Katarina did not say how she knew that she had crossed the international border into PNG. She said: ‘We knew we were drawing close to the border. We met a hunter on the road. He said that we were heading to “PNG”. We did not know PNG. At the end of 1979, we reached the border.’ Her journey from the highlands of Irian Jaya to the international border took two years to complete. In contrast, most of the refugees at East Awin were Muyu whose dusun was located within several days’ walking distance from the camp. The location of ‘East Awin’ refers to the PNG census division of the landowning group, the Awin people. The fact that East Awin lay more or less contigious to Muyu traditional land provoked my curiosity: how did Muyu conceive of their settlement in a UNHCR site given the proximity of their traditional land?

Muyu displacement at East Awin was defined by their existence outside their customary land on their Awin neighbours’ land. It was also defined by their location on the far side of a watershed that marked the eastern boundary of Muyu territory. I was introduced to the significance of this particular watershed by an elderly Muyu man at East Awin called Yusuf. A church elder with two wives and an enormous bevy of adult children and grandchildren, Yusuf’s approach to living at East Awin was entirely pragmatic. He had planted sago and coconut palms on his arrival, and at the time of my fieldwork his expansive roof was neatly thatched and his family enjoyed sago.

Yusuf used the Yonggom language term ‘aknim’ to describe the north-south watershed which separates two principal rivers: the Digul River and its tributaries Kao and Muyu, and the Fly River and its tributary Ok Tedi. He mapped aknim by sketching the watershed. Blocking the watershed with coloured Texta, Yusuf drew aknim as interstitial, delineating east and west. He told me that in some parts, particularly towards the south, aknim is barely distinguishable and is marked by signs. Around the periphery of the watershed trees to the west lean to the east, and vice versa. Muyu people routinely travelled from west to east across the aknim in order to hunt in the sparsely populated and abundant region of the Fly River. Traditional communication and trade routes ran west–east, and it was these connections that were more important than those which ran north–south.^[1] At the crest or site of the aknim, travellers would pause to light a fire of leaves that emitted a noise when burned. Made from leaves like cork, and other branches, the fire was said to guard against the risk of sickness when crossing to the other side of the watershed. According to Yusuf, elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis) was common in the Digul area to the west, and quite rare in the area of the Fly River. To the west there was little malaria and to the east it was prevalent, and it was said that people to the west were youthful compared to their eastern counterparts who aged prematurely.

Yusuf also mapped hot and cold states onto west and east. Muyu people living in the western part of their region around the Digul River considered that area to be hot, whereas the area to the east around the Fly River was thought to be cold because of its sparse habitation. Yusuf admitted that his interpretation was subjective: ‘This question of hot and cold is a matter of conviction or belief only, a feeling.’ Using binaries, Yusuf established an agronomic opposition between the west and east of the aknim:

Yusuf also used the east and west banks of the Fly and Ok Tedi rivers as spatial markers of different ecological regions. While the bulge of the Fly River constitutes the thalweg or international boundary, Yusuf constructed east and west in terms of species distribution and landscape. He told me there were no eels to the west of the Fly and Ok Tedi, and substantiated this with a story. In the northern Muyu region where the aknim emerges near the Arem mountains to the west, a Muyu man who was pursued by an attacker fled to the east. He entered the Alice River where his hiding place in a clump of pandanus was revealed to his pursuers by the mep mep call of the white hornbill bird. Upon capture, he assumed the form of an eel. According to Yusuf, eels are only found to the east of the Tedi, Alice and Fly rivers in the Awin region. I was told that if an eel appears in the Muyu region it is considered a sign of bad luck. By way of illustration, an eel may be demanded as part of a compensation payment claimed by relatives or in-laws of a deceased person. The request is made to deliberately burden the family of the accused as the eel is not found locally and its value is higher than a live pig. Yusuf’s second example of ecological distribution pertains to birds. To the west of the Fly, the bird of paradise is golden-yellow, short-bodied and makes the sound kong kong kon. To the east it is dark red and sings ke kokokoko. Yusuf’s third example mentions caves and springs. To the west there are spring-fed streams and vast caves that stretch westward, and to the east there are no springs and streams flow after rain. (Caves to the west were mentioned as places where corpses—victims of the Indonesian military and the OPM—were concealed.)

