features traction in recent years to describe the cur-

rent epoch, in which humans have become

There Are No Straight
Lines in Nature
Making Living Maps in West Papua
Sophie Chao
(Un)settling the Scene
Alongside melting glaciers, marine oil spills
and sinking islands, large-scale monocrop
plantations have become emblems of the
so-called Anthropocene. This term, which
is derived from anthropo meaning human
and cene meaning new in Greek, has gained
the single greatest geological influence on
the planet. In Indonesia, the worlds top
palm oil producer, the plantation boom has
contributed to a range of adverse social and
environmental effects, including rampant
deforestation and the dispossession of forest-
dependent indigenous peoples.1
With land growing scarce in Sumatra and
Borneo, the oil palm frontier is rapidly mov-
ing eastward into West Papua, where rain-
forest and savannah are being razed at an
unprecedented rate.2 In particular, oil palm
expansion in the Papuan regency of Merauke,
a remote region of swamplands and savannah
on the border with Papua New Guinea, has
been the subject of growing campaigns led
by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
including advocacy at the level of the United

Figure 1. Location of the Marind villages along the Bian River in Merauke Regency, West Papua.
Adapted from Alan Cline West Papua Map, University of Texas Libraries.

16 anthropology Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017

Anthropology Now, 9:1633, 2017 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1942-8200 print / 1949-2901 online DOI: 10.1080/19428200.2017.1291014
Nations.3 Largely implemented without the
free, prior and informed consent of the in-
digenous Marind-Anim people (hereafter the
Marind), oil palm expansion has been facili-
tated by widespread collusion among corpo-
rate, state and military interests.
Along the banks of the Bian River in north-
ern Merauke, I carried out fieldwork among
several Marind communities whose lands
and settlements are encircled by large-scale
oil palm plantations established in the last de-
cade. Participatory mapping with local com-
munities is one of the key tools being used
in the area to protect remaining forest areas
in indigenous territories from oil palm incur-
sion. This article explores maps as objects and
mapping as practice, both of which are part
ethnographic method, part advocacy tool.
As ethnographic tools, maps and mapping
can provide important insight about how our
Figure 2. Droning destruction aerial view of deforestation in Merauke. Source: Sophie Chao.
Sophie Chao
research participants conceptualize place
within their particular cultural value sys-
tems and cosmologies. Among the Marind,
for example, mapmaking reveals that place
is a dynamic entity shaped by the lives and
doings of multiple actors, both human and
nonhuman. In producing their own maps,
the Marind convey this sense of place as a
multispecies endeavor by emphasizing the
role of different organisms in shaping it and
giving it meaning. In this respect, places and
the maps that represent them are lively en-
tities, characterized by constant movement
and transformation. The consequence of this
is that Marind maps themselves keep mor-
phing and never sit still, in the image of the
multispecies world itself.
As an advocacy tool, community map-
ping like that undertaken by the Marind is
an important means of conveying to states
Making Living Maps in West Papua 17
Figure 3. Participatory mapping is one tool used by the Marind clans seeking to secure their remaining forests from the
oil palm incursion. Source: Sophie Chao.
and corporations the various cultural values
that people associate with land. In the eyes
of more powerful actors, maps can there-
fore serve as forms of proof of the rights
to land and resources of indigenous peoples
subjected to development projects that un-
dermine these rights.
A growing concern or perhaps expectation
among anthropologists regarding the knowl-
edge they generate is that it should engage
with contemporary issues and provide in-
sights into the cultural worldviews that shape
social relations, including conflictual ones in
contexts of power imbalances. The liveliness
of Marind maps the fact that they never sit
still and are always works in progress
reflects fundamental cultural understandings
of place as movement. However, the fact that
maps are always unfinished may also under-
18 anthropology
mine their effectiveness and value in contexts
of advocacy directed toward the government
and corporate sector. The Marind themselves
are very much aware of the tensions inherent
in producing maps that are both culturally
accurate and politically strategic.
The Marind have come to see the gov-
ernment and oil palm companies as the de-
stroyers of the multispecies worlds displayed
on Marind maps and of the movement seen
on such maps. When I spoke to them, they
The liveliness of Marind maps
reflects fundamental cultural
understandings of place as
movement.
Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017
blamed this on rampant deforestation and oil
palm expansion. Not surprisingly then, the
Marind critiqued the government and com-
pany maps as static, lifeless representations of
place that fail to account for multispecies en-
deavors that give place meaning. This article
suggests that the insistence of the Marind in
keeping maps lively and constantly changing
is not solely an expression of their cosmology.
It also constitutes a veiled, if sometimes coun-
terproductive, strategy of resistance to state
and corporate forces that, through actions and
