Since it began circulating publicly in April 2026, the documentary Pig Feast: Colonialism in Our Time, about development projects in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua, has sparked intense discussion — and resistance — across the country.
Screenings planned in several cities were questioned, postponed, or abruptly canceled. Organizers reported pressure from security officials, ranging from informal summonses and “clarification requests” to warnings that the film was “sensitive” and could disrupt public order.
The controversy extended beyond civil society into Catholic institutional spaces. At a pastoral center in Yogyakarta, a proposed screening was challenged on the grounds that the film was too political and risked straining relations with the state.
Yet attempts to block the documentary only amplified its reach. Pig Feast has since been screened widely through grassroots initiatives organized by Catholic students, schools, Indigenous networks, women’s collectives, and environmental activists — in campuses, coffee shops, village halls, and informal church spaces.
The film’s resonance has also crossed borders. Screenings and discussions in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Europe, and across the Pacific have drawn attention from church networks, academics, and human rights advocates. As of May 2, organizers recorded 1,734 screening requests, with re-screenings continuing to multiply.
Beyond the controversy over its circulation, Pig Feast poses a deeper moral question for Indonesia — and particularly for the Catholic Church: At what point does “development” cease to serve human dignity and begin to resemble a renewed form of domination?
Directed by investigative journalist Dandhy Dwi Laksono and social anthropologist Cypri Jehan Paju Dale, who has spent more than two decades researching Papua, the film is the result of collaboration among Watchdoc Documentary, Jubi Media, Greenpeace Indonesia, Pusaka Bentala Rakyat, Ekspedisi Indonesia Baru, and the Merauke Legal Aid Institute. Papuan journalists and researchers played a central role in field reporting and community engagement.
As an investigative documentary, the film enters one of Indonesia’s most sensitive debates. For a nation forged through an anticolonial struggle, the suggestion that contemporary state policies might reproduce colonial patterns is deeply unsettling. Colonialism, in Indonesia’s dominant narrative, is treated as a closed historical chapter linked solely to Dutch rule.
Pig Feast disrupts this assumption not through abstract accusation, but by documenting how power operates today — through land governance, state-corporate alliances, weakened public participation, and increasing militarization.
Rather than framing Papua primarily as a security problem, as official discourse often does, the film places land at the center of its analysis: who controls it, who profits from it, and who is displaced in the name of national interest.
The name “Pig Feast” refers to an important customary ritual in many Papuan communities, where pigs — animals of high social, economic, and symbolic value — are slaughtered and shared collectively to mark major events such as reconciliation, mourning, or communal celebration. In the film, this meaning is critically inverted: land, forests, and Indigenous lives are treated as the “feast” in a grand development banquet, consumed by the state and corporations while Indigenous communities bear the loss.
The documentary traces present-day policies to a longer trajectory of land exploitation in Papua, dating back at least to the opening of a large-scale gold mine in Timika in the late 1960s. What has changed, the film suggests, is not the extractive logic itself but its scale, speed, and institutional sophistication.
Under Indonesia’s National Strategic Projects framework, massive food and energy projects are being driven into southern Papua, particularly Merauke. These include industrial food estates and bioethanol sugarcane plantations targeting the conversion of millions of hectares of forest and customary Indigenous land.
Independent monitoring cited in the film documents recurring patterns: land dispossession, environmental degradation, the absence of free, prior, and informed consent, and the growing presence of armed security forces. Although the projects are officially framed as development, they often operate as a regime of exception, where human rights and environmental safeguards are subordinated to investment priorities.
The film shows how these projects function through close partnerships between the state and corporations linked to Indonesia’s oligarchic elite. While companies gain privileged access to land, permits, and security protection, Indigenous communities defending ancestral territories face intimidation or criminalization.
Papua, the film insists, is not an anomaly — it is an extreme manifestation of a national pattern intensified by long-standing conflict and militarization.
One of the film’s most striking contributions is its portrayal of faith-based Indigenous resistance. It documents the emergence of the Red Cross Movement, in which Papuan Catholic laypeople erect or carry red-painted crosses in areas threatened by state-backed projects.
