Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an Oceanian country that occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby; the western half of New Guinea forms the Indonesian provinces of West Papua. At the national level, after being ruled by three external powers since 1884, Papua New Guinea established its sovereignty in 1975; this followed nearly 60 years of Australian administration, which started during World War I. It became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1975 with Elizabeth II as its queen, it became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations in its own right. Papua New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, it is one of the most rural, as only 18 per cent of its people live in urban centres. There are 851 known languages in the country. Most of the population of more than 8 million people lives in customary communities, which are as diverse as the languages.
The country is one of the world's least explored and geographically. It is known to have numerous groups of uncontacted peoples, researchers believe there are many undiscovered species of plants and animals in the interior. Papua New Guinea is classified as a developing economy by the International Monetary Fund. Strong growth in Papua New Guinea's mining and resource sector led to the country becoming the sixth-fastest-growing economy in the world in 2011. Growth was expected to slow once major resource projects came on line in 2015. Mining remains a major economic factor, however. Local and national governments are discussing the potential of resuming mining operations at the Panguna mine in Bougainville Province, closed since the civil war in the 1980s–1990s. Nearly 40 per cent of the population lives a self-sustainable natural lifestyle with no access to global capital. Most of the people still live in strong traditional social groups based on farming, their social lives combine traditional religion including primary education.
These societies and clans are explicitly acknowledged by the Papua New Guinea Constitution, which expresses the wish for "traditional villages and communities to remain as viable units of Papua New Guinean society" and protects their continuing importance to local and national community life. The nation is an observer state in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN since 1976, has filed its application for full membership status, it is the Commonwealth of Nations. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first arrived in Papua New Guinea around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago, they were descendants of migrants out of Africa, in one of the early waves of human migration. Agriculture was independently developed in the New Guinea highlands around 7000 BC, making it one of the few areas in the world where people independently domesticated plants. A major migration of Austronesian-speaking peoples to coastal regions of New Guinea took place around 500 BC; this has been correlated with the introduction of pottery and certain fishing techniques.
In the 18th century, traders brought the sweet potato to New Guinea, where it was adopted and became part of the staples. Portuguese traders had introduced it to the Moluccas; the far higher crop yields from sweet potato gardens radically transformed traditional agriculture and societies. Sweet potato supplanted the previous staple and resulted in a significant increase in population in the highlands. Although by the late 20th century headhunting and cannibalism had been eradicated, in the past they were practised in many parts of the country as part of rituals related to warfare and taking in enemy spirits or powers. In 1901, on Goaribari Island in the Gulf of Papua, missionary Harry Dauncey found 10,000 skulls in the island's long houses, a demonstration of past practices. According to Marianna Torgovnick, writing in 1991, "The most documented instances of cannibalism as a social institution come from New Guinea, where head-hunting and ritual cannibalism survived, in certain isolated areas, into the Fifties and Seventies, still leave traces within certain social groups."Little was known in Europe about the island until the 19th century, although Portuguese and Spanish explorers, such as Dom Jorge de Menezes and Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, had encountered it as early as the 16th century.
Traders from Southeast Asia had visited New Guinea beginning 5,000 years ago to collect bird-of-paradise plumes. The country's dual name results from its complex administrative history before independence; the word papua is derived from an old local term of uncertain origin. "New Guinea" was the name coined by the Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez. In 1545, he noted the resemblance of the people to those he had earlier seen along the Guinea coast of Africa. Guinea, in its turn, is etymologically derived from the Portuguese word Guiné; the name is one of several toponyms sharing similar etymologies meaning "land of the blacks" or similar meanings, in reference to the dark skin of the inhabitants. In the nineteenth century, Germany ruled the northern half of the country for some decades, beginning in 1884, as a colony named German New Guinea. In 1914 after the outbreak of World War I, Australian forces landed and captured German New Guinea in a small military campaign and occupied it throughout the war.
