However, there is one issue that is still rarely discussed in public – the casual racism experienced by native Papuans in their day-to-day lives.

“I remember I sometimes regretted my decision to study in Java. If only I had known it would be that hurtful, I would have just gone to a university in Sorong,” Norce Herlin Mak Momao, 24, told The Jakarta Post recently.

Like many young Papuans, Norce left Sorong, her homeland, in 2013 and flew to Yogyakarta to go to university there, hoping to benefit from better higher education standards.

It was her first time living far away from her family, but she quickly learned how people tended to look at her and treat her differently because of her appearance or because she was from Papua.

The first few years were the hardest for her, Norce said.

Finding a place to stay, for instance, was unnecessarily difficult. Once, the owner of a rooming house refused to take her in despite a sign advertising a vacancy up front. She was told there were not any rooms available.

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