For decades, Papua has been treated not as a homeland, but as resource warehouse for Jakarta. Ironically distant enough to be ignored, yet close enough to be continuously exploited. For just as long, Papuans have resisted in countless ways, yet the cycle of exploitation persists.
Today, around 1,800 red crosses have been placed by local indigenous communities across their lands. These red crosses serve as a harrowing symbol of resistance and a desperate plea to stop the destruction of their homeland. Through these symbols, indigenous Papuans seek help from God and their ancestors to protect their forests, territories, and entire way of life from being commodified into profits that benefit everyone but themselves.
Red Cross standing with Laudato Si’ poster.
Source: @cypripajudale (Twitter)
However, the reality remains grim: these predatory actors fear neither God nor the ancestors. Operating with absolute impunity, they perceive themselves as too powerful to fear anything except the loss of their profit margins. Thousands of excavators continue to invade these customary lands. In the name of the so-called “national interest” packaged as development, energy security, food security, and economic growth, they systematically destroy the ecosystems that have been home to indigenous communities and wildlife for millennia.
This modern-day domestic subjugation is brilliantly encapsulated through the documentary film “Pig Feast” (Pesta Babi). Without spoiling the narrative, the film briefly yet powerfully shows how colonialism is perpetuated and sustained under different names and justifications.
From the Masterplan for Percepatan dan Perluasan Pembangunan Ekonomi Indonesia (MP3EI) and the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), to contemporary Food Estates and “energy estates” aimed at producing sugarcane-based bioethanol and palm oil-based biosolar, the nomenclature changes, but the core reality remains identical. They all lead to land grabbing, massive deforestation, the forced displacement of indigenous communities from their own lands, and the erasure of cultures and livelihoods that have sustained Papuans for generations.
Colonialism, something we’ve fought against for centuries until we finally declared our independence. Yet as a nation, we barely understand what colonialism truly means. Despite knowing the agony of being oppressed, we continue to inflict it upon our own people. This film highlights the stark reality of internal colonialism, a practice of domination where a colonized population exists within the borders of an independent state.
Colonialism is not merely a historical relic imposed by foreign empires; it thrives today through land domination, displacement, and exploitation carried out by the state against its own marginalized communities, just like what is happening in Papua.
What is perhaps most concerning is that this colonialism is how this internal colonialism is currently being repackaged as a “green” energy transition. When energy colonialism is widely understood by the relations between the Global North and the Global South in the energy transition, resource extraction in the Global South to sustain the EV transition in the Global North, and carbon projects in the Global South to pay off the Global North’s ecological debt–, the exact same colonial logic also operates at the domestic level.
Energy colonialism manifests through systems that reproduce classic colonial notions: forced land acquisition, forced displacement, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of the state and corporations while affected communities bear the existential costs. These colonial patterns are reflected across Indonesia’s energy system, from coal and nickel mining to geothermal development.
Nickel mining by PT Kawei Sejahtera Mining on Kawe Island, West Waigeo District, Raja Ampat, Southwest Papua.
Source: Greenpeace/ Alif R Nouddy Korua
Yet in Papua, these patterns intensify through large-scale land clearing and the militarization surrounding these “development projects” that ultimately function as a tool to suppress indigenous dissent.
A truly just energy transition is supposed to be a collective pathway toward an energy system that is truly sustainable and centered on human well-being. Yet current bioenergy practices remain far from the meaning of “just”. The massive promotion of sugarcane and palm oil plantations as green solutions drives catastrophic deforestation.
The consequences are not only ecological. Beyond the loss of biodiversity and carbon sinks, forests in Papua are inseparable from the lives of indigenous communities who have long depended on them for food, shelter, medicine, and livelihood. As many Papuans describe it, the forest is their “supermarket”, the foundation of everyday life and survival. Destroying the forest means stripping away their capacity to live.
When the status quo relies on a hyper-centralized energy system that perpetuates colonial patterns and resource dependency, the solution is not merely “greener extraction.” We must transform the system altogether by tying energy decentralization to energy decolonialization.
To decentralize is to decolonize. The answer lies in building decentralized, community-based energy systems, whether self-sufficient or supported by the state, where energy infrastructure is shaped around the needs, realities, and ways of life of the local inhabitants.
Energy must cease to be another tool for corporate accumulation, extraction, or displacement. Instead, it must be reclaimed as a collective resource that fosters local autonomy, justice, and a harmonious relationship with the land.
Bibliography:
- Müller, Franziska (2024). Energy Colonialism. Journal of Political Ecology 31(1). 701–717. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5659
- Kohn, Margaret and Kavita Reddy (2024). Colonialism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/colonialism.
- Desta (2026). Neocolonialism, Postcolonialism and Decolonialism. https://www.dekolonialestadtfuehrung.de/en/2024/12/neocolonialism-postcolonialism-and-decolonialism/.