After the war, in which Germany and the Central Pow
Papuan Peninsula
The Papuan Peninsula known as the Bird's Tail Peninsula, is a large peninsula in Papua New Guinea, southeast of the city of Lae, that makes up the southeastern portion of the island of New Guinea. The peninsula is the easternmost extent of the New Guinea Highlands and consists of the Owen Stanley Range, with peaks such as Mount Victoria and Mount Suckling. On the south coast is Port Moresby, the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It was first issued in 1951, is now published annually by SIL International, a U. S.-based, Christian non-profit organization. SIL's main purpose is to study and document languages to promote literacy and for religious purposes; as of 2018, Ethnologue contains web-based information on 7,097 languages in its 21st edition, including the number of speakers, dialects, linguistic affiliations, availability of the Bible in each language and dialect described, a cursory description of revitalization efforts where reported, an estimate of language viability using the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. Ethnologue has been published by SIL International, a Christian linguistic service organization with an international office in Dallas, Texas; the organization studies numerous minority languages to facilitate language development, to work with speakers of such language communities in translating portions of the Bible into their languages.
The determination of what characteristics define a single language depends upon sociolinguistic evaluation by various scholars. Ethnologue follows general linguistic criteria, which are based on mutual intelligibility. Shared language intelligibility features are complex, include etymological and grammatical evidence, agreed upon by experts. In addition to choosing a primary name for a language, Ethnologue provides listings of other name for the language and any dialects that are used by its speakers, government and neighbors. Included are any names that have been referenced regardless of whether a name is considered official, politically correct or offensive; these lists of names are not complete. In 1984, Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, called an'SIL code', to identify each language that it described; this set of codes exceeded the scope of other standards, e.g. ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2; the 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7,148 language codes. In 2002, Ethnologue was asked to work with the International Organization for Standardization to integrate its codes into a draft international standard.
The 15th edition of Ethnologue was the first edition to use this standard, called ISO 639-3. This standard is now administered separately from Ethnologue. In only one case and the ISO standards treat languages differently. ISO 639-3 considers Akan to be a macrolanguage consisting of two distinct languages and Fante, whereas Ethnologue considers Twi and Fante to be dialects of a single language, since they are mutually intelligible; this anomaly resulted because the ISO 639-2 standard has separate codes for Twi and Fante, which have separate literary traditions, all 639-2 codes for individual languages are automatically part of 639–3 though 639-3 would not assign them separate codes. In 2014, with the 17th edition, Ethnologue introduced a numerical code for language status using a framework called EGIDS, an elaboration of Fishman's GIDS, it ranks a language from 0 for an international language to 10 for an extinct language, i.e. a language with which no-one retains a sense of ethnic identity.
In December 2015, Ethnologue launched a metered paywall. As of 2017, Ethnologue's 20th edition described 237 language families including 86 language isolates and six typological categories, namely sign languages, pidgins, mixed languages, constructed languages, as yet unclassified languages. In 1986, William Bright editor of the journal Language, wrote of Ethnologue that it "is indispensable for any reference shelf on the languages of the world". In 2008 in the same journal, Lyle Campbell and Verónica Grondona said: "Ethnologue...has become the standard reference, its usefulness is hard to overestimate."In 2015, Harald Hammarström, an editor of Glottolog, criticized the publication for lacking citations and failing to articulate clear principles of language classification and identification. However, he concluded that, on balance, "Ethnologue is an impressively comprehensive catalogue of world languages, it is far superior to anything else produced prior to 2009." Starting with the 17th edition, Ethnologue has been published every year.
Linguasphere Observatory Register Lists of languages List of language families Martin Everaert. The Use of Databases in Cross-Linguistic Studies. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110198744. Retrieved 2014-07-13. Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. Linguistic Genocide in Education-or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights?. Routledge. ISBN 9781135662356. Retrieved 2014-07-13. Paolillo, John C.. "Evaluating language statistics: the Ethnologue and beyond". UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Pp. 3–5. Retrieved October 8, 2015. Web version of Ethnologue
Bougainville Island
Bougainville Island is the main island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville of Papua New Guinea. This region is known as Bougainville Province or the North Solomons, its land area is 9,300 km2. The population of the province is 234,280, which includes the adjacent island of Buka and assorted outlying islands including the Carterets. Mount Balbi at 2,700 m is the highest point. Bougainville Island is the largest of the Solomon Islands archipelago, forming part of the Northern Solomon Islands, politically separate from the sovereign country called Solomon Islands. Bougainville was first settled some 28,000 years ago. Three to four thousand years ago, Austronesian people arrived, bringing with them domesticated pigs, chickens and obsidian tools; the first European contact with Bougainville was in 1768, when the French explorer Louis de Bougainville arrived and named the main island for himself. Germany laid claim to Bougainville in 1899. Christian missionaries arrived on the island in 1902. During World War I, Australia occupied German New Guinea, including Bougainville.