Unlike the bird of paradise, the afternoon bird is found across the Muyu and Awin regions. In a song titled ‘The edge of the Fly River’, the afternoon bird is depicted as a creature whose call can draw a person’s discontent or grievance to the surface. Muyu people claim the afternoon bird’s song compels the listener to act on a matter that is held or buried in their heart. The meaning and affect of this bird’s call depends on the listener’s location in the moment. The song’s lyrics in the Yonggom language centre around the Fly River which is an approximate eastern boundary of the region conceived as Muyu territory, and occasionally, homeland. In conversation, people talk about crossing the Fly in terms of ‘going inside’ and ‘going outside’. The afternoon bird also delineates inside:outside. Flight has forced Muyu to live outside their own dusun, and it is a source of regret and grievance. The sound of the call of the afternoon bird reminds the listener of their dusun where the same call is heard. In the song, it is a yearning to return to this Muyu homeland that is assumed to be the matter buried in the heart of the exiled Muyu:

Heard at East Awin, the afternoon bird’s song invokes thoughts of a Muyu homeland, and when Muyu think of their homeland place such thoughts invoke the sound of the afternoon bird. Feld has described such a process as a ‘doubly reciprocal motion’: ‘as place is sensed, senses are placed; as place makes sense, senses make place’.^[2] That Muyu possess a ‘sound world’ is suggested by the invocatory powers of bird sound, and other soundful beings. The sound of the afternoon bird heard in Muyu camps at East Awin settlement does not effect a sense of familiarity there. Rather, familiar sounds evoke sentiments of loss at being outside.

Other insects and animals are also said to conjoin the Muyu and Awin regions in an ecological sense. Overlapping sounds can be disorienting as they locate the listener simultaneously in their garden or house at East Awin, and in their homeland dusun. For example, the glass-winged insect known as enet is found in both places, and its constant single pitch synchronises the two locations. At four o’clock, its call signals readiness for people working in their gardens to prepare to return home, at five, the call is repeated and signals the time for women to leave their work and return home carrying garden produce and children, and finally at six, the enet’s third call summons men to return home before the rainforest path becomes completely shadowed in darkness.

Shared seasons like the hatching of tortoises and ripening of breadfruit also synchronise and connect the Awin and Muyu regions. The tortoise season runs like this: in October/November, the hot season causes the lowering of the river’s water level, and tortoises emerge to lay eggs on the river’s sandy edge. In November/December, tortoise eggs begin to hatch. In January/February, the rainy season causes the river to rise and hatchlings swim away on their mother’s back. The breadfruit season follows. In January, the breadfruit tree flowers. Between May and September, the secretion of getah or white sap indicates ripened breadfruit, and harvest commences. Yusuf had observed these seasons to be identical in both regions. The seasons of tortoise and breadfruit, synchronised from Samarai to Sorong (that is, the full length of New Guinea) constitute part of a discourse on New Guinea as a natural island. According to another elderly Muyu man named Viktor, birds that herald the hot and rainy seasons and times of daybreak and nightfall are present from east to west because of the island’s form. Season is identified as a unifying feature of the entire island.

At East Awin, Muyu people are able to read familiar signs because the landscape remains subsumed under a single and familiar Muyu cosmology or scheme of explanation. The presence of birds and animals and other beings that are believed to possess powers of agency comparable to humans are central to Yonggom speakers’ notions of place.^[3] So birds in the Muyu and Awin regions signal the time of day by their calls and movements; the season by their consumption of ripening fruits; the weather by their presence or absence at particular times of the year; as well as misfortune and fortune. Predictions, warnings and indication of opportunities provide Muyu with ‘critical social information’.^[4]

