79 points bryanrasmussen 1 day ago 7 comments

swiftcoder 1 hour ago | parent

Really cool. I hope they succeed in establishing native rights to the forest before the logging companies make them extinct again.

triyambakam 1 hour ago | parent

I wouldn't be surprised if more such discoveries were found. Papua is, as best as I can describe it, insane.

abanana 1 hour ago | parent

Indeed, it seems the interior of the country is so little-known and so unspoiled by modern civilisation, it would be surprising if we don't have any unexpected discoveries coming out of there in the nearish future.

anon84873628 1 hour ago | parent

Not to get all internet indignant about it, but the island is currently split into two countries thanks to the colonization by Indonesia. Which human rights advocates and indigenous leaders consider to be a systematic ethnic cleansing and cultural erasure of the indigenous Melanesian Papuan population. Along with an ecocide driven by a toxic mix of military occupation, corporate exploitation, and resource extraction.

The situation in West Papua is essentially one of the least recognized humanitarian and ecological tragedies slowly happening right under our noses.

red75prime 47 minutes ago | parent

> cultural erasure of the indigenous Melanesian Papuan population

Old people lamenting how children learn about all those other ways of life? Some cultural isolates do really dumb things.

DoItToMe81 36 minutes ago | parent

The military goes in and splits up their communities by murdering them on behalf of logging and mining companies.

red75prime 21 minutes ago | parent

What it has to do with the "cultural erasure" I quoted specifically? "Who owns the land" is a different problem.