Girl With Gun?

Dani people, 20x10 inches, oil on canvas, 2024

I'm quite pleased with this painting of a Dani woman from the Baliem Valley of Western Papua. The area was once a colony of the Netherlands called Dutch Papua New Guinea. It became part of Indonesia in 1962. Indonesia became independent in 1949 in the aftermath of the Japanese occupying the islands during WWII. I was born in the Netherlands in 1964; Papua was the most fearsome of the Dutch colonies, and when I was young the territory was used by parents to strike fear in the heart of their children. It worked, cannibalism seemed the most gruesome humanity had to offer at the time (my parents didn't teach me that the dropping of the atomic bomb was way scarier.) This woman, mischievously smiling, represents all of that history. What is she hiding? Does she carry a knife behind her back. It reminds me of a painting by Ronald Ophuis Girl With Gun from 2011.