An elderly woman on the Papua New Guinea side of the border takes me to see where they are illegally clearing her family’s land. As an excavator works to clear away primary rainforest to build the road, other people, unhappy she is there with a foreigner who has a camera, come to have words with us. I have no idea what is said, but intimidation is in the air. Her family is protesting the building of the road without their consent or receipt of any payment, but it looks like not everyone agrees.

Young Papuan boy plays in the lumber yard among heavy machinery as forklifts take the enormous trees to be loaded onto barges for export overseas.

Logging road outside of Vanimo, Papua New Guinea. The lower portions, originally primary rainforest, are now logged, with some plantations such as cocoa and palm oil moving in. The local politician for the area struck a deal with the logging company, but the community has seen none of the profits. Families are deeply divided as to the best use of the land and resources.

Tribal elder in West Papua who managed to secure his family's land title and have his land returned to him by the Indonesian government. In West Papua resistance is costly. The people who live here - Melanesians and Indonesians alike - live in fear of the Indonesian military and police, who keep an increasingly tight rein on the isolated region. Everyone (including visitors) operates in a climate of fear, never knowing who you can trust and who will report you. Traditional songs have been made illegal. The men only discuss the politics of resistance late at night in smoke-filled huts when they know every person gathered around the fire. With Indonesia’s clear policies to give away land and "breed out" Melanesian bloodlines, many living in West Papua claim there is a silent genocide taking place.

Close to the tipping point, Papuans’ relationship with nature is a part of their spiritual world. As local Greenpeace activist "Ruth" explains it, "It's [connection to nature] a part of our being, it's a part of our life as Melanesians. It's a part of our culture, and we are getting pushed into a situation where we are losing the connection [that] makes us a people."

Once pristine rainforest, this land has been recently clearcut and is waiting for palm oil to be planted.

A young tribal chief (right) schooled in Indonesia returns to his community to lead after his father passed away. The tribe is living in abject poverty, surviving on sweet potatoes. He hopes to make money by using their land for organic shade-grown coffee. The community gathers to sing and socialize in West Papua.

On the border of Indonesia, I stay illegally in the cement and cinder block home (an absolute luxury for here) of the most powerful chief in the area and his family (wife and daughters pictured). Afraid to speak with outsiders for fear of government reprisal, I am left to wait with the women for two days before he grants me an interview.

A remote community hours away from the main town of Vanimo, it used to take several days to walk here on small paths through the forest. Now with the logging road, it takes 5 hrs in a Landcruiser. Living mostly a subsistence farming life this communities land has been illegally logged, a road built through it, their water supply has been polluted with pesticides from the "sustainable" palm oil plantation up the road, and several local girls have become pregnant after encounters with foreign workers.

Although the land is passed down matrilineally, male family members are making deals without the entire family’s approval. While the land has not been released by all of the stakeholders, companies move forward with development. In some communities, the tribe members have essentially become indentured laborers on their own land.

Some clans essentially have become indentured servants on their own land, doing backbreaking work without proper clothing to protect against exposure to pesticides. Most of them live in abject poverty while working their own land for corporations.

Dempta is a major port for palm nut exporting, it is the best-paid gig in town, and the rebel stronghold of West Papua. This shipwreck is stuck reef during poor conditions. The international company that owns the ship is not required to clean it up and it will remain here for generations to come.

In all-consuming heat and treacherous conditions, two workers load thousands of pounds of palm nuts (the raw form of palm oil) into the multi-ton ship hull. Sans safety gear, they are covered in pesticide residue and the greasy (itchy) oil that coats the palm nuts.

Freshly harvested palm oil kernels in the shell.

The Gisim family overlooks what used to be their family's land and is now an industrial palm oil plantation. In 2006, at the age of four, oldest son Manu Gisim was persuaded to "sign a contract" with a thumbprint since he could not write, with PT HIP (an Indonesian Corporation). The contract said if his father died, the next generation released their rights to the land. The contract was upheld in an Indonesian court. While the family tried to preserve areas of forest and erected blockades to stop land clearance, the company bulldozed and cleared more land than agreed. Thus far, none of the benefits promised – such as a house and schooling – have been honored. The boy at the center is now 13 years old and the family is subsistence farming on the edge of the property.