modernization is not beautiful to watch up close

Freeport Indonesia’s activities are just one facet of the broad encroachment of modern civilization on virtually all of the primitive societies of Irian Jaya and, indeed, the world. The consequences are often profound and disturbing. Shortly before he disappeared off the coast of New Guinea in 1961, Michael Rockefeller wrote to his parents about his impressions of the Asmat, a remote tribe living a hundred miles down the south coast from kokonao in the vicinity of the town of Agats:

The Asmat is filled with a kind of tragedy. For many of the villages have reached that point where they are beginning to doubt their own culture and crave things Western. There is everywhere a depressing respect for the white man’s shirt and pants, no matter how tattered and dirty, even though these doubtful symbols of another world seem to hide a proud form and replace a far finer… form of dress… The West thinks in terms of bringing advance and opportunity to such a place. In actuality we bring a cultural bankruptcy that will last for many years… There are no minerals; and not a single cash crop that will grow successfully. Nonetheless, the Asmat like every other corner of the world is being sucked into a world economy and a world culture which insists on economic plenty as a primary ideal.

Even if it were possible, though, there are many grounds for questioning to what extent the local villagers’ way of living should be preserved like that of some endangered species in a wildlife refuge. “Their infant mortality is close to 50%,” says Wyn Coates. “Their food supply is terrible and there is wide malnutrition. Their average lifespan is 35. They are 99% illiterate. Are those the sorts of things you think ought to be preserved?” Many aspects of life in local villages, certainly, are valuable. However, Coates says, “It is hard to change certain things while preserving other things. When you change one thing everything else changes also.” One cannot raise a village’s standard of living by improving nutrition, increasing literacy, teaching residents specialized skills, and helping them organize productive enterprises without upsetting the village’s traditional social and economic structures. “Modernization is not beautiful to watch up close,” Coates sums up. “It is an unsettling, disruptive process.” But for the tribal people of the Irian Jaya mountains, the process, sooner or later, is inevitable.



The Conquest of Copper Mountain by Forbes Wilson. Antheneum. 1981. p.222-224