Land tenure in contemporary Keo and in adjacent domains within the district of Ngada shows considerable variation, and there have also been a number of historical changes. Moreover, my study of the origin myths of ’Udi-Worowatu in conjunction with local oral history has convinced me that the region’s land tenure system was never fixed and stable, but has been open to contestation from the beginning. Perhaps the most well-remembered case within living memory that demonstrates this openness is a dramatic conflict between the Worowatu and Witu-Ma’uara villages that occurred in 1937, and is known as léto laka witu. ^[4]

One of the more important historical changes came at the end of the 1950s, when the Indonesian Government introduced a new notion of the ‘village’ (desa) as an administrative unit within the structure of the State, or what locals refer to as ‘new-style villages’ (desa gaya baru). Until Indonesian independence, and for some time thereafter, the Keo men recognised and employed by the Dutch Colonial Administration to serve as local political leaders had invariably been their traditional leaders or ‘lords of the land’ (’ine tana ’ame watu).

The size of different communities’ overall landholdings, and the amount of land accessible to individuals, has always varied greatly from one nua to another. My informants in ’Udi-Worowatu insisted that in other places a certain area of land, perhaps 10 hectares or more, was the informal minimum holding required if a person wanted to be a village leader (Kepala Mere orKepala Gemeente) under the Dutch. Control over extensive landholdings as such, however, was insufficient grounds to make someone a ‘Lord of the Land’ in ’Udi-Worowatu. Locals believe that this office is inherited from a powerful, named founding ancestor.

Taku Nuru was the founding ancestor of Worowatu, and his male-line descendants hold the right to the office of Lord of the Land over the area that includes Worowatu as well as ’Udi, Bedo, Witu and Ma’uara. This claim is supported by an oral history of origin:

The girl Tonga Mbu’e So’a was found as an infant by ’Embu Nderu in So’a, lying on a liana tree (tadi kada). ’Embu Nderu took the girl home and brought her up. When Tonga grew up into a beautiful young lady, she suggested to her adoptive mother, ’Embu Nderu. that they should go to the coast. ’Embu Nderu and Tonga Mbue Soa then moved down to the south coast of Flores through Ma’umbawa. They arrived at Seko Nangge, near ’Ae Tolo and Ma’umbawa. They stayed at the home of ’Embu Paja Wae. Tonga then left for Ma’undai to search for a tree without leaves (do kaju wunu mona). She met Taku Nuru, a local leader from Worowatu under the tree. They married. From that marriage, Tonga Mbue Soa gave birth to Waja ’Ake, Waja De’e and Waja Sébho, who were the grand ancestors of the people in Worowatu and Ma’undai.

The story further claims that from the beginning the Lord of the Land for the whole territory of Worowatu, including the villages Witu and Ma’uara, was always a descendant of Taku Nuru. His descendants claim that he is their founding ancestor. However, another group claims that Taku Nuru came from Koto Mountain and settled in Tudi Wado village before the others arrived. His wife, ’Embu Tonga Mbu’e So’a, is said to have been sent from afar, from outside, from a place called So’a near the town of Bajawa. She met Taku Nuru under ‘a tree without a name and without leaves’ (do kaju ngara mona ne’e wunu mona) in Ma’undai. ^[5] An informant, Jamaludin Husein, a man from Ma’undai, even called them the Adam and Eve of Worowatu.

So’a, as the place of origin of ’Embu Tonga, seems to be referred to in myth but is not linked to any contemporary practices. For example, there is no evidence today to suggest a relationship between the two places (So’a and Worowatu) that may be framed as a wife-giving group (’embu mame) and wife-taking group (’ana weta) relationship. So’a, the home of the progenitor mother of the Worowatu people, is used here as a common place of origin. This seems to fit with a common idea among the Ngadha, that So’a (and Naru) are primeval places where earth and sky used to be connected with a liana tree. Gregory Forth also mentions that throughout the Nage and Keo regions one continually encounters the idea that the present population originally came from So’a, as did important items and traditions such as the areca palm and the practice of palm tapping(Forth 1998: 235-6).

A second issue that would seem relevant to land tenure relates to the question of individual access to agricultural land. With remarkable unanimity of opinion, however, the people of Worowatu and Witu-Ma’uara proclaimed to me that they had few problems with regulating individual access to land. The real problem in contemporary Keo is how to maintain the idea that Worowatu and Witu-Ma’uara share the same land and belong to the same ritual confederacy, given that the creation of new style villages (desa gaya baru) such as ’Udi Worowatu and Witu Romba ’Ua has introduced a new pattern of territorial division and authority and is producing a widening gap between the two traditional groups. The new pattern of land tenure and land cultivation introduced under the administration of the two desa gaya baru seems to be creating a separation of Witu and Ma’uara from Worowatu. The modern administration has also challenged the office of Lord of the Land (who is from Worowatu), prompting a serious decline in his political and ritual authority. ^[6] Before discussing these more recent conflicts, I will first describe traditional perceptions of land among the Keo in more detail.