It became part of the Australian Territory of New Guinea under a League of Nations mandate in 1920. In 1942, during World War II, Japan invaded the island, but allied forces launched the Bougainville campaign to regain control of the island in 1943. Despite heavy bombardments, the Japanese garrisons remained on the island until 1945. Following the war, the Territory of New Guinea, including Bougainville, returned to Australian control. In 1949, the Territory of New Guinea, including Bougainville, merged with the Australian Territory of Papua, forming the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, a United Nations Trust Territory under Australian administration. On 9 September 1975, the Parliament of Australia passed the Papua New Guinea Independence Act 1975; the Act set 16 September 1975 as date of independence and terminated all remaining sovereign and legislative powers of Australia over the territory. Bougainville was to become part of an independent Papua New Guinea. However, on 11 September 1975, in a failed bid for self-determination, Bougainville declared itself the Republic of the North Solomons.
The republic failed to achieve any international recognition, a settlement was reached in August 1976. Bougainville was absorbed politically into Papua New Guinea with increased self-governance powers. Between 1988 and 1998, the Bougainville Civil War claimed over 15,000 lives. Peace talks brokered by New Zealand led to autonomy. A multinational Peace Monitoring Group under Australian leadership was deployed. In 2001, a peace agreement was signed including promise of a referendum on independence from Papua New Guinea, which will be held in 2019. Bougainville is the largest island in the Solomon Islands archipelago, it is part of the Solomon Islands rain forests ecoregion. Bougainville and the nearby island of Buka are a single landmass separated by a deep 300-metre-wide strait; the island has an area of 9000 square kilometres, there are several active, dormant or inactive volcanoes which rise to 2400 m. Mount Bagana in the north central part of Bougainville is conspicuously active, spewing out smoke, visible many kilometres distant.
Earthquakes cause little damage. The daily volume of wild rivers appears to be decreasing; this has been affected by deforestation caused by the increased demand for gardens to feed the growing population. Mining with its use of chemicals and its aftereffects poses other environmental issues, e.g. alluvial gold mining and the now decommissioned Rio Tinto-owned Panguna mine. Bougainville has one of the world's largest copper deposits; these have been under development since 1972. The majority of people on Bougainville are Christian, an estimated 70% being Roman Catholic and a substantial minority United Church of Papua New Guinea since 1968. Few non-natives remain. There are many indigenous languages in Bougainville Province, belonging to three language families; the languages of the northern end of the island, some scattered around the coast, belong to the Austronesian family. The languages of the north-central and southern lobes of Bougainville Island belong to the North and South Bougainville families.
The most spoken Austronesian language is Halia and its dialects, spoken in the island of Buka and the Selau peninsula of Northern Bougainville. Other Austronesian languages include Nehan, Solos, Saposa and Tinputz, all spoken in the northern quarter of Bougainville and surrounding islands; these languages are related. Bannoni and Torau are Austronesian languages not related to the former, which are spoken in the coastal areas of central and south Bougainville. On the nearby Takuu Atoll a Polynesian language is spoken, Takuu; the Papuan languages are confined to the main island of Bougainville. These include Rotokas, a language with a small inventory of phonemes, Terei, Nasioi, Siwai, Baitsi and several others; these constitute North Bougainville and South Bougainville. None of the languages are spoken by more than 20% of the population, the larger languages such as Nasioi, Korokoro Motuna and Halia are split into dialects that are not always mutually understandable. For general communication most Bougainvilleans use Tok Pisin as a lingua franca, at least in the coastal areas Tok Pisin is learned by children in a bilingual environment.
