West Papua Quotes

“Papuan existence is being destroyed simultaneously at the physical, political, metaphysical, and cosmological levels — and must be understood as a unified system of extinction.” This is the essence of Psycho‑Cosmocide.”
― Yamin Kogoya, PAPUAN TRAGEDY: 300 Warnings From The Edge Of Extinction

“The deepest horror of the Psycho-Cosmocide is not the conquest of land or a people. Conquest has always been a part of history. Nor is it that a people are exploited, displaced, assimilated or governed by external powers. The deepest horror begins when the instruments of conquest become internalised by the conquered themselves. This occurs when foreign realities become familiar, when imposed meanings become self-evident truths, when survival becomes participation and when adaptation becomes reproduction. At that point, the coloniser no longer stands outside the walls. The walls themselves start to rebuild the labyrinth. The gatekeepers become its guardians. The prisoners decorate their cells. The language forgets itself. The library burns its own books. The forest grows the handle of the axe. The tragedy of West Papua and many other colonised Cosmobian peoples is therefore not just a story of external domination. It is also a story of how domination learns to speak with the voice of the dominated, think with their thoughts, dream with their dreams and reproduce itself through their love for their children. Psycho-Cosmocide is victorious when a people continue to walk, work, study, vote, develop, consume and progress while the world that once made them has disappeared. At that point, the labyrinth no longer requires walls because it has been rebuilt inside the colonised minds themselves.”
― Yamin Kogoya, PAPUAN TRAGEDY: 300 Warnings From The Edge Of Extinction

“The greatest tragedy is not that Papuans disappear. It is that Papua disappears while Papuans remain.”
― Yamin Kogoya, PAPUAN TRAGEDY: 300 Warnings From The Edge Of Extinction

“An Indonesianised Papuan mind is more dangerous to Papua’s sovereignty than an Indonesian weapon.”
― Yamin Kogoya, PAPUAN TRAGEDY: 300 Warnings From The Edge Of Extinction

“The history of the Papuans is not just about what was done to them. It is also the story of how the concept of 'Papuan' was created, given meaning, spread through institutions and turned into a framework through which Papuans could be seen, understood, governed and acted upon.”
― Yamin Kogoya, The Papuans: Being Papuan and Papuan Being

“The Papuan people were first conceptualised as an object of knowledge, and then transformed into an object of governance.”
― Yamin Kogoya, The Papuans: Being Papuan and Papuan Being

“De-Papuanisation is not the displacement of Papuan bodies from Papuan land. It is the displacement of the systems of meaning through which Papuan existence recognises itself as Papuan.”
― Yamin Kogoya, INDONESIA’S SETTLER COLONIAL INFRASTRUCTURE: The Architecture of De-Papuanisation in West Papua