maps, erode the meaning of place as multi-
species movement and generative liveliness.
Of Spirits and Species
Traditionally a nomadic hunter-gatherer com-
munity, and still largely reliant on the forest
Figure 4. For the Marind, humans, animals and plants all participate in making the forest a place of life and movement.
Source: Sophie Chao.
Sophie Chao
for their subsistence, the Marind self-identify
on the basis of membership to one of several
clans. Members of each clan are related by
kinship, myth and genesis in particular ani-
mals, plants and natural features of the for-
est. These animals and plants are described
as amai, meaning grandparent. The Marind
believe amai have consciousness and agency,
as people do, and that they have their own
particular affects, capacities and volition. Hu-
mans, amai and ancestral spirits (or dema)
all participate in different ways in shaping,
through their movements and actions, the dy-
namic living space that is the forest.
One is never alone in the forest, says
Paskalis, an elder of Khalaoyam village. In-
stead, one encounters in the forest a lively,
more-than-human realm, teeming with mul-
tispecies worlds in the making. There are the
Making Living Maps in West Papua 19
ceaseless labors of busy red ants underfoot
and the slow and imperceptible growth of
centennial aloe wood trees. The seasonal mi-
gration of egrets, the trajectories of wild boar
packs in search of food, the transplanting of
sago suckers along river banks and groves,
the journeys of warmongering ancestors and
the travels of deceased and living relatives are
but some examples of place-making move-
ments that endow the forest with its dynamic
and multispecies relief. Place, in the words
of Marcus, an elder from Selam village, is a
journey, in which the wayfarings of plants,
people, animals and spirits partake. Place
comes into meaningful existence as various
lifelines form intricate and time-transcending
meshworks that are at once historical and
continually emergent.
Pressure Points
The controversial incorporation of West
Papua into the Indonesian state in 1969 has
been accompanied by the emergence of a
network of pressure points across this liv-
ing and moving landscape. Military garri-
sons, towns, roads, police headquarters and,
more recently, the carving out of privatized
oil palm concessions all stultify human and
nonhuman movements. These forces also de-
stroy the lives and pathways of human and
nonhuman beings while subjecting them to
the omnipresent surveillance of a powerful
state, military and business nexus. The past,
embodied in the rapidly vanishing forest, is
eradicated, rendering the present precarious
and the future uncertain, a reality that many
Marind convey through the expression time
has come to a stop.
20 anthropology
In particular, the advent of oil palm
plantations in the last decade is the
subject of great concern among the
Marind.
In particular, the advent of oil palm planta-
tions in the last decade is the subject of great
concern among the Marind. Uncannily simi-
lar to military garrisons and training grounds,
the plantations extend over vast swathes of
land and are out of bounds to nonpersonnel.
Their entrances and exits are strictly guarded
and trespass is heavily sanctioned. Rows of
equidistant, uniform oil palm trees crisscross
the plantations, like a regiment of obedient,
disciplined soldiers, identical to each other
in appearance and size. Always located on
elevated land, police, military and company
headquarter bases survey the concession
from afar and above, the visibility of move-
ment and presence substantially aided by the
general flatness of the oil palm landscape.
Oil palm, unlike the plants and animals
of the forest, is considered by many Marind
a selfish and solitary being. It is without
friends and family. Oil palm, says Selly,
a middle-aged woman from Selam village,
Oil palm, unlike the plants and
animals of the forest, is considered
by many Marind a selfish and
solitary being.
Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017
Figure 5. Forest and savannah in Merauke are being cleared to make way for large-scale monocrop oil palm
plantations. Source: Sophie Chao.
does not like the company of others. In-
deed, few endemic species are able to sur-
vive in the low canopies, sparse undergrowth
and low-stability microclimates of monocrop
plantations. The conversion of natural forests
to such plantations has also increased habi-
tat fragmentation and biodiversity loss, the
monoculture model resulting in barriers im-
pervious to species migration.4 The life-giving
movements of animals and plants, ancestors
and spirits, humans and nonhumans, are in-
creasingly impeded by the incursion of oil
palm and the solitary, oppressive places that
it occupies.
Sophie Chao
There Are No Straight Lines in Nature
Sitting at the foot of the mango tree by the
old church of Selam, a group of Marind com-
munity members and I had gathered for a
moments rest after an unsuccessful fishing
trip on the western banks of the Upper Bian
River. Stretching our limbs, we munched on
grilled sago and coconut, discussing the re-
cent flow of greasy effluents from the palm oil
mill into the river that had, as the Marind say,
made the fish drunk. Midbetel chewing,
we were interrupted by Paulinus, a bright and
energetic young man, who came running, a
Making Living Maps in West Papua 21
Figure 6. Government map of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate project (MIFEE). Source Masterplan
for Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesias Economic Development. Source: Indonesia Mid-Term National
Development Plan 20152019.

