Aerial roots

This poem was written at the request of Antomina Rumwaropen for a ceremony held on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra, Australia, to mark 40 days after the death of her mother Dina Kayukatui. Antomina left West Papua as a very young woman, and then, because of links to the independence struggle, fled Indonesia as a refugee, first to Holland and then to Vanuatu. She came to Australia in 1989, as a refugee with her extended family. Because of political sensitivities she was unable to return to West Papua before her mother’s death in 1995 in her home village of Ransiki near the Bird’s Head of West Papua. Along with several members of her family, Antomina became an Australian citizen in 1997.