the influential Roman Catholic political party, the Dutch parliament finally passed a bill allowing unrestricted activities on the part of all mission societies in West Papua. After some brief explorations and the establishment of a station at Hetegima at the southern end of the Baliem Valley, Protestants began expanding into the previously off-limits Baliem at a rapid pace.
The mission at Pyramid, at the northwestern end of the valley was the first to be established. A major trade route already led here from the Western Dani centers of Bokondini, Karubaga and Mulia. Because of its strategic location, more missionaries were sent to Pyramid than anywhere else, and the mission retains its importance today.
The western valley station at Tiom, and one at Seinma in the Baliem Gorge area south of Hetegima, were both opened in 1956, one year before the Dutch government established its first outpost in the valley, at Wamena. In 1958, a year after Wamena was established, Catholics entered the valley.
When Dutch control came to the Valley, the various Protestant sects—CAMA, the Australian Baptist Missionary Society, the Regions Beyond Missions Union, and the United Field Missions—joined forces for financial and logistical reasons as well as to counteract the Roman Catholic presence. The Catholics' more flexible policy toward native beliefs was a sore point with more fundamentalist Protestants. Said one polemicist, "the Catholics' attempts at accommodation have at times produced hybrid creeds scarcely recognizable as the continuation of historic, Biblical Christianity."
With the competition for souls heating up, gone were the "gentlemen's agreements" of old. But old-fashioned Protestant missionaries who, for example, insisted on clothing being worn in church, were also fading. Younger, more open-minded Americans who had taken university courses in anthropology and linguistics after their years of Bible college were now joining the ranks. This new breed of missionaries enjoined only against those practices that were in direct conflict with the Bible—killing the second twin born, spirit worship and the execution of women accused of witchcraft.
Fearing a Catholic monopoly on education, the Protestants also agreed to participate in secular educational programs sponsored by the Dutch government. And, albeit reluctantly, the Americans also participated in setting up a government-subsidized public hospital at Pyramid.
'Pockets of heathenism'
In the early 1960s, the pace of missionary activities slowed. The country was undergoing a difficult transition from Dutch to Indonesian rule, and the frenetic pace of evangelical advances had left numbers of unbelievers as well as "pockets of heathenism" in the minds of the recent converts. It was time to consolidate gains.
Preachers found that even well-behaved flocks were sometimes operating with pretty strange notions of Christianity. Some West Papuans believed that sitting in church would result in immunity from sickness, and that forgetting to shut one's eyes during prayers would lead to blindness. Missionaries responded to these setbacks and superstitions by swearing to persevere against this "black magic," which one called "Satan's counteraction to God's perfect will for man."
The Protestants, resolving their internal difficulties, at this time planned a two-pronged strategy to conquer the remaining Western Dani—moving eastward from the Ilaga Valley and northwest from Pyramid. Setting aside jealousies and theological differences, the Australian Baptist Missionary Society joined forces with Regions Beyond Missions Union to help the United Field Missions build an airstrip at Bokondini. Areas thus opened up were divided into exclusive spheres of influence.
From Bokondini, missionaries trekked to Mulia to spread the gospel to the "crazy people"—Danis suffering from huge goiters and giving birth to cretins. Disease in this tragic place, the "most concentrated goiter pocket in the world," was soon cleared up with iodine injections and prayers. By 1963, a conference in Bokondini attracted 51 Dani church leaders. In the same year, Bokondini became the site of a teacher-training school.
While the Gospel swept into Western Dani areas, the Baliem Valley offered surprisingly stubborn resistance. Powerful war chiefs here resisted the new creeds, correctly viewing them as as a direct threat to their authority. A man who has more than 20 confirmed kills to his credit isn't going to give up his hard-won prestige to a religion that proposes that "the meek shall inherit the earth." Many leaders also objected to the secrets of salvation being revealed to women—religious lore had always been a male preserve.
There were other reasons for a slowing of proselytization here, too. With the civil government providing medical care and newly arrived merchants offering essential material goods, Bible preachers lost some of their punch. In fact, the greatest concentration of Dani who today refuse Christianity live in and around the administrative center of Wamena.
American missionary John Wilson poses with a Dani man at Pyramid.
Life among the cannibals
The life of a missionary in West Papua was not easy. (This is not to celebrate their suffering; missionary efforts in West Papua have inflicted great hardships on the West Papuans.) One story involves Stanley Dale, an abrasive former Australian commando, and Phil Masters, an American, who were dispatched to convert a group of Yali villagers in the area east of Ninia, between the Heluk and Seng Rivers.
For a while, the Yali believed that the two newcomers were reincarnations of two of their deceased leaders, turned white after passing through the land of the dead. But they soon realized the missionaries were ordinary humans, and following several misguided attempts at "reform"—including mass fetish-burning—killed them. In 1968, the bodies of the two men were found riddled with arrow shafts "as thick as reeds in a swamp."
Another tale involves Dutch Reverend Gert van Enk, 31, a tall, tropics-cured veteran of five years' service, who has been working among the Korowai tribe, around the upper Becking River, in what he calls the "hell of the south." The Dutch Reformed Church has been trying to proselytize the 3,000 Korowai for ten years and so far has not celebrated a single baptism. Van Enk is not allowed into most of the tribal territory, and if caught there would be pin-cushioned with arrows. But he has no thoughts of giving up. His countrymen, he says, took centuries to become Christians.
Missionaries and progress
Although the methods and mission of Third World evangelical Christianity are today routinely questioned, missionaries in West Papua have often played a positive role in easing traditional West Papuans into the 20th century. They have brought medicine, and have often served as an important buffer between the government and the people.
The sensitivity of the church to local customs is today greatly improved. Even fundamentalist Protestants now allow worshipers into their churches wearing penis gourds, and local West Papuans are groomed to take over positions of leadership within the church.
John Cutts, the son of missionaries, grew up with the Moni near Enarotali. The mission's ultralight airplane allowed him to land at even the tiniest of bush strips.
TEMBAGAPURA
A Giant
Copper Mine
in the Sky
In the shadow of glacier-capped Puncak Jaya, West Papua's highest peak, steel jaws travel along the world's longest single-span tramways, carrying up to 17-ton loads of ore across some of the most inaccessible terrain on earth. A huge mineral concentrator processes the ore into liquid slurry, which is then pumped through the world's longest slurry pipelines to a port on the mangrove flats 118 kilometers away
