Table of Contents
In terms of most communication theories and common sense, a map is a scientific abstraction of reality. A map merely represents something which already exists objectively ‘there.’ In the history I have described [of Siam], this relationship was reversed. A map anticipated spatial reality, not vice versa. In other words, a map was a model for, rather than a model of, what it purported to represent. Thongchai (1988:110, cited in Anderson 1991:173, my emphasis)
On the most up-to-date maps of the Indonesian Province of Maluku, one will find Buru Island labelled ‘District of Buru Island’ (Kabupaten Pulau Buru). Buru’s attainment of district status in 1999 was the result of several years of effort by delegates in the Provincial Assembly in Ambon. Before this, Buru appeared on maps merely as three ‘subdistricts’ (kecamatan) in the ‘District of Central Maluku’ (Kabupaten Maluku Tengah), governed from the district centre at Masohi on the island of Seram. [1]
The need to update maps of Buru is nothing new. In the 16th century, the island of Buru was claimed by the Sultan of Ternate as one of his ‘dependencies’. By others, it was identified as a ‘vassal’ of Portugal. After the Dutch East Indies Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, hereafter VOC) arrived in the early 17th century and replaced the Portuguese as the predominant European power in the region, the Dutch took advantage of an earlier Portuguese-Ternate alliance to claim their own sovereignty over Buru because it had been ‘land that sat under the crown of Ternate’. Later, in 1824, a colonial law resulted in the division of Buru into regencies (regentschap) as Dutch officials sought to incorporate local political systems into an overarching administration. For the next 100 years the map of Buru again changed repeatedly as the number of regencies declined gradually from 14 to seven.
For centuries foreigners have made claims and drawn maps of Buru as ‘models for’ their political aspirations. From Ternate, Ambon, Jakarta and other places across the sea, notions such as ‘vassal’, ‘dependency’, regentschap, kecamatan (subdistrict), desa (administrative village), and now kabupaten (district), have been mapped onto Buru. The people of Buru, however, have not always embraced these foreign concepts nor the political relationships they imply. In the mid-1980s when I first went to Buru, I was hosted by the late Raja of Regentschap Masarete. One of the first tasks I set for myself was to ascertain what contemporary significance was attributed to the notion of regentschap, and specifically to Regentschap Masarete. A dusty old regentschap map hung respectfully in a subdistrict office in recognition of Buru ‘tradition’ (adat), even though there was no correlation between the regentschap boundaries and the boundaries of the subdistrict map. I did not have to spend long, however, to realise that a territorial concept existed that was far more salient than regentschap, or even kecamatan or desa. It was the Buru concept of fena. This paper discusses how Buru discourses of territory are centred on the concept of fena, and how Buru people draw on this concept from their Austronesian heritage to interact with alternative models for territory that have been mapped onto their island.
Etymologically, fena comes from the Proto-Austronesian word *benua. Blust (1987: 100) proposed the meaning of this proto-term to be ‘an inhabited territory that includes not only the human population and dwellings, but also all plant and animal forms that contribute to the maintenance of the human community’. Like many other cognates of *benua, fena is primarily a territorial concept, and a very useful concept for sharing the land. On Buru, however, the fena is associated so closely with the noro—the Buru origin group or ‘clan’—that the two terms not only imply each other, they can represent each other.
The inhabited or domesticated aspect of fena can be seen clearly in the Buru opposition between fena and mua. Mua is a term used primarily to refer to the vast tropical rainforests that dominate much of the island. When contrasted with fena, mua can also include open grasslands or any other uninhabited, uncultivated space, regardless of whether it would be classified by Western categories as jungle. Thus, the dichotomy of fena versus mua brings out the distinction between domesticated land versus wild or undomesticated land. People use these terms to distinguish, for example, between fafu fena, ‘village or domesticated pigs’ and fafu mua ‘jungle or wild pigs’.
So while fena delineates the sphere of socially or humanly controlled land, the agents who control that land are a particular noro. On the basis of its origin account, each Buru clan is linked to a well-defined ‘place’ or ‘territory’ (neten) and the members of the clan are considered to be ‘custodians of the territory’ (geba neten duan). Such a link exists between every Buru clan and a specific territorial area on the island. These places are well defined by boundaries such as stream beds, rivers, mountain ridges, large rock formations and other topographical features. This relationship between clan and land was described by several different colonial officials who studied land tenure on Buru in the 19th century, carefully noting down the Buru term rah isin fena, ‘land of the fena’ (Willer 1858: 100; Wilken 1875: 12). One wrote:
The ownership of all the lands, from the tops of the mountains to the seaside, belong, thus to the different fena; the Alfuru is very specific about this, when he says, that the fena is neten duan, that is, master of the land. The rights to the land belong to the members of the fena. (De eigendom van all de gronden, van de toppen der bergen tot aan het zeestrand, behoort dus aan de verschillende fenna’s; de Alfoer drukt zich heiromtrent vrij bepaald uit, wanneer hij zegt, dat de fenna is ‘nettin doean’, d. i. heer (eigenaar) van de grond. Het bezit van den grond berust bij de leden der fenna.) (Wilken 1875: 12).
Later on, in the early 20th century, a Dutch missionary-scholar wrote several articles on Buru including one titled Noro en fena op Buru (Schut 1921). He also described the relationship between these two Buru concepts, arguing as we would say now, that noro refers to a kin group or clan, while fena refers to the territory of a clan.
Thus, fena is polysemous and can refer to the ‘territory’ (neten) of a clan, to a settlement of that clan, or to the clan itself. For example, noro Masbait refers unambiguously to the people in the Masbait clan; while fena Masbait can refer to the specific territory linked to the Masbait clan who are considered to be its ‘custodians’ (geba neten duan), to a settlement in which many Masbait clan members reside, or to the people in the Masbait clan. In this final sense, fena is interchangeable with noro.