bulky cardboard box under his right arm,
calling, Hey! I found another map! Check it
out! He carefully pulled out a laminated A3
map titled Investment Planning Map 2010
2030, produced by the Merauke Regency
Division of the National Spatial Planning
Agency. Taking photographs of the document
with my smartphone, I listened attentively to
the groups cartographic critique.
Administrative boundaries. Oil palm
concession boundaries. Timber concession
boundaries. National conservation zones.

22 anthropology Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017

Figure 7. Map of planned and established agribusiness and timber concessions in Merauke Regency. Source: Merauke
Regency Government.
Mining concession boundaries. A doubtful
look on her face, Rosalina, a middle-aged
woman from Khalaoyam, followed with her
callused finger the color-coded straight lines
carving up the landscape into a series of
overlapping geometric shapes. Shaking her
head, she concluded: There are no straight
lines in nature. The group nodded in as-
sent, and Okto, Rosalinas younger brother,
added:
Nothing moves in straight lines like this.
Look at the seasonal flight of the birds, the
journeys of the cassowary and the wallaby,
the monsoonal movements of the fish and
Can you make this map alive?
Sophie Chao
prawns. Look too at the way the sago re-
produces following the curve of the Bian,
the way our ancestors and we still today,
follow this movement to feed and protect
ourselves. Look now at the flow of the Bian
itself swaying right, then left, then right
again, it has direction but no rigidity. Noth-
ing grows in straight lines, apart from oil
palm.
At this point, Marcus, a rather introverted
and shy young man who had been looking at
the map at a slight distance from the rest of
the group, turned to me and asked: Can you
make this map alive? I was confused and
Making Living Maps in West Papua 23
looked to the others for help. Their rephras-
ings of the question (Can you give this map
some life? Can you bring it to life?) were no
clearer to me. Eventually, Marcus explained:
You see, its like this. This map, I think, is
what the government and companies see.
Just land and borders and oil palm. But
there is something dead about this map.
I dont know if dead is the right word,
because even in death there is some kind
of movement, but what I mean is that there
is no sign of life. There are no people, or
birds, or animals, or plants to be seen. Just
patches of color that dont mean much at
all. Everything just sort of stands still on
this map. When I look at it, I dont hear
anything that tells me where I am. I dont
see who surrounds me. Do you know what
I mean, Miss?
I tried to explain to Marcus that not ev-
erything could be included in a map for rea-
sons of scale and detail. But Marcus insisted
that without that kind of life, the map was
pretty much useless. Borrowing my pen,
he started to show me what it meant to add
some life to the map. Here, he traced the
paths of the spirits of his clan across forest
and marshland. Further to the left, he circled
the sites of interethnic peacemaking rituals,
warfare and congregations. Scattered across
the map, he pinpointed the funerary sites
of great warriors of the past. In long, broad
strokes, he drew the movements of migratory
birds and their places of rest, feeding and
mating. Then there were the aquatic jour-
neys of native fish, followed closely by those
of their predators. His excitement growing,
Marcus traced in detail the swooping trajec-
tories of the bird of paradise, the amphibian
24 anthropology
proliferation of sago suckers along the Bian
riverbanks. Then he added the flight of the
wallaby during slash-and-burn forest clear-
ing, followed by its inquisitive return in the
wet season to feed on juicy new shoots in
the forest regrowth.
Other group members began to join in,
putting movement and multispecies lives
back into the map with arrows, arcs and
scribbles. Each addition to the map was ac-
companied by stories of the species whose
lives and doings gave place its meaning.
Concession and administrative boundaries
disappeared under a dense meshwork of in-
tertwined, interconnected and multitemporal
existences. This process unflattened time and
space by reinscribing them with movement.
In this and many other instances, Marind
saw government and company maps as
both limited and limiting. They believed that
such maps were disconnecting places and
persons, deanimating symbiotic life flows
and circuits and dissolving the dynamism
of multispecies becomings into hard and
fast boundaries and zones. The liveliness of
place was diluted and dissected in govern-
ment maps into static, rigid taxonomies of
perceived economic value and expected
productivity. My interlocutors talked of maps
as instruments of control and deception by
a state whose painful and ongoing legacy of
violence, human rights abuses and intimida-
tion continues now in the form of imposed
oil palm expansion.
But they also noted the inconsistencies
across different government maps in terms of
scale, administrative and concession bound-
aries, forest classifications and concession
types. For example, the northern village
of Kharam in some maps finds itself inside
Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017
Figure 8. Marind elders explaining the human and natural landmarks of their customary territories. Source: Sophie
Chao.

