Group Leader: Dr Laura Arnold (Australian National University)
With more than 270 languages and ethnic groups, Tanah Papua is an extremely diverse region of Indonesia. Some of the languages spoken in this region belong to the vast Austronesian family, which originated in Taiwan and today stretches from Madagascar through the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and out into the Pacific. However, the majority of the languages are endemic to Papua, and belong to many different unrelated language families. Some languages of the region are language isolates, which means they have no known relatives anywhere else on the planet.
Despite this important and vibrant heritage, we still know comparatively little about the languages and cultures of Tanah Papua. For more than half of the languages, the only record we have is a wordlist, and sometimes even less than this. The cultures are even less documented, with modern ethnographic descriptions available for fewer than a third of the ethnic groups of the region. In addition, as in many other places in Indonesia, a large number of Papuan languages and cultures are today threatened with extinction, as global homogenising forces spread rapidly through the area.
Our research group responds to these urgent issues of underdocumentation and endangerment, by bringing together experts from across Tanah Papua, Indonesia, and the world. We work closely with Indigenous Papuan communities to document, describe, and promote some of their incredibly rich linguistic and cultural diversity. Through our work, we aim to create a permanent record of these unique and valuable traditions and, going forward, to establish a collaborative agenda for policy making. By drawing on the expertise of local groups and state-of-the-art scholarship, we hope to ensure that the linguistic and cultural heritage of Tanah Papua remains sustainable, long into the future.