The material above suggests that the Muyu homeland and East Awin both do, and do not, share a ‘material essence’ that might affiliate them as belonging to the same region.^[5] The watershed aknim is physically located to the west of the international border, but some Muyu dusun extend across aknim and the international border, stretching as far as the western bank of the Ok Tedi in PNG. The aknim is mentioned by some Muyu as bounding Muyu territory, but the western and eastern banks of the Ok Tedi River are perhaps a more concrete threshold between Muyu and Awin regions. In the Muyu region, rivers as well as watersheds are fundamental to any delineation of the landscape. What can be said spatially at least, is that Muyu at East Awin find themselves on the far side of the aknim watershed, on the eastern banks of the Ok Tedi and Fly rivers, and on the eastern side of the international border. Species distribution and shared seasons aside, at East Awin, Muyu are ‘outside’ their territory in all of its spatial definitions.

According to Markus, a community health worker at East Awin who had once studied sociology at UNCEN, being outside causes him to feel destitute:

The verb ‘drifting’ expresses inability to determine the direction of one’s journey. Yusuf, Markus and other Muyu, described their flight into PNG in 1984, compelled or forced in a particular direction at a certain moment, and without time to settle affairs or gather possessions. Raids carried out by OPM fighters and Indonesian soldiers forced their flight. The activity of flight was not entirely spontaneous though. Muyu felt disenfranchised by the Indonesian government’s failed promise of development. Extremely low rubber prices controlled by a rubber monopoly (IJ-JDF and its subsidiary P. T. Jodefo) deepened this sentiment among Muyu, and neighbouring Mandobo, Auyu and Mapi peoples.^[6] Muyu felt themselves to be victims of deliberate and categorical neglect. In the early 1980s, the central government’s development programs barely serviced the interior of Irian Jaya which contained 80 per cent of the population,^[7] and military conflicts in rural areas further obstructed development activity.^[8] But Muyu flight into PNG has also been attributed to ‘unrequited reciprocity’.^[9] Muyu did not speak of their treatment by Indonesians in terms of racism, cultural imperialism or ethnocide. Rather, they spoke about Indonesians’ refusal to treat them as equals by establishing reciprocal relations.

The Catholic Church reported that between April 1984 and July 1985 around 9500 Muyu left their village and homes. Of these, about 2000 became internally displaced, and the remainder crossed the border into PNG. The exodus was distinct because of its size, and limited area of origin. Violence in this region catalogued by the Church documents a crescendo at the time of flight, over and above the usual pattern of Indonesian military and OPM attack and counter-attack.^[10] By mid-1985, established villages in the Muyu region in Irian Jaya were deserted, and only a small number of Muyu remained in the closest town of Mindiptana.

OPM supporters were said to have motivated Muyu to leave their villages, promising them a better future and a temporary stay in PNG. But the OPM also perpetrated acts of violence against some villagers. A Muyu woman at East Awin composed a song of lamentation that recalled retaliatory events between the Indonesian military and the OPM that led to the flight of her entire village into PNG in 1984. Known as a tamagop, the song contains a slow, laboured rhythm that can invoke weeping in the listener. It is subject to a repetitive cycle or round, its lines sung: 1/2/3, 2/3, 1/2/3. The song is titled ‘You are strong, I am strong’ and disguises the identity of the Indonesian military (referred to as ‘you’) and the OPM (referred to as ‘I’). The songwriter aligns herself to the OPM, and not the Indonesian military which she positions as ‘Other’ by labelling it ‘you’:

At East Awin, this lamentation was sung at the funerals of Muyu people. It was explained to me that the fighting drove people to flee, and indirectly caused their subsequent suffering and premature death at East Awin.

