Introductory Note to this Blog

This blog is specifically dedicated to the elders of the Koteka Tribas in West Papua (formerly calld the Netherlands New Guinea or West New Guina, West Irian and then Irian Jaya respectively).
There are at least 245 tribes with distinct patterns of leadership and system of governance in West Papua, which requires a contextualised approach to manage public affairs, particularly after the independence of West Papua.


So many times, and almost in all meetings I have been asked, "Why should we support West Papua movement and campaigns for independence: is it because so many people are being killed, the destruction of the environment or because you really want to be free from Indonesia?"
I always give my answers as follows:

1. Yes, you should support us because we are being wipped out from our own land, there is genocide, there is ethonocide, there is also ecocide; how come this civilisation can allow such things to continued in your own eyes?
2. But there is a more important reason: We are going to set up a system of governance that will become a model for all human beings around the world, a model of democracy where the government is "of the communities of beings, by the human beings, for all communities of beings." This democracy is called "Tribal Democracy"

Many people also have asked me to provide an outline of my idea. Following up the requests, I presented an early draft orally to a group consists of human rights activits, a democratic instutute in England and other scholars on May 5, 2000 at Percy Stree, Oxofrd, Oxfordshire, the United Kingdom.

Following this discussion, I further developed the idea in Malay (a Malay version used in Indonesia) and presented to students in Yogyakarta, December 2001. There are many pros and cons. Some aksed me to stop doing this work. Many of them asked me to continue with further details and analysis.

I then did some library research and searched the Internet, to find our similar idea being proposed int his world. I found "Tribal Model of Democracy" by Nelson Mandela (1962). I found it very interesting, but I realised that he was proposing just a model of democracy to be applied or learned within the modern system f governance. As I understood, he was trying to import his tribal wisdom and tribal models of democracy into the existing modern systems of governance.

What this proposal of "Tribal Democracy" would like to propose is both a model of democracy and a system of governance, which means the overall phylosophical, ideological and infra-structure as well as supra-structure of the government to be converted into the ones being applied within each tribe in West Papua. There is no set system and set model for all tribes, this proposal acknolwedges and promote all systems that exist within each tribe, and this model of democracy is trying to protect all of them.

In other words, tribal democracy is a democracy within each tribe, which acknowledges and protect the norms, values, patterns and systems that

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