Boven Digoel district, in others in Merauke
district. District boundaries seem to strangely
move to accommodate plantation conces-
sion delimitations. A timber concession
on paper turns into an oil palm concession
on the ground. Map scales across different
sources somehow never seem to match or
fit when overlaid. Concession areas con-
tract and expand, changing names, changing
crop. Certain planned developments never
end up materializing, while others are acti-
vated without any prior notice. Areas sup-
posedly protected from deforestation shrink
suspiciously in consecutive annual maps.
Perhaps, in the words of Yakobus, the
government itself is confused. Government
maps are as unfinished as the spaces they
seek to control through visual representation.
For certain, the signature of the state, in the
words of anthropologist Veena Das, on paper
and place is at once hegemonic and oppres-
sive on the Marind.5 But it is also ambiguous
and volatile. In this ambiguity the Marind see
the possibility of their own intervention to

Areas supposedly protected from deforestation shrink

suspiciously in consecutive annual maps.

Sophie Chao Making Living Maps in West Papua 25

curb the radical landscape transformations
taking place with the advent of oil palm.
Making maps of their own constitutes one
such strategy.
Follow the Song of the Khaw
After a breakfast of baked sago and boiled
taro, a group of Khalaoyam elders and I
headed out eastward to map the customary
territory of the Mahuze clan. This triangular
area extends from the coconut grove on the
banks of the Upper Bian further east to the
milk tree (Astonia scholaris) promontory
and then south to the Arvak spring. Armed
with two GPS devices, we started walking.
Mahuze elder Yakobus lead the group, hum-
ming tunes of his childhood and regularly
calling out our individual names, a Marind
habit to ensure that peoples souls do not get
lost or captured by malignant spirits dwelling
in the forest and swamps.
I followed Yakobus, keeping my eyes
on the ground to avoid tripping over thick
tangles of buttress roots and picking off in-
sistent leeches from my arms and legs as
they crawled up from the moist hummus or
dropped down conveniently from overhead
foliage. Yakobus suddenly stopped in his
tread, causing me to nearly run headfirst into
the newly sharpened machete dangling off
his back. Looking up at the dense canopy,
interspersed with green-hued shards of light
and swaying gently in the morning breeze,
he stood in silence. Suddenly, he pointed up
and looked at me, saying There it is. Thats
our first point. You can map that.
I couldnt tell what Yakobus was pointing
to, or what needed to be mapped, or under
26 anthropology
what caption in the GPS device, so I asked
him to explain. Cant you hear, Miss? Cant
you hear the whistle of the khaw up there?6
Thats one of our dema, telling us it knows we
are here, and it sings for us to continue our
journey. This is an important place because it
is a place of encounter with the khaw dema,
so it must be mapped. Follow the song of the
khaw. Luckily, a savvy techie friend of mine
had set up software in my GPS unit to record
sound, so I promptly recorded the shy whistle
in the wind, the black and yellow plumage
of the small bird invisible to my eyes. I won-
dered how to name this coordinate that ex-
isted to me as a mere sound clip but to my
informants was a place-making sensory ex-
perience. Beep. Whistle. Khaw.
Yakobus then proceeded to tell me the
story of the khaw, how it sprung from the wet
soils of the Upper Bian, feet first and head
last, hence the dark blotches of its crest, eter-
nal markings of fertile riverine soil. How it
drank from the Bian River and from there re-
ceived the power of flight, which allowed it
to circle the moon and the sun, grabbing sun-
light under its wings, forever tainted bright
yellow from its rays. The story recounts how
the khaws whistle guided the Mahuzes an-
