Koreri and the Messianic Imagination: Decolonizing Indigenous Futures in Papua

This paper examines the Koreri movements of the Biak people in Papua as a form of political messianism that imagines indigenous futures. Yet colonial and missionary presented it as a pagan and a “false hope” in which the Biak people lost themselves in an illusory messianic hope. Countering that narrative, this study employs Koreri as an indigenous text and political messianic movement grounded in the Biak contexts and its relational cosmology. Through the lenses of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, George Dei, and Christina Jaimungal's decolonial and indigenous frameworks, this research method offers a critical analysis of the authority of colonial and missionary texts in relation to the oral narratives and interconnectedness cosmology of the Biak people. Hence, the result of this study claims Koreri as an epistemological decolonial movement and resistance, which could therefore be seen as a decolonial attempt to envision and construct possible indigenous futures.