Lying to the west of Papua New Guinea and geographically a part of the Australian continent, the territory is almost entirely in the Southern Hemisphere and includes the Biak and Raja Ampat archipelagoes.

The empire engaged in trade relations with western New Guinea, initially taking items like sandalwood and birds-of-paradise in tribute to China, but later making slaves out of the Papuan people.

Don Jorge de Menetes, a sailor from Spain also stopped by in Papua a few years later (1526–1527), he refers to the region as 'Papua', which was mentioned in the diary of Antonio Pigafetta, the clerk for the Magellan voyage.

The most startling discovery took place on 4 August 1938, when Richard Archbold discovered the Grand Valley of the Baliem River, which had 50,000 yet-undiscovered Stone Age farmers living in villages.

With local approval, the United States constructed a headquarters for Gen. Douglas MacArthur at Hollandia (now Jayapura) and over twenty US bases and hospitals intended as a staging point for operations in the Philippines.

Papuan men went into battle to carry the wounded, acted as guides and translators, and provided a great deal of labour, from construction and carpentry to machine shop workers and mechanics.

Papuan men went into battle to carry the wounded, acted as guides and translators, and provided a range of services, from construction work and carpentry to serving as machine shop workers and mechanics.

[84] Simultaneously another separate Indonesian nationalist movement in New Guinea formed when Dr. Sam Ratulangi, was exiled at Serui, along with his six staff by the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration on 5 July 1946.

Still the movement did not disappear in Biak, Stevanus Yoseph together with Petero Jandi, Terianus Simbiak, Honokh Rambrar, Petrus Kaiwai and Hermanus Rumere on 19 March 1948, instigate another revolt.

Following the failure of the Dutch and Indonesians to resolve their differences over West New Guinea during the Dutch-Indonesian Round Table Conference in late 1949, it was decided that the present status quo of the territory would be maintained and then negotiated bilaterally one year after the date of the transfer of sovereignty.

A small western elite developed with a growing political awareness attuned to the idea of independence and close links to neighbouring eastern New Guinea (which was then administered by Australia.

[8][111] However, this risky operation did not eventuate as continuing US efforts to have the Netherlands secretly negotiate the transfer of the territory to Indonesian administration succeeded in creating the "New York Agreement", which was signed on 15 August 1962.

The capital Hollandia was renamed Kota Baru for the transfer to Indonesian administration and on 5 September 1963, West Irian was declared a "quarantine territory" with Foreign Minister Subandrio administering visitor permits.

I lost count of the number of desperate, appealing letters left in my room or hidden in big shells given to me by Papuans so afraid that Indonesia might find out they had communicated with a journalist.

[117] While several international observers including journalists and diplomats criticized the referendum as being rigged, the U.S. and Australia support Indonesia's efforts to secure acceptance in the United Nations for the pro-integration vote.

[133] Following his election in 2014, Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, embarked on reforms intended to alleviate grievances of Native Papuans, such as stopping the transmigration program[134] and starting massive infrastructure spending in Papua, including building Trans-Papua roads network.

[citation needed] The waterways and wetlands of Papua provide habitat for salt and freshwater crocodiles, tree monitors, flying foxes, ospreys, and other animals, while the equatorial glacier fields remain largely unexplored.

[164] Environmental issues include deforestation, the spread of the introduced crab-eating macaque, which now threatens the existence of native species, and discarded copper and gold tailings from the Grasberg mine.

The waterways and wetlands of Papua are also home to salt and freshwater crocodile, tree monitors, flying foxes, osprey, bats and other animals;[172] while the equatorial glacier fields remain largely unexplored.

The island of New Guinea is presently populated by almost a thousand different tribal groups and a near-equivalent number of separate languages, which makes it the most linguistically diverse area in the world.

These original inhabitants first arrived in New Guinea at a time (either side of the Last Glacial Maximum, approx 21,000 years ago) when the island was connected to the Australian continent via a land bridge, forming the landmass of Sahul.

The ancestral Austronesian peoples are believed to have arrived considerably later, approximately 3,500 years ago, as part of a gradual seafaring migration from Southeast Asia, possibly originating in Taiwan.

Human habitation of New Guinea over tens of thousands of years has led to a great deal of diversity, which was further increased by the later arrival of the Austronesians and the more recent history of European and Asian settlement.

[219] A large number of local languages are spoken in the region, and the need for a common lingua franca has been underlined by the centuries-old traditions of inter-group interaction in the form of slave-hunting, adoption, and intermarriage.

[227] In 1863, sponsored by the Dutch colonial government, the Utrecht Mission Society (UZV) started a Christian-based education system as well as regular church services in Western New Guinea.

A major factor in this is the extraordinarily high cost of delivering goods and services to large numbers of isolated communities, in the absence of a developed road or river network (the latter in contrast to Kalimantan) providing access to the interior and the highlands.

On the other hand, government spending and fixed capital investment have both grown, by well over 10 per cent per year, contributing to growth in sectors such as finance, construction, transport and communications, and trade, hotels and restaurants.

[248] Papua has been named as the region with the worst sanitation in Indonesia, garnering a score of 45 while the national average is 75, due to unhealthy lifestyle habits and a lack of clean water.

Inequality based on income and residence levels is stark, demonstrating the importance of integrating equity principles into policy and practice and expanding the coverage of community-based total sanitation programs.

[140] Lack of good healthcare infrastructure is one of the main issues in Papua as of today, especially in the remote regions, as most hospitals that have adequate facilities are only located at major cities and towns.