English and Tok Pisin are the languages of official government. A 2013 U
Nusantara
Nusantara is the Malayo-Polynesian name of Maritime Southeast Asia. It is a Javanese term which means "archipelago" in Old Javanese. In Indonesia it is taken to mean the Indonesian archipelago, while in Malaysia the term has been adopted to mean the Malay archipelago; the word Nusantara is taken from an oath by Gajah Mada in 1336, as written in the Old Javanese Pararaton and Nagarakretagama. Gajah Mada was a powerful military leader and prime minister of Majapahit credited with bringing the empire to its peak of glory. Gajah Mada delivered an oath called Sumpah Palapa, in which he vowed not to eat any food containing spices until he had conquered all of Nusantara under the glory of Majapahit. Today, Indonesian historians believe that the concept of Nusantara as a unified region was not invented by Gajah Mada in 1336. Earlier in 1275, the term Cakravala Mandala Dvipantara is used to describe the Southeast Asian archipelago by Kertanegara of Singhasari. Dvipantara is a Sanskrit word for the "islands in between", making it a synonym to Nusantara as both dvipa and nusa mean "island".
Kertanegara envisioned the union of Southeast Asian maritime kingdoms and polities under Singhasari as a bulwark against the rise of the expansionist Mongol Yuan dynasty in mainland China. Nusantara is a Javanese word. In Javanese, Nusantara means "outer islands", from nūsa, meaning'island' and antara, "within". Based on the Majapahit concept of state, the monarch had power over three areas: Negara Agung, or the Grand State — the core realm of the kingdom where Majapahit formed before becoming an empire; this included the capital city and the surrounding areas where the king exercised his government: the area in and around royal capital of Trowulan, port of Canggu and sections of Brantas River valley near the capital, as well as the mountainous areas south and southeast of the capital, all the way to the Pananggungan and Arjuno-Welirang peaks. The Brantas river valley corridor, connecting the Majapahit Trowulan area to Canggu and the estuarine areas in Kahuripan and Hujung Galuh, is considered to be part of Negara Agung.
Mancanegara, the areas surrounding Negara Agung — this traditionally referred to the Majapahit provinces of East and Central Java ruled by the Bhres, the king's close relatives. This included the rest of Java as well as Bali; these areas were directly obliged to pay annual tributes. Majapahit officials and officers were stationed in these places to regulate their foreign trade activities and collect taxes, but beyond this mancanegara provinces enjoyed substantial autonomy in internal affairs. In periods, overseas provinces which had adopted Javanese culture or possessed significant trading importance were considered mancanegara; the ruler of these provinces was either a willing vassal of the Majapahit king or a regent appointed by the king to rule the region. These realms included Dharmasraya, Pagaruyung and Palembang in Sumatra. Nusantara, areas which did not reflect Javanese culture, but were included as colonies which had to pay annual tribute; this included the vassal kingdoms and colonies in Malay peninsula, Lesser Sunda Islands and Maluku.
These regions enjoyed substantial autonomy and internal freedom, Majapahit officials and military officers were not stationed there. In 1920, Ernest Francois Eugene Douwes Dekker known as Setiabudi, proposed Nusantara as a name for the independent country of Indonesia which did not contain any words etymologically related to the name of India or the Indies; this is the first instance of the term Nusantara appearing after it had been written into Pararaton manuscript. The definition of Nusantara introduced by Setiabudi is different from the 14th century definition of the term. During the Majapahit era, Nusantara described vassal areas, conquered. Setiabudi defined Nusantara as all the Indonesian regions from Sabang to Merauke, without the aggressive connotations of its former imperial usage. Today in Indonesian, Nusantara is synonymous with the Indonesian archipelago or the national territory of Indonesia. In this sense, the term Nusantara excludes Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. In 1967, it has transformed into the concept of Wawasan Nusantara or "archipelagic outlook", which regards the archipelagic realm of Indonesia, the islands and seas surrounding them, as a single unity of several aspects, including political, socio-cultural, economic and defensive unity.
