I used to watch https://www.youtube.com/@MissionaryBushPilot deliver stuff around PNG in a Kodiak. If you're into aviation, the videos are golden

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walrus01 4 hours ago | parent [-]

On the other hand, the MAF is a highly questionable organization that exists specifically to convert the local people away from their own belief systems into whatever brand of evangelical Christianity its supporters are peddling. There's plenty of bush plane videos from Alaska, Nunavut and other challenging places in the world from ordinary small commercial bush plane operators.

It's morally indefensible in my opinion for a bunch of random people from many thousands of km away to go off to some pre-technology rural villagers' home territory and basically say "everything you believe is wrong, here's our god, you must follow and believe in him or you're going to hell".

If people want to go do bush plane things in remote areas and work in very challenging environments as weird foreigners, there's plenty of ways to justify that in the form of a secular NGO (something like Medecins Sans Frontiers) without combining it with missionary work.

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desterothx 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If there is no funding for helping the people coming from the non evangelical sources, i'm sure the people would rather have medicine than keep dying, no matter the indoctrination they receive

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ShinyLeftPad 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are they actually violently forcing anyone though, like Russians did in Siberia etc?

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hermitcrab an hour ago | parent [-]

Probably not, but there is a massive imbalance of power between white missionaries with the trappings of the modern world and indigenous people.

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ShinyLeftPad 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Do you see diversity of cultures with different levels of development on the planet as a problem? Because as long as it exists there will be the imbalance

	▲	hermitcrab 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>Do you see diversity of cultures with different levels of development on the planet as a problem? When a more 'advanced' group use their wealth, technology, medicine etc to control a less developed group - yes that can be a problem.

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papua_is_being_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> On the other hand, the MAF is a highly questionable organization that exists specifically to convert the local people away from their own belief

At this stage in the ecocide and genocide of West Papua, any eyes are welcome no matter what their biases. If they want to convert people to their belief system, honestly I couldn't care right now as long as they protect the indigenous West Papuans from being genocided by Prabowo and his cronies and the beautiful ecology of the island from being ecocided.