«Becoming Stronger»: Local Christianity, Endogenous Transformation, and Politics of Decolonization in West Papua

In West Papua (Western New Guinea) the once called «stone age people» have embraced Christianity and continue to confront the legacy of Euro-American colonialism and the contemporary operation of the Indonesian state. Based on ethnographic study of one of the largest indigenous church – the Papua Kingmi Church (GKIP) ‒ this lecture elucidates the way Papuans take over Christianity, reinvent its theology, delink it from its colonial entanglements, and use the church as basis for consolidating their community «to transform to become stronger» (berubah supaya lebih kuat). It also examines the role played by this form of Christianity in the current transformation of Papuan society and in their long sustained agenda for self-determination.