The physical, social and political circumstances of flight were also invoked in the naming of children. Naming allows the incorporation of individual experiences and incidences of flight into people’s genealogies. Some Muyu children were given a second name drawn from the local language of the child’s parents. It was this second name that sometimes mentioned displacement that made the circumstance of birth difficult. For example, in the Muyu language the name Mitikim refers to a child born in darkness during flight. Kiri or Kirikup signifies a child born during the journey of flight in 1984. Wangu-wangu is the name given to a child born in a temporary or transitory place. Kiriwain recalls unassisted birth in a place far from one’s place of origin, and far from one’s own parents. Benandim recalls the delivery of an infant onto bare ground without so much as material to wrap the child or a string bag in which to carry it. The mother of the girl child Benandim explained her choice of name: ‘When people ask why this daughter has the name Benandim I will explain the destitute circumstances of her birth.’ Benandim’s mother imagined returning to her place of origin, and explaining to her kin and neighbours, her child’s name and the circumstances of birth. Another child was given the name Octaviana, recalling her birth month October and birthplace: ‘October was the month we shifted from the West Papuan side in the direction of Papua New Guinea.’

In some places entire villages fled, in others, only partial populations. Intact families and individuals fled. Some people crossed the border by taking familiar paths already marked by footprints that emerged at Yonggom villages on the eastern side of the border. Others took whatever path they could forge, and emerged randomly. People did not necessarily stay in the village of their arrival. Many travelled on to other villages where they had relatives. Some Muyu were received as kin by their fellow Yonggom speakers, others were not. Most squatted in makeshift camps alongside Yonggom villages on the eastern banks of the Fly River. (Anthropologist Stuart Kirsch used the term ‘Yonggom’ to refer to Yonggom-speaking Muyu as a tactic to counter the PNG government’s perception of Muyu as foreigners in the period of refugee influx.^[11]) The situation was further complicated by the fact that most Muyu wanted to return home. They remained in the border camps out of fear of punishment: from the OPM who wanted to retain a sizeable refugee enclave to attact world attention, and from the Indonesian military who claimed that the OPM had incited flight.

By mid-1987, about 1800 Muyu people had returned to Irian Jaya. Remaining Muyu in border camps were coaxed by the PNG government and UNHCR officials to relocate to East Awin. Despite the enticement of education, health services and rations by the UNHCR, and the severance of aid to border camps, the majority of Muyu people refused to relocate. Instead, they reorganised themselves into several large camps on the border. (In 2004, about 4500 Muyu refugees were living in 10 settlements spread over 150 kilometres in the border region of Western Province.^[12]) Muyu at East Awin explained the refusal of their border counterparts to move as due to a desire to remain close to their dusun, the availability of sago on the border and links with local OPM groups. A history of feuding between Yonggom speakers and Awin was also alluded to:

Yonggom speakers on the PNG side were ambivalent about Muyu refugees. They wanted to help them due to their shared ‘kinship and cultural affinity’, yet they felt anger towards them for exhausting local resources, and feared their potential to cause illness and death through sorcery.^[14] These sentiments are manifest in actions by Yonggom landowners towards Muyu refugees such as the disabling of water tanks, refusal to collaborate in joint initiatives like community schools, and refusal to allocate additional gardening land in spite of barrenness after 15 years of continuous cultivation.^[15]

About 2500 Muyu people were eventually relocated to the UNHCR settlement at East Awin in 1987. It was an uncleared, unserviced site situated in the rainforest some 40 kilometres from the Fly River. At East Awin, the Awin landowners constituted part of the total social field in which Muyu conceived their displacement. Some Muyu felt themselves to be incarcerated at East Awin: bound by rules proscribing hunting activity, mobility and trading rights. Refugees generally were mindful of observing so-called ‘landholder rules’ at East Awin. None could elaborate how these rules were disseminated or policed however. Superficially at least, these rules appear to reflect a profane conservation ethic. But from a landholder viewpoint, the objects of these rules (sago, wild pigs, certain fish and prawns) are enspirited elements in a landscape. These so-called rules could also function—in the minds of Awin landholders and Muyu refugees—to mitigate the risk of ‘desecrating’ other people’s land. Some Muyu elaborated their own rules for living in other people’s dusun which were probably applicable in their own region in Irian Jaya. For example Yakub’s list read:

