Following a failed uprising against the Dutch, he was imprisoned before he left Papua in 1949, only once returning in 1950. He became a legislator between 1954 and 1960 and had participated in the Round Table Conference and the New York Agreement. Papare then began criticizing the Indonesian government's actions in Papua throughout the 1960s and was briefly arrested, though he later returned to the legislative body. He died in 1979, and was made a National Hero in 1993.