ABSTRACT
This volume defines Melanesia as encompassing the independent Pacific states of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, France’s territory New Caledonia, the Torres Strait Islands of Australia, and West Papua (which consists of the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua). By some accounts, Melanesia is a far-flung cultural area extending from the south-west Pacific, and into eastern Indonesia. In order to bolster its claim to the western half of the island of New Guinea, the Indonesian government has for years claimed that its provinces of Maluku, North Maluku and East Nusa Tenggara – together with Papua and West Papua, the two Indonesian provinces in western New Guinea – are as Melanesian as anything in the Pacific. Indeed, by this reckoning, Indonesia is home to 11 million Melanesians, a population greater than all the Melanesians normally counted east of the Indonesia/PNG border and the inclusion of West Papua is therefore unremarkable. To engage in these definitional debates is to be reminded of the arbitrariness of the label applied to the Melanesian region and its diverse peoples.