Other rules mentioned use of the fish stupefying bomb called tubah made from tree-root, the sale of pig meat hunted outside the boundary, the raising of domesticated pigs and the cultivation of gardens. Two types of tubah were made and used at East Awin. One was made from the pounded root of a garden plant which was soaked in water and laid on the water’s surface, making active fish dizzy but not affecting fish concealed in the mud floor. This type of tubah was allowed by the landowners, as was the use of goggles to spear prawns. However, tubah made from the grated root of a certain forest tree was proscribed. Laid on the surface of the water in the dry season when the river runs slowly, the grated root powder kills all fish beneath the surface. People using the grated root powder are meant to inform their downstream neighbours so that they might also gather fish from the water’s surface. Refugees claimed that the landowners had prohibited use of this more potent tubah at East Awin. The use of tubah caused tensions between landowners and refugees, and among refugees themselves. For example, a Kanum woman told me that among her own people, tubah was only used where a person was very old and poor-sighted, and could not see or hold a hand-fishing line, and could not wait a long time for a catch. Only then could tubah be used, and only in a pool, isolated from the river flow.

Muyu at East Awin distinguished wild or forest pig from domestic pig. Tradition prescribed that wild pig meat ought not be sold, but eaten and shared among the hunter’s neighbours. If a hunter used a spell or incantation to capture a wild pig and subsequently sold the meat, his spell’s power would be diminished. Some refugees claimed there were Muyu hunters at East Awin who used a preventative spell enabling them to hunt and sell meat without consequence. In an incident in the marketplace at East Awin in 1995, a landowner announced that the sale of wild meat by refugees was prohibited. Wild meat included pig, kangaroo, cassowary, large fish including catfish, and tortoise. According to the Muyu narrator, because little game remained inside the East Awin boundary, it was assumed that any game sold in the market had probably been hunted outside the camp boundary. According to Yakub, landholders routinely inspected meat sold in the market at East Awin, querying: ‘Where was that animal hunted?’ In 1999, a landholder made a public announcement in the East Awin marketplace that refugees could not sell wild pig meat for more than three kina (in 2000, 1PGK = approx. $US0.4). It was explained that while refugees hunted pigs with their own effort—according them some right of benefit—landholders resented being asked to pay high prices for wild pig grown on their land.

While Muyu possessed their own houses and restricted gardening plots at East Awin, there was no expanse of uncultivated hunting ground or sago forest. Markus explained to me that Muyu farmers felt oppressed living in such a state:

Constricted space caused particular tensions about raising pigs. One camp allowed their pigs to roam freely and they constantly caused damage to the neighbouring camp’s gardens. Warnings and reprisals always followed. When sickness occurred in the pig owner’s village, the garden owners were blamed, for it was known that they held a pre-existing grievance. When a pig is caught inside a person’s garden it may be killed. If the garden owner is angry he may sell the meat, but if he is a reasonable man he will divide the meat with the pig’s owner. The killing of a pig to avenge a damaged garden installs another layer of grievance. Roaming pigs caused other problems. Chickens were eaten by pigs, and young pigs were eaten by domestic dogs. According to a Muyu man whose garden had been destroyed on several occasions by pigs from the neighbouring Dani camp, all of these incidents were a result of space which was both constrained and undefined at East Awin.

Stabling pigs inside camps at East Awin settlement meant the owners were compelled to cart large quantities of cassava from distant gardens, and water from distant streams in order to tend the pigs. In 1996, Muyu people from Atkamba camp collectively fenced an open area inside the camp so that pigs could roam an enclosed space. The fence was completed, but the effort required to cart cassava from distant gardens proved too labour intensive and the project folded. The East Awin administration eventually prohibited the raising of pigs inside the camps. Police distributed notices to each camp outlining the prohibition due to disease risks caused by pigs defecating on village paths, and disputes caused by damaged gardens. Penning pigs in gardens located far from the residential camp was not without difficulty either, as owners were required to make the journey to the garden several times a day for feeding and watering.

