Are there Sepik people in West Papua? Sepik people include all tribes that occupy the area along the Sepik River in the Indonesian Province of Papua and the Papua New Guinean Provinces of Sandaun and East Sepik. To answer this question, it is important to focus on the geographic aspect of New Guinea Island.
Sepik River
Sepik River spans along the area of the two different countries. Because the biggest section of this river is located on the Papua New Guinean side of the island and only a small portion is located on the Indonesian side, there could be two answers to this question.
West Papua as the Entire Indonesian New Guinean Territory
If the term “West Papua” refers to the western part of New Guinea Island, which is also called Western New Guinea or Papua and comprises the entire Indonesian part of the island, there are indeed Sepik people who live in that region. In the easternmost part of the Indonesian province of Papua, especially in the Pegunungan Bintang district, Sepik people live along the bank of the river section that flows through the region.
The headwater is located in New Guinea. The river flows to the northwest, entering the Indonesian territory before making a curve to the northeast and returning to the Papua New Guinean territory, where the rest of the river section continues to meander until it reaches the river mouth in the Broken Water Bay. It is near this small Indonesian curve of the river that the West Papuan Sepik people live.
West Papua as a Province
Are there Sepik people in West Papua Province? If the term “West Papua” refers to the western part of the Island, which makes up the Bird’s Head Peninsula region where the West Papua Province is located, the existence of any Sepik community is very unlikely. If the term refers to this region, the answer for the question would likely be a negation. The information provided by West Papua news further corroborates the fact of the non-existence of Sepik communities in West Papua.
The Sepik Demography
The term Sepik people don’t refer to a homogenous society. Multiple ethnic groups live along the bank of the river, each often with a distinct culture and language. Of all these ethnic groups, the Iatmul people are considered the biggest group and often regarded as the most prominent representative of the Sepik society.
Although the “Iatmul” term was coined by a European anthropologist who once researched the region, making the designation of the name potentially inaccurate, this name has now stuck and is accepted as the designation of the major ethnic group that lives along the bank of the Middle Sepik. Nevertheless, the large Sepik community to which this name is designated rarely uses the name. As a decentralized and heterogeneous group, the Iatmul community rarely uses a single identity, language, and tribal name to represent the entire group.
The entire ethnic group lives deep inside the Central Papua New Guinean territory. This demographic fact further negates the existence of the Sepik community in the westernmost peninsular part of the island.
Sepik Lifestyle
Sepik people, be they highlanders or lowlanders, depend mostly on what the river provides to them. They hunt deep in the New Guinean jungles, cultivate their gardens, perform rituals such as Naven and male scarring, and rely on the water and fishes that the river provides to them.
The people living in the West Papua Province of Indonesia, on the other hand, are mostly fishermen and seafarers. Are there Sepik people in West Papua Province? By looking and the lifestyle of the people living in that province, it is unlikely that there is a Sepik community living in that province.