In Malaysia, the term is used to refer to the Malay archipelago or the Malay realm which includes those countries. In the 21st century, Nusantara can be considered the correct term to represent the Malayo-Polynesian region consisting of all the Austronesian nations; the Nusantara Society in Moscow conducts studies on the Nusantara region's history, culture and politics. Irredentism Malayness Bumiputera Pribumi Malay world Malay Archipelago East Indies Malay race Maphilindo Greater Indonesia Nusantara Society Islam Nusantara History of Indonesia Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Network Nanyang Wawasan Nusantara Wacana Nusantara UNESCO: Pararaton Manuscript Gajah Mada article History Nusantara
Papua (province)
Papua is the largest and easternmost province of Indonesia, comprising most of Western New Guinea. It is bordered by the nation of Papua New Guinea to the east, the province of West Papua to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the north, the Arafura Sea to the south. According to the 2010 census by Statistics Indonesia, Papua had a population of 2,833,381, majority of whom are Christians; the province is divided into one city. Its capital and largest city is Jayapura; the province was called Irian Jaya and comprised the entire Western New Guinea until the inauguration of the province of West Papua in 2003. In 2002, Papua adopted its current name and was granted a special autonomous status by the Indonesian legislation. Puncak Jaya is the province's highest mountain as well as the highest point of Indonesia. "Papua" is internationally recognised name for the province. During the Dutch colonial era the region was known as part of "Dutch New Guinea" or "Netherlands New Guinea". Since its annexation in 1969, it became known as "West Irian" or "Irian Barat" until 1973, thereafter renamed "Irian Jaya" by the Suharto administration.
This was the official name until the name "Papua" was adopted in 2002. Today, the indigenous inhabitants of this province prefer to call themselves Papuans; the name "West Papua" was adopted in 1961 by the New Guinea Council until the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority transferred administration to the Republic of Indonesia in 1963. "West Papua" has since been used by Papuans as a self-identifying term by those demanding self-determination, refers to the whole of the Indonesian portion of New Guinea. The other Indonesian province that shares New Guinea, West Irian Jaya, has been renamed as West Papua, or Papua Barat; the entire western New Guinea is referred to as "West Papua" internationally – among networks of international solidarity with the West Papuan independence movement. The province of Papua is governed by a directly elected governor and a regional legislature, People's Representative Council of province of Papua. A government organisation that only exists in Papua is the Papuan People's Council Papuan People's Council), formed by the Indonesian Government in 2005 as a coalition of Papuan tribal chiefs, tasked with arbitration and speaking on behalf of Papuan tribal customs.
Indonesian sovereignty over Papua dates back to 1969, when Indonesia conducted a referendum on the self-determination of the peoples of Papua under an agreement with the United Nations to respect any result. Instead of conducting a democratic referendum amongst the general population, Indonesian security forces forcibly coerced a small number of tribal elders to vote to join Indonesia; the agreement with the UN was nominally upheld, was recognised by the international community in spite of protests. This intensified the independence movement among indigenous West Papuans, deepening the Papua conflict, which began when the Dutch withdrew from the East Indies in 1963; the conflict has continued to the present, with Indonesian security forces being accused of numerous human rights abuses in their suppression of the independence movement. The Indonesian government maintains tight control over the region, barring foreign journalists or rights monitors from entering. In 1999 it was proposed to split the province into three government-controlled sectors, sparking Papuan protests.
In January 2003 President Megawati Sukarnoputri signed an order dividing Papua into three provinces: Central Irian Jaya and West Papua. The formality of installing a local government for Jaraka in Irian Jaya Barat took place in February 2003 and a governor was appointed in November; the creation of this separate Central Irian Jaya Province was blocked by Indonesian courts, who declared it to be unconstitutional and in contravention of the Papua's special autonomy agreement. The previous division into two provinces was allowed to stand as an established fact; the province of Papua is one of three provinces to have obtained special autonomy status, the others being Aceh and West Papua. According to Law 21/2001 on Special Autonomy Status, the provincial government of Papua is provided with authority within all sectors of administration, except for the five strategic areas of foreign affairs and defense, monetary and fiscal affairs and justice; the provincial government is authorised to issue local regulations to further stipulate the implementation of the special autonomy, including regulating the authority of districts and municipalities within the province.
Due to its special autonomy status, Papua province is provided with significant amount of special autonomy funds, which can be used to benefit its indigenous peoples. But the province has low fiscal capacity and it is dependent on unconditional transfers and the above-mentioned special autonomy fund, which accounted for about 55% of total revenues in 2008. After obtaining its special autonomy status, in order to allow the local population access to timber production benefits, the Papuan provincial government issued a number of decrees, enabling: a Timber Logging Permit for Cus
