The historical vesting of ownership in land by a particular ratu group is denoted by the title mua ho cawaru, which may be translated as ‘lord of the land’. In more formal language, the parallel phrase is: Mua cao vele ocawa :: horo cao vele ocawa (land head skin lord :: gravel head skin lord). [24] This phrase speaks to the Fataluku idea of a conceptual distinction between the ‘body’ of the earth and its ‘skin’ (vele), which is cultivated for staple food crops. The title of ‘lord of the land’, held by a particular ratu group in relation to a defined area of land, is one that confirms and honours their status as founder settlers. Their claims to precedence of origin provide the cultural basis for asserting ownership over tracts of land within their ancestrally defined jurisdiction. Their status is also maintained through their ritual custodianship of spirit forces and entities associated with particular territories (part of the pre-existing tei sphere).
Ideally, the communally inherited land of the ratu may not be sold or alienated. It forms part of the ‘sacred land and sacred garden’ of the group (mua tei ho pala tei). [25] However, marriage and long-term alliance relationships between ratu groups moderate this perspective. Alliance allows for complex sharing arrangements concerning forested swidden garden land that may be sustained over many generations. Fataluku designate marriage alliance relationships with the terms arahopata and tupurrmoko. These metaphors encode a cultural and status asymmetry between affines. The arahopata, the ‘base and post’, represent the symbolically ‘male’ wife-givers and are contrasted with their symbolically ‘female’ wife-takers, or tupurrmoko or ‘little women’. Under Indonesian rule, when many populations were relocated and restricted to cultivating defined areas, practices of temporary use rights to ratu land also developed. These people as newcomers are said to be ‘passengers’ (micani horune) on the land of resident ratu, with limited rights of cultivation for seasonal food crops but without claims to ownership or inheritance.
Preliminary explorations of the forested zone with local claimants to traditional land have revealed something of the scope and character of continuing traditional tenures within the proposed national park. I present them here as two case studies. To my knowledge, there has never been any sustained attempt to map ratu clan land boundaries in Lautem. Their status was formally ignored within state-based administrative regimes of the Indonesian Government and the Portuguese before them. [26] As a result, traditional titles to land reside for the most part in the minds and narrative memories of ratu elders, but they are no less significant or important to the integrity and reputation of the ratu for this.
The first case study is based on several days’ walking in the dense undulating forest around the western foothills of the Paichao Range. The second explores something of the indigenous attachment to land in the Vero River Valley, which lies to the south of the settlement area of Tutuala and drains into the sea to the east of the Paichao Range (see Map 1). The studies illustrate both the reality of population displacement from these areas and the continuing reproduction of symbolic and practical attachment to ancestral country.
Contemporary members of the patrifilial Paichao ratu group currently reside in the hamlet (aldeia) of Malahara, located on the southern shores of the shallow lake, Ira Lalaru. The forested mountains of the Paichao Range border to the south and extend east in a series of forested peaks. The residents of Malahara cultivate the adjacent hillsides with seasonal maize, cassava and secondary food crops. Malahara comprises one of the constituent communities of the village (suco) of Muapitine.
Formerly, the Paichao ratu community lived in and around their historical forest settlement, Veteru (lata paru), some 6km to the south towards the coast. Historically, Veteru formed a distinct administrative hamlet in the village of Muapitine. After the Indonesian occupation of East Timor in 1975, the community of 36 households fled and dispersed, with a small group eventually being resettled in Malahara on land owned by Ponu Ratu. [27] They still live in the settlement but their numbers have dwindled to six households. Nevertheless, they still hope to return home to cultivate their own land if their numbers increase, as their present circumstances preclude inheritance of land cultivated by permission from Ponu Ratu.
I was invited to join a senior member of the ratu and his nephew in visiting ancestral origin sites of Paichao ratu, prompted by their concerns over the proposed establishment of the national park and the uncertainty of future tenure arrangements. With sufficient food and camping supplies, our party of three plus hunting dog left Malahara and followed a track into the nearby forest, passing through a complex of fallowed swidden fields and secure timber garden fences. Entering the forest proper, my guide, Umberto Rakupua, left the path and picked out his own track through the dank undergrowth littered with coralline rubble, negotiating the dense undulating forest terrain with consummate and barefooted ease. Walking under closed canopy forest, my companions pointed out a diverse range of tree species and vines, along with their various practical uses for building, consumption and medicinal purposes. We passed through extensive areