Fox has noted there are various social groups in societies throughout eastern Indonesia which can be characterized by what he calls origin groups in that:

… what they claim to share and to celebrate is some form of common derivation. This derivation is socially constructed and may be variously based on the acknowledgement of a common ancestor, a common cult, a common name or set of names, a common place of derivation, and/or a share in a common collection of sacred artefacts (this volume:132).

The Buru noro, composed of Houses, is such a social group, sharing and celebrating a common origin. In this section I describe the configuration of ideas which make up the “origin structure” of a Buru noro.^[4]

Most important in the origin structure of each noro is a moyang. For convenience I gloss this Buru term as “founding ancestor” but it is important to understand how Buru people use the term as there are some significant semantic differences between the Buru meaning of moyang and the English meaning of “ancestor”, as well as between the Buru meaning and the standard Malay or Indonesian meaning of the same form which is in more ways like that of the English term “ancestor”. The English term is based on genealogical criteria and denotes a person at the apex of a genealogical relationship (Keesing 1975:21). On Buru, genealogical links to individuals in the past are recognized (enohon enatin), and can be important at times, but genealogical links are not the basis for an individual’s relationship with his moyang. It is an individual’s affiliation to a particular noro that determines his or her particular moyang.

Moyang are culturally significant for many reasons, one of which is that they are potentially involved in the everyday affairs of living noro members. There are numerous cases on Buru where people change their noro affiliation and “enter” (rogo) a new noro. This occurs most frequently with women through marriage, but there are also various kinds of adoption (cf. B.D. Grimes 1990). When people change their noro affiliation for whatever reason, they acquire the moyang of their new noro who can be pleased or displeased with the conduct of their newly affiliated offspring.

As spirits who have the potential for both blessing and punishing their living noro offspring, moyang are in some ways similar to the spirits of dead noro members (nitu) who can also bless or curse their living kin. And yet moyang and nitu are very different. Nitu are the spirits of very normal humans who have died relatively recently, while moyang were physically present on earth in the remote past, in the founding time of society.

In attempting to grapple with Lao categories of spirits in Fiji, Hocart noted that a class of spirits called vu (which he also referred to as “gods”) had as their chief characteristic “originating”. He also noted “the Fijians are very careful to distinguish between the spirits of the dead and these [vu] gods” (1952:9). While admitting the difficulty of finding an adequate gloss for vu, Hocart referred to them as “founder-gods”. The Buru concept of moyang has many similar features. The chief characteristic of moyang is that they each founded a noro which later divided into various Houses. There are no moyang who are not originators. At the same time, moyang have semi-divine characteristics in that they were not ordinary humans. As founders of society they are known to have performed supernatural deeds having more power than is associated with normal humans.

So while all moyang are founders of noro, each moyang is considered to be unique and to have founded a unique noro. Differentiation is constructed among moyang in several ways, including gender, how they came to be on Buru, and where they became established on Buru. The first of these criteria establishes a moyang as either male or female which may be specified as “father founding ancestor” (ama moyang) or “mother founding ancestor” (ina moyang). While the gender of a specific founding ancestor is always known, there is no social differentiation made between noro on the basis of the gender of their founding ancestor, nor is there any difference in the affiliation rules between noro with male or female founding ancestors.

The second way in which moyang are differentiated is in the manner associated with their appearance on Buru. The founding ancestors of some noro are autochthons who “appeared” (newa) at the headwaters of streams on the island, while the founding ancestors of other noro came to Buru by boat from other islands. This is the case for example with the founding ancestress of the Mual noro, Bokis Raja, who came from the Hoamoal peninsula on Seram to Buru.

Thirdly, each moyang is associated with a unique place on Buru, giving each noro a place of origin. The place where the moyang was first established on the island is called the tean elen which literally means the “place of the planted house pole”. The tean elen of autochthonous moyang is at the specific spring or stream in the mountains where the moyang appeared. The tean elen of a noro with non-autochthonous moyang is the place where the moyang first went after arriving on the island by boat: the stream or river they came to and subsequently planted a house pole. The name of the stream at which a moyang established itself is often given to the noro and referred to as the “ancestral water/stream” (wae moyang) of that particular noro. There is an additional place on the coast associated with non-autochthonous moyang: the place of the “boat disembarkation” (waga enohon). There are ties to this place as well as to the “place of the planted house pole” and the “ancestral stream”, associations of the journey and power of the moyang.

There is a well defined and often large territorial area surrounding the place of origin which belongs to the noro and is divided into portions belonging to each hum lolin. Land rights and hunting rights to the territory are inherited by Houses, and people of other groups must request permission to make gardens or to hunt there. Today there is a far from perfect correlation between the places where people currently reside and their places and territories of origin because of frequent migrations to other parts of the island. Mass sickness and death are the most frequent reasons given for such migrations, some of which have brought people to live at places on the island far from their original tean elen. The important point is that even if people no longer live in their original territory, they still inherit this land and they still control rights to its use because it is part of the origin structure of the House and noro to which they belong.

Near or at the tean elen is a hum sikit or house in which its various heirlooms are stored. Heirlooms typically include ruling cloths, staffs and other objects of noro history. Because migrations have been so frequent and people do not live near their tean elen, these houses have been difficult to keep up. In actual fact, many noro have not had a hum sikit for many years. Hum sikit are never the focus of much activity and many people are rarely at their tean elen, but the idea that each noro should have a hum sikit in which to store the objects of its history is still present on Buru.

Around 1990 one noro rebuilt their hum sikit near their tean elen far in the interior of the island. This involved carrying metal roofing up the mountain several days’ walk to use in the construction. This innovation was not missed by other noro in the area and they also began discussing how to collect money to buy roofing and then construct a “modern” hum sikit for their own noro. The value of metal roofing is in very practical terms the fact that it will outlast thatch roofing for many years and make the hum sikit last many more years before repairs are needed.

The origin structure of a Buru noro also includes names for the noro as well as its Houses. A hum lolin is frequently named after a prominent geographical feature such as a river, stream, tree or rock near the garden house of the “founding father of the House” (tama). Names for noro come from a variety of sources. Sometimes the name of the founding ancestor is reflected in the name. Another naming strategy already mentioned is to make use of the origin place name. The “ancestral stream” (wae moyang) of the Wae Temun noro is a small stream called Wae Temun. The Wa Kolo noro has its origin place at Wa Kolo, an alternate name for the lake (Rana) in the centre of the island.

Each noro has two names: an “inside” name and an “outside” name. The inside name is referred to as the noro name and the outside name is called the fam ^[5] name or the “Indonesian name”. The outside name is used much like a surname when people interact with the Indonesian state, such as when enrolling their children in school, signing legal documents and so on. Non-Buru immigrants and other outsiders are said to only have an outside (fam) name. Because the origin structure of a Buru noro includes both inside and outside names, the lack of an inside name is seen as evidence that these people lack a Buru origin structure and therefore cannot be “people of Buru island” (geb fuk Bururo).

The origin structure of a noro thus includes a founding ancestor, a place of origin called the tean elen where ideally a hum sikit is maintained for storing heirlooms, a traditional territory belonging to each House, and inside and outside names. These origins are not just seen as facts of history, but are relevant to everyday life. People may seek the help and blessing of their moyang in any place, but it is always much more efficacious to ask for blessing at the tean elen. This ideology results in one of the many ways in which people on Buru strive to return to their origins for blessing. If it is deemed necessary, people who have moved away will spend much time, money and effort to return to their tean elen to seek the blessing of their moyang.

The uniqueness of each noro and House is constructed in terms of differences in the salient features of their origin structures. Equally significant, Buru ideas about social hierarchy and equality are also articulated in terms of these origins. In discussing hierarchy in eastern Indonesia, Fox has noted hierarchy is both structured and countered through the use of dual categories. When dual categories structure hierarchy he states:

The hierarchical use of dual categories depends upon the conjunction of two analytic features: recursive complementarity and categorical asymmetry (1989:59).