In powerful scenes, communities erect large wooden beams as red crosses in forests marked for clearance. These are not decorative symbols. They mark mourning and moral resistance.
Faith becomes a political language. Land conflict is framed not as a technical dispute but as a matter of life and death, justice and structural sin. Forests and land are treated not as commodities but as part of God’s creation.
For Indigenous Papuan Catholics, the film shows that defending land is inseparable from defending relationships — with ancestors, neighbors, and God. Resistance is expressed through prayer, ritual, and symbolism rather than violence. The red cross becomes a moral appeal addressed simultaneously to the state and to the Church.
Precisely because this resistance is rooted in Catholic faith, Pig Feast exposes a painful internal tension within the Church itself. Conflict unfolds not only between the state and Indigenous communities, but also between Catholic lay communities and Church authorities.
The film and subsequent discussions highlight divisions surrounding the Merauke food estate project. Public support expressed by Archbishop Petrus Canisius Mandagi — framed in humanitarian development terms — has been interpreted by many Indigenous Catholics as an endorsement of land dispossession and ecological destruction.
These critiques do not arise from anti-Church sentiment. They are grounded in Catholic social teaching, particularly Laudato Si’, which insists that ecological destruction and injustice toward the poor are inseparable. From this perspective, projects that destroy ancestral forests cannot be justified by development rhetoric alone.
Pig Feast also records incidents in which peaceful faith-based protests — red cross displays and prayer gatherings — were forcibly dispersed. Some Catholics reported intimidation and detention even within church grounds. Such moments raise difficult questions about pastoral accompaniment as the Church navigates pressure from state power and capital.
Ultimately, Pig Feast functions as a mirror. It challenges the Indonesian state to confront whether its development model reproduces colonial relations under a new name. It also challenges the Catholic Church to reflect on its prophetic mission in contexts of structural injustice.
The film warns of the cost when ecclesial institutions align too closely with national development agendas: the erosion of moral credibility and the loss of trust among the faithful.
At the same time, the Red Cross Movement signals something significant. Lay Catholics — particularly Indigenous women and young people — are reclaiming moral and theological authority to speak when life and creation are threatened.
For Indonesia, and for the church, the central question raised by Pig Feast is no longer whether development will continue, but at what human cost — and where moral responsibility will ultimately reside when dignity, land, and creation itself are at stake.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
Football West has hosted members of the Papua Football Academy from Indonesia on an eleven-day exchange visit to Perth, marking a significant step in the governing body’s Asian Engagement Strategy and demonstrating football’s capacity to build meaningful cross-cultural relationships across the region.
Supported by the WA Government, the visit brought 60 players aged 13 to 15 from across Papua province to train alongside Football West Academy players and local clubs, including Perth Azzurri and Perth Glory. The group also attended A-League and New Balance NPL WA matches, toured Optus Stadium, visited the WA Institute of Sport, ECU Joondalup and John Curtin College of Arts, and met with the Indonesian Consulate General in Perth.
“Football West is committed to leading football diplomacy in the region, and this program is a great example of football’s power to connect people, build relationships and create genuine pathways,” said Football West Asian Engagement Advisor Robbie Gaspar. “It’s all about the people-to-people connections”.
Leading initiatives
Established in 2022 through a partnership between PT Freeport Indonesia and the Football Association of Indonesia, the Papua Football Academy provides high-performance training, education and welfare support for talented young players from one of Indonesia’s most geographically remote provinces. The program has quickly become one of Indonesia’s leading youth development initiatives, with ambitions to build international connections through training camps, matches and partnerships.
Papua Football Academy Director Wolfgang Pikal said the visit had provided his players and coaches with a standard of facilities and competition exposure unavailable at home. “We have nothing like this in Papua,” he said. “It has allowed the coaches to learn something new and for the kids to measure themselves against young players in Perth.”
Pikal flagged hopes of placing two or three players in Perth competitions in the future as the partnership develops.
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