the daily life and traditional agriculture of the Central Highlands of West-Papua, at that time officially known as ‘Irian Jaya’.

Simultaneously the project was distributed to Dutch secondary schools by several organisations.

A Road to Nowhere.

(see also more info on other pages)

West-Papua is a province of the Indonesian archipelago, that stretches almost 6000 kilometres from Sabang in the north of Sumatra to Merauke in the south  of  West-Papua, close to the border of Papua New Guinea. Until 1962 West-Papua was a colony of The Netherlands, until that time named Dutch New Guinea. The Indonesians changed its name into Irian Jaya, and in the year 2000 rebaptised it into it’s current name:  ‘Papua’.  Papua is the western part of the second largest island in the world. Together with its independent nabour Papua New Guina  it almost forms an entire and unique continent: New Guinea.

This foto-documentary explores some recent changes in West-Papua while it was still named Irian Jaya.  During our stay in West-Papua, in the year 1991, we tried to document some recent influences that ‘modern development schemes ‘ meant for the traditional way of life of the Papuan tribes. We compared the more or less untouched food system of Central Highland tribes, such as the Dani and the Jali, with the changed food security from the Workwane tribe, a northern lowland tribe neighbouring the eastern border with Papua new Guinea.