These two analytic features can be illustrated at precisely the place where hierarchy occurs in Buru society: at the ranking of Houses within a noro and the ranking of same sex siblings within a House. In these cases hierarchy is constructed through the use of the complementary dual categories of elder-younger same-sex sibling terms. These categories are asymmetrical in that the superiority of the elder is always stressed on Buru and reflected in statements such as “an elder [same-sex sibling] (kai) will always be an elder [same-sex sibling] (kai) and must always be treated as such”. These asymmetrical categories are then applied recursively to produce precedence within the noro and House.

Precedence within a House and noro.

This ranking or precedence is fixed. Within a House, it is fixed among same-sex individuals according to the timing of their relative births. Within a noro, it is fixed among Houses according to the timing of their relative establishments. This is often geographically objectified in that a noro is associated with a particular river or stream and the origin place of each House along the river system is known. Elder Houses were always established first, closer to the source of the river and therefore upstream to younger Houses. Precedence thus flows from elder to younger, from upstream to downstream, from the headwaters in the mountains at the centre of the island to the periphery of the island at the coast.

Turning from internal relationships within a noro where precedence is established between Houses and individuals, to external relationships between noro, categorical asymmetry is no longer found. Dual categories exist in the classification of noro, just as they exist in the classification of Houses and individuals, but this time no asymmetrical value is assigned. People in every noro express profound respect for and stress the uniqueness and power associated with their particular founding ancestor, but none of the differences among founding ancestors — their maleness or femaleness, their autochthonous or non-autochthonous origins, their order of appearance — translates into categorical asymmetry. Reflecting the classification of their moyang, people can be called “original people” (geba dengen) or “people who arrived” (geba enadut), but again superior value is assigned to neither category. Difference is constructed, but it does not produce precedence or rank.

This construction of difference and the assignment and non-assignment of superior value to the resulting categories formulates the nature of social relationships on Buru. Within the noro, House relationships are both inalterable and hierarchical. Similarly, within a House every individual knows his or her place in the ranking of generations and the ranking of elder and younger samesex siblings. Of only one person and one House can it be said “There is no one elder.”

Between noro, however, where there is no established precedence, it is possible to avoid relationships of asymmetry. The ideology of “a person replaces a person” (geba gati geba) is the primary operating principle in inter-noro relations and applies equally to the loss of women in marriage as it does to the loss of men in warfare. In warfare “revenge killing” (kalungan) demands that there be an equal number of deaths between two noro. In marriage, the cultural option of “reciprocally exchanged maidens” (emhuka eptukar) allows for the simultaneous exchange of women between two groups. This makes the two noro and Houses simultaneously both “wife-givers” (kori) and “wife-takers” (sanat) to each other and makes two men simultaneously both WB and ZH to each other.

Symmetrical marriage exchanges can occur between two groups at a single point in time through emhuka eptukar, but they also occur over time through the accumulation of bi-directional single marriages. Arrangements involving the marriage of only one bride always necessitates the asymmetry of kori over sanat and of the WB over his ZH in the context of that particular marriage. However, the cumulative effect of bi-directional marriages between noro — both single marriages and emhuka eptukar marriages — allows two noro to see their overall relationship as one of symmetry. Positive relationship between two noro is equated with the symmetry that occurs when “they are WB and ZH to each other” (du wali-dawen). The relationship between men who are “reciprocally both WB and ZH to each other” (wali-tal-dawet) exemplifies Buru ideals of the intimate friendship and equality that can exist between men and social groups in symmetrical relationships.

It is thus the assignment and non-assignment of value to features in the origin structure of noro and Houses that formulates the context for social relations on Buru. There is a perpetual deference to the hierarchy of elders within a House and noro and at the same time a continual striving for equality in relationships with other noro. Hierarchy within the House and noro is fixed and permanent, while equality between noro must continually be achieved and maintained.