Who Owns Kokoda?

How a Sacred Wartime Trail Became a Battleground of Narratives

(By Kora / Direction and editing: Glenn Armstrong)

Kokoda is many things at once: a battlefield, a pilgrimage, a national symbol, a shared wound, a shared pride.

For Papua New Guinea, it is the memory of villages, carriers, courageous families who sheltered soldiers, and the landscape that shaped history.

For Australia, it is the legend of courage, endurance, sacrifice, and mateship - as is carved in granite on the four pillars of the Isurava memorial.

But today, Kokoda is also something else — something less organic. It has become a contested narrative space, tensed between history, tourism, development funding, political symbolism, and competing interpretations of what the trail should “mean”.

Slowly, quietly, and often without public debate, Kokoda has been reframed by external actors — including aid contractors, NGOs, policy think-tanks, and government programs — into something far broader than the wartime story itself.

Development agendas now sprout from the Kokoda brand like roots from an overwatered tree. 

A development-industrial-complex has grown around Kokoda, driven by funding opportunities, consultant agendas, and external policy priorities.

This is classic in places where symbolism is strong and donor interest is high.

When a place becomes a “platform”, it loses its core meaning.

Kokoda has become:

• a tourism product,

• a development platform,

• a job creation mechanism,

• a policy showcase,

• a cross-cultural project space,

• a funding opportunity.

But in doing so, its historical identity becomes diluted.

Another way to say it:

Kokoda has become a tree, and every donor wants to hang their own fruit on it.

This is not unique to PNG — but Kokoda is one of the clearest examples in the Pacific.

The “Kokoda Tree” — When a Historical Symbol Becomes a Development Platform

Below is a visual text diagram that captures the phenomenon:

🌿 The Kokoda Tree: how development agendas have grown from a wartime symbol

Here is the visual Kokoda Tree showing how new offshoots have grown around the historic stem, with aid contractors feeding at the roots:


This is the essence of what has happened — Kokoda is now a “development platform”, not just a historical trail.


Each branch represents a well-intentioned but externally added agenda.


None are inherently wrong. But none are Kokoda’s original story.

This is what we call development creep — when a place becomes a platform for every donor-friendly issue. 

And Kokoda, with its emotional weight and political accessibility, has become one of the most attractive platforms in the Pacific.

From ‘Mateship’ to ‘Friendship’: The Quiet Rewrite of Meaning

Nothing illustrates this shift more starkly than the attempt to replace the word “mateship” with “friendship” in official Kokoda messaging, back in 2017.

“Mateship” is distinctly Australian — but it is part of Kokoda’s historical DNA.

It reflects the wartime reality between Australians and the people of Papua: trust, loyalty, interdependence, shared struggle.

Swapping it for “friendship” was not an innocent choice.

It was an attempt to reframe Kokoda in neutral, modern, donor-friendly language — stripping away cultural specificity to make the Trail “fit” into contemporary development narratives.

This is how heritage gets diluted: not through conflict, but through editing.

The Question No One Asks: Who Actually Owns Kokoda?

Is it owned by:

  • Australia, for whom the Trail is a pillar of national identity?

  • PNG, whose land, people, and ancestors lived the reality?

  • The trekking industry?

  • The villages who depend on trekking revenue?

  • The donors (including Australian taxpayers) who are funding development projects?

  • Or the consultants and contractors living off and shaping policy around it?

In truth:

Kokoda should be owned by the people whose ancestors walked it — not the institutions who discovered it later.

Australia has a moral and historical stake.

PNG has the land, lineage, and cultural authority.

But neither government — nor any foreign development contractor — should redefine the Trail’s meaning without deep local consensus.

The Cost of “Reframing” Kokoda

When Kokoda becomes a catch-all policy platform:

  • Historical nuance is lost

  • Local custodians lose authority

  • The wartime story is simplified

  • Cultural ownership becomes blurred

  • And the Trail shifts from sacred memory to bureaucratic asset

Most troubling is how easily global development language — gender equity, capacity building, community resilience, governance strengthening — can overshadow the profound, emotional, human legacy of a nation-changing battle.

Kokoda deserves more than being repackaged as a development product.

Returning Kokoda to the People Who Carry Its Memory

This is not an argument against development, nor against partnerships.

It is simply a call for clarity:

  • Let Kokoda’s core identity remain historical, cultural, and human.

  • Let other agendas exist, but not dominate.

  • Let PNG voices and historians guide the narrative.

And let the world engage with Kokoda for what it truly is — not what funding cycles want it to be.

Because the answer to “Who owns Kokoda?” is ultimately this:

Those who walked it, those who bled on it, those whose families lived it — and those who still carry its story today. 


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