This paper examines the Trans-Papua road as more than a technical infrastructure project by approaching it as a form of geological power that reorganises land, life, and indigenous space in southern Papua. Drawing on ethnographic research among the Muyu people in Boven Digoel, it argues that infrastructure functions as a spatial and political technology through which the state reconfigures indigenous territories into calculable and governable space.

Using Henri Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of space, the paper shows how the road embodies conceived space shaped by technocratic and developmental logics. This form of space intersects with and disrupts lived space (Bit Ambip), where land is understood as a relational and normative ground of life. For the Muyu, land is not a resource but the “backbone of life,” governed through customary practices and embodied relations.

The term “geological” is used to emphasise land as the ground of life that is continuously lived and contested. Infrastructure not only transforms space but also alters the relations that sustain life.

The construction of the Trans-Papua road reveals a politics of disavowal. The state recognises indigenous presence and land ownership, yet proceeds as if such relations were secondary to development. This disavowal is both ideological and material, evident in altered mobility, shifting subsistence patterns, and the erosion of social and ecological relations.

This paper argues that these processes signal a shift from biopolitical governance toward a necro-landscape in which infrastructure produces slow dispossession and vulnerability. It contributes to debates on commodity frontiers and indigenous governance in Southeast Asia by showing how infrastructure mediates the expansion of economic and political control over land.