cestors as they traveled across the lands in
search of food, falling upon sago at the banks
of the river where the bird had led them. It
explains how its whistle enchanted the chil-
dren and brought the fish to surface to feed
the Mahuze people. And finally it is a story
about how the khaw sings at dawn to mark
the rise of the sun, today still guiding the
Mahuzes members across the forest, giving
direction to their steps, protecting them from
witchcraft and harm.
Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017
Figure 9. Lively maps trace the movements of people and species across time and place. Source: Sophie Chao.
Yakobus went silent, then began, slowly,
then with faster cadence, in a low, hoarse
voice, to sing the song of the khaw. The other
group members lowered their heads in re-
spect, some sniffling, teary-eyed, remember-
ing the past, their kin, their childhoods, their
mothers. The GPS unit continued to record
the sound of place and movement through
the stories and songs of human and bird. I
wondered how a single red dot on the map
The other group members lowered
their heads in respect, some
sniffling, teary-eyed, remembering
the past, their kin, their childhoods,
their mothers.
Sophie Chao
would convey the temporal, affective and
ontological depth and directionality of this
symphony of a timeplace.
Following the movement of the khaw, we
roamed the forest, as my friends explained
the fruit trees from which the bird fed, the
particular riverbanks it would drink from,
the sago groves it would nest in, the place it
came into existence, and the place it goes to
sing its last song. Each of these places was in
turn mapped into the GPS unit forming a sort
of khaw lifemap. In turn, each coordinate
was connected by my interlocutors to those
of other beings, happenings, times and songs
that had emerged symbiotically in these and
nearby sites. Each node came to connect rich
and dynamic multispecies lifeworlds and
movements across time and space.
The names of ancestors, the peacemak-
ing rituals, the death of a wise woman from
Making Living Maps in West Papua 27
Figure 10. An oil palm concession map reworked by the Marind to incorporate customary land boundaries and
inhabitants movements over time. Source: Sophie Chao.
witchcraft, the trees from which Marind ca-
noes and bows are made, the shrubs whose
white-pink inner bark is used as medicine
and plasters, the sago grove where the wild
boar comes in search of food inside hol-
lowed-out boles, the river bend where the
dog spirit of the Mahuze clan took a nap only
to turn into a stone mound visible to this day,
the resting place of the snake spirit and the
shallow sleeping holes of the Tilapia fish sub-
merged in water in the wet seasonthese,
and countless more, shared biographies, we
recorded and noted, accompanied by photo-
graphs and sound clips, following the song
of the khaw.
The landscapes my friends wanted to
map were in no way limited to those that re-
lated to their history and past, or to ancestral
dema beings. The coordinates we mapped
28 anthropology
as sound (for most were not visible in the
literal sense of the term) included those of
birds, the wind and sago-pounding, or what
Feld, in his work among the Kaluli of Papua
New Guinea, has called the poetic cartog-
raphies of rainforest trails.7 But they also
included sounds that coexist awkwardly, of-
ten jarringly, with these more traditional
acoustics: roaring bulldozers, distant chain-
saws, passing trucks, the Muslim call to
prayer of nearby settler village mosques, the
solemn intermittent bell-ringing of the local
church, the xylophonic lunch-break Fr Elise
chime of the state primary school and the
triumphant if somewhat crackly Indonesia
Raya national anthem trickling from military
garrison megaphones in between the shrill
crescendos of stubborn static. And, inside the
Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017

