Sean Williams at Harper’s Magazine:
One morning last November, I boarded a plane from Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, to Buka, the capital of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. A collection of islands and atolls the size of Puerto Rico, Bougainville is located some six hundred miles east of Moresby, across the Solomon Sea. Its southern shore is just three miles from the politically independent Solomon Islands, and its people share a culture, linguistic links, and dark skin tone with their Solomon neighbors. But thanks mostly to European colonizers, who drew the borders, Bougainville is the farthest-flung province of Papua New Guinea, whose lighter-toned inhabitants Bougainvilleans often call “redskins,” betraying a sense of otherness in their own country that partly explains why I am writing about them here.
I say partly because if not for the islands’ having fought a bitter, decade-long war against the Australia-backed Papua New Guinea—which remarkably they won—and demanding Papua New Guinea allow Bougainville’s independence by 2027, the story I am about to tell would likely never have happened, nor would it have piqued the interest of an American magazine.
more here.
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