Rules relating to cultivation were broadcast from the pulpit by Catholic Church elders to the Muyu congregation. They advised about economical use of garden land:

Less effort was required to open a new garden than to re-clear land that had reverted to kunai grassland. Over-zealous clearing produced quarrels among refugee neighbours. Gardeners who had determined their boundaries but not yet cleared the entire space, often found the unoccupied area appropriated by their neighbours. Outward expansion meant that people were forced to walk longer and longer distances to gather firewood, and to attend their gardens. Building materials such as rattan, hardwood for foundation posts, and nibung palm for flooring and walls, became scarce inside the settlement boundary and people were forced to seek these materials outside. In theory they were meant to compensate the landholders for anything gathered outside. According to Markus, many people assumed that because they would return to their own dusun there was no need to adapt their cultivation practice to the situation at East Awin. But Markus warned against this malaise. He believed that conversion of forest to grassland inside the East Awin boundary could eventually cause famine.

Muyu maintained their connection with their original dusun. From East Awin, fathers mapped dusun in order to familiarise sons born or raised outside, and they named children in a way that identified their dusun rights. Each of these practices anticipated eventual return. Markus had articulated the boundaries, topography and history of his dusun to his son Theo:

Markus said that when his son Theo was mature enough to visit his father’s dusun in Irian Jaya, Markus would advise him to speak with neighbours about their dusun boundaries. Then Markus would quiz Theo about the neighbours’ assertions, and confirm or dispute their claims.

According to Markus, a dying man at East Awin ought to counsel his sons about the division of his property. First, he should advise his sons not to seize another’s land, but to work together and avoid conflict. Second, he should reiterate the boundaries of his dusun, and the boundaries of each son’s portion. Finally, he should map these boundaries mindful of his sons’ lack of familiarity with his dusun:

Some Muyu refugees had appointed dusun caretakers who were accorded certain rights of use. Other families had sent individual members from East Awin back to Irian Jaya to look after their dusun. Since 1984 when Yakub’s entire village fled into PNG, villagers had installed caretakers on dusun that faced the main Waropko–Mindiptana Road. On behalf of absent owners, caretakers had fixed stakes along the road’s edge and built bush houses visible from the road so that the land appeared to be occupied. The Indonesian government considered Yakub’s area to be an optimum transmigration location as it comprised riverflat country: its dark, fertile soil was ideal for cultivating rice, peanuts and fruits. Installing a caretaker was a pragmatic arrangement. One man claimed that if he did not allow right of use or right of care to a male relative living within walking distance of his dusun, then it would revert to overgrown forest. This man allowed his relative to fell sago on the condition that he cleared the area so that a replacement sucker would grow.

Depending on the circumstances, absence from one’s dusun could also diminish a person’s claim to ownership. Yakub used the metaphor of ‘thinning’ to describe the effect of absence on ownership. Inversely, a caretaker’s rights could increase with the passing of time, and he may be reluctant to relinquish his rights in the event of the landholder’s return. Among Muyu, distribution of land rights to non-relatives was flexible, and in the instance of land surplus, usufruct or right of use may be granted to a friend, affine or person from another area. Continued use of land may effect full ownership, but it was more likely that full ownership and lineage membership would be installed in their descendants.^[16] A returning Muyu landholder had lost rights over his ancestral dusun because he had been unsuccessful in reasserting his authority over the caretaker. The relation between caretaker and landholder could also get caught up in political manoeuvring. I heard the story at East Awin of a Muyu refugee who returned to his dusun and proceeded to re-establish his full rights of ownership. The caretaker had reacted by reporting the returnee to the Indonesian military, claiming him to be an OPM member.

Muyu experience of displacement on Awin land is not diminished because of their proximity to their homeland, quite the contrary. From East Awin, Muyu people represent their territory as the western horizon, as though there is nothing further west than Muyu territory. Whenever I was in the company of a Muyu person at sunset or dusk, he or she would gesture in the westward direction of the setting sun with great sadness: ‘O! See how the sun is setting in our place over there.’ Markus told me that at sunset he usually wept a little: ‘It is not just me, it is everyone here. I ask myself: “Why until now have we remained so long in the rainforest when there is no sentiment to stay?” We came to live here without the slightest desire. We are just waiting.’