Yakobus: Listen carefully, child.
Tell me now, what do you hear?
Author (hesitant): Im afraid I hear
nothing, Elder.
Yakobus: Exactly. Record it.
nearby oil palm plantation, perhaps the most
deafening sound of all.
Yakobus: Listen carefully, child. Tell me
now, what do you hear?
Author (hesitant): Im afraid I hear nothing,
Elder.
Yakobus: Exactly. Record it.
The Maps That Wont Sit Still
The Marind critique government maps for
being static and lifeless, often using the vi-
sual terms abu-abu (unclear, literally gray)
and datar (flat) to describe them. By contrast,
the value and validity of maps produced by
the communities themselves arise from their
personal and personalized production as
collective multisensorial endeavors across
multispecies topographies of time, place and
praxis. The maps produced by the Marind,
just like the beings, both human and non-
human, who inhabit and enliven the forest,
never sit still. Slippery organisms, they ac-
quire liveliness from the movement they con-
vey and conjure kinesthetic, visual, audi-
tory. Furthermore, the temporal morphing
Sophie Chao
of social ties as they unfold in the everyday
make community maps constant works in
progress, in the image of relationships made
and unmade over time.
Map scales and legends, for example, are
defined less in terms of topography than in
terms of closeness or distance of kinship, in-
terspecies encounters and historical events.
Villages closely connected through family
links, histories of reciprocity and exchange
are mapped closer than GPS points indi-
cate. Conversely, animus relations, in par-
ticular with those groups that had ceded land
to companies in the name of other groups,
are represented by greater geographical dis-
tances. The seasonal migration of birds and
beasts requires new lines to be added or
shifted, as does the emergence or destruction
of sago groves and bamboo clusters. Living
maps transform as do the living worlds they
seek to represent.
But maps that do not sit still can be dif-
ficult to use. Often, to the great frustration
of facilitating NGOs and the Church, and
months after maps had been produced, some
community members would insist that GPS
points taken were no longer accurate.
Maps had to be revised, distances changed,
scales increased or decreased, river bends
and other natural customary land boundar-
ies redrawn or shifted, sites and locations
added or removed. The mapping expeditions
I participated in lasted for months on end,
yet maps kept transmogrifying. We ran out of
pens to color code ever-multiplying legends.
As social ties both human and interspecies
converge and diverge, flourish and fritter,
space and distance expand and compress
in accordion-like movements to the flux of
Making Living Maps in West Papua 29
Figure 11. Overlay of missionary, corporate and community maps. Source: Sophie Chao.

30 anthropology Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017

morally imbued multispecies relationships.
There are no straight lines in nature.
Cartographic Conundrums
Sitting beside me in the front yard of his
home, young Oktavianus from Kharam vil-
lage looked at me as I overlaid different
maps on a specialized mapping program on
my laptop. One was a missionary map from
the 1940s. Another was produced by the
Indonesian Ministry of Forestry. Yet another
was mapped by the Gebze clan members
of Garok village, and another had recently
been published by a nearby oil palm conces-
sion. Puffing away at a thickly rolled clove-
scented cigarette, Oktavianus corrected the
spelling of one of the Bian River estuaries
on the Kharam map. Then he spoke. Things
are no longer moving. The spirits are angry
with us. The plants and animals are starving
from too much oil palm. Time has come to a
stop. Who knows, maybe one day, the Bian
River too, will start to flow upstream? Miss
can your computer draw a river flowing
upstream? How do you map time? How do
you map life?
The map can be understood as a form of
representation as much as imagination and
aspiration. The Marinds cartographic cri-
tique and praxis reveal how they conceptu-
alize and challenge the ways in which the
state and oil palm corporations perceive and
affect their lifeworlds. Governments and oil
palm corporations, in their visual representa-
tions and physical reconfigurations of space,
disrupt existing multispecies relationships
by thwarting the dynamism through which
places and persons come to exist meaning-
Sophie Chao
fully. By contrast, the living maps that Marind
are producing embody the very dynamism
that gives place meaning.
The fact that Marind maps seem to never
stop moving is in one sense a strategy of re-
sistance to the stasis, destruction and control
imposed by the state and oil palm corpora-
tions. At the same time, however, the reluc-
tance of the Marind to simplify and render
static the textured multispecies world of the
forest in the form of fixed maps constitutes
a major hindrance to their efforts to secure
their lands from the oil palm incursion.
For example, none of the maps that I
helped my friends produce have been final-
ized, and likely never will be. As such, few
have been actively used as forms of evidence
in negotiations with corporations and the
government. Constrained by legal require-
ments for land exploitation within particular
time frames, companies have gone ahead
with clearing and planting of oil palm be-
cause community maps were not shared
early enough. On several occasions, the con-
stantly shifting boundaries of different com-
munities territories have resulted in compen-
sation payments to the wrong landowners, in
turn fostering intracommunity resentment
and horizontal conflicts. In other cases, com-
panies have avoided paying any compensa-
tion for lands acquired because the maps did
not clarify who those lands belonged to. The
iterative and lengthy processes of making
maps are also problematic for supporting lo-
cal NGOs, whose capacity and resources are
often limited.
As a staunch proponent of applied anthro-
pology, I was keen to make a tangible dif-
ference to the Marinds growing precarity by
facilitating community mapping. However, I
Making Living Maps in West Papua 31
 Figure 12. How do you map a river flowing upstream? tributaries of the
Bian River mapped by Marind communities. Source: Sophie Chao.

