In ’Udi-Worowatu, the land is considered the mother of the people. This is evident in ritual language discourse about death and in the honorific titles ofadat leaders. In metaphoric ritual language, those who have died are said to have ‘returned to the mother’s womb’ (ta négha tama tuka ’ine) or to be ‘under the soil and the stone’ (ta négha wena tana ’au watu). ^[7] Some informants elaborated further by adding the titles mother (’ine) to the land, and father (’ame) to the stone. The complete ritual speech couplet thus runs as follows: ta négha wena ’ine tana, ta négha ’au ’ame watu, ‘those who are under mother soil and father stone’. The Keo believe that while the physical body may be destroyed, the soul (mae) continues to live, staying forever in the womb of its mother land. Such a belief leads people to make various kinds of offerings (wésa léla) to the ancestral spirits who dwell in their land.

The feeling of awe and respect for the land, as their parent and as a living body, takes shape as a sacred geography. For the ’Udi-Worowatu people, this geography is not limited and extends into the territory of their neighbours, because they tend to represent themselves as being at the centre of a wider universe:

Worowatu ritual leaders tend to extend the idea of a sacred unity of the land to the domains of related neighbours, in Jawawawo, Wuji and Giriwawo villages to the north, on the slope of Mt Koto. At the same time, the southern boundary reaches into the Sawu Sea, to a distance greater than 40 rolls of traditional fishing snare (wundu).

My experience working with the locals and the ritual leaders on opening up the inter-village road from Ma’undai to Giriwawo in 1997, further illustrates the significance of this sacred geography. Locals argued that the new road should not run through the centre of their villages (nua) because each village, with its various cultural monuments and functioning as a ritual site, is a sacred site. Even an abandoned village (nua ’odo), such as Nua Ora, is sacred because there people still find the ritual sites of founding ancestors such as Rangga ’Ame ’Ari. Another sacred site outside the village of Worowatu, which is called Watu Dia Meo (Stone of the Cat’s Cave), is also protected from violation. People also say that the blood of the ancestors has wet the territory. ^[9] When the road construction passed the site, the Worowatu ritual leader, ’Ameka’e Muwa, had to perform a special ritual with chicken blood to wet the stone and ask permission from the ancestral spirits who dwell there.

The following two examples of rituals also illustrate the notion of Worowatu sacred geography. The first has to do with ‘extending the boundaries of someone’s land’ (pi singi rete ra’i). It is considered a criminal action to thus annex another’s property; as well as a negation of, or false claim to parenthood. In order to settle a subsequent boundary dispute, a ritual specialist (’ata madi) recites an oath, witnessed by both parties:

After the oath has been recited, both parties eat the livers of a chicken and a dog while drinking toddy. A false claim to landownership can result in deaths, famine, drought, earthquake and disharmony in the family and society, because the ‘mother land’ (’ine tana) does not stand firm but ‘becomes shaky’. That is also why a pala ritual should be undertaken in the village with the slaughtering of buffaloes at certain times, so the meat will be shared and the blood wet the earth, ‘so that the soil does not shake and the stones do not tremble’.

A second ritual concerns theft. If community leaders cannot identify the thief, an oath of eating soil is undertaken to invite the spirit of ‘mother land’ to be present and to witness. To prove that someone has not stolen something, the suspect has to eat a certain amount of soil, witnessed by the community and a ritual leader. The accused must also recite a particular oath: ^[10]

The religious appreciation of the land’s motherhood in eastern Keo society is distinct from Western or modern Indonesian ideas of land as a privately owned commodity. The ’Udi-Worowatu people believe that their ‘ownership’ of land is intrinsically linked to their mythological knowledge of the ancestors’ places of origin and paths of migration. The paths that have been travelled by their ancestors, for instance, from So’a through Ma’umbawa and Ma’undai or from Paulundu through Ngera, or from Sumbawa through ’Eko Kota and Paga, seem to provide a map of identity. Keo people understand their country and link themselves with specific places. The travels of the ancestral beings, and the power they left at specific locations, bind together those people who claim to be their descendants. This linking of place with mythology in a sacred topogeny provides an important key to understanding why rituals to do with the land are so fundamental to the stability of Keo society.

An incident involving the destruction of a sacrificial post (léto laka) in the village of Witu in 1937 provides a pertinent example. A whole generation from Witu had neglected their past and their topogeny, which resulted in continuing conflict and violence. Another conflict in 1962, between the villages of Ma’uara and Bedo, was also caused by a denial of the past. At that time, the village of Bedo was transferring its cultural monuments from ‘old Bedo’ to ‘new Bedo’, a village now known as Kodinggi. The people of Ma’uara, who used to be members of a traditional alliance, Bedo-Dokarea, refused to be involved in the ritual. They claimed that their ancestor, Tai, was older than Bedo’s ancestor, Seso. That is why they further claimed that the whole ritual should belong to ’Embu Tai (’oda tau ko’o ’Embu Tai). The subsequent dispute over ritual precedence required police involvement to calm down the two parties.

Certification of land is still very rare among the eastern Keo people, and the so called ‘Seri A Letters’ issued by the Indonesian Government nowadays seem to show an appreciation of the past links between ancestors, land and mythology. A ‘Seri A Letter’ indicates that the clan lands belong to a named ancestor or an’embu, and acknowledges the existence of collective land-ownership of clan land among the ’embu’s descendants. The descendants are believed to be the children of the land (’ana tana) and can obtain access to their ancestral land by performing rituals and fulfilling various social-political and religious obligations related to their ‘large house’ (sa’o mere) or ‘source house’ (sa’o pu’u) and to their village life (nua ’oda).