32 anthropology Volume 9 Number 1 April 2017

struggled to find a balance between accom-
modating their moving worlds and helping
them produce something that would be rec-
ognized as legitimate in the eyes of a preda-
tory audience of government and corporate
actors with little time to heed stories, songs
and sentiment. Far more than a technologi-
cal exercise of representing simply whats
there, mapping dynamic lifeworlds also
proved deeply constraining of peoples at-
tempts to halt, or at least slow down, the on-
going destruction of these worlds.
However, Marind mapping, as a grass-
roots-driven technology of territoriality,8 also
derives its value from enhancing the visibility
of disaffected local communities and their
customary lands in the gaze of state and cor-
porations. Albeit fraught with complexities,
the villages of the Upper Bian River con-
tinue to work together to produce maps as
important counter-evidence to the transfor-
mations imposed by these powerful actors.
In mapping lies the possibility of commu-
nity empowerment and participation in the
representation of space. This is all the more
significant in the politically volatile region of
West Papua, where indigenous peoples self-
determination continues to be denied, their
freedoms curbed and their cultural rights in-
fringed.
Notes
1. J. Bhattacharya and O. Pye (eds.), The Palm
Oil Controversy in Southeast Asia: A Transnational
Perspective (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2012).
2. P. Jacobson. West Papua Oil Palm Atlas
Portrays Industrys Explosion in Region. Mong-
abay. May 6, 2015. https://news.mongabay.
Sophie Chao
com/2015/05/west-papua-oil-palm-atlas-portrays-
industrys-explosion-in-region/.
3. See sources at Forest Peoples Programme.
Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate
(MIFEE) Project. Last accessed October 21, 2016.
http://www.forestpeoples.org/tags/merauke-inte
grated-food-and-energy-estate-mifee-project.
4. E.B. Fitzherbert, M.J. Struebig, A. Morel, F.
Danielsen, C.A. Brhl, P.. Donald and B. Phalan,
How Will Oil Palm Expansion Affect Biodiver-
sity? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23, no. 10
(2008): 539554.
5. V. Das, The Signature of the State: The Para-
dox of Illegibility, in Anthropology in the Margins
of the State, eds. D. Poole and V. Das (Santa Fe,
New Mexico: American School of Research Press,
2004), 225252.
6. Khaw is the Marind term for the black-
crested bulbul (Pycnonotus melanicterus).
7. S. Feld, A Rainforest Acoustemology, in
The Auditory Culture Reader, eds. M. Bull and L.
Black (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 223241.
8. T. Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of
the Geo-Body of a Nation (Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1994), 16.
Sophie Chao is a doctoral candidate in anthro-
pology at Macquarie University, Sydney. She re-
ceived an M.A. in Tibetan and Chinese studies and
an M.Sc. in social anthropology from the Univer-
sity of Oxford. Sophie has previously worked as
an education consultant at UNESCO in Paris and
as project officer for the human rights organiza-
tion Forest Peoples Programme in Indonesia. She
is co-editor of Conflict or consent? The palm oil
sector at a crossroads (2013), Human rights and
agribusiness: Plural legal approaches to conflict
resolution, institutional strengthening and legal
reform (2012) and Divers paths to justice: Legal
pluralism and the rights of indigenous peoples in
Southeast Asia (2011).
Making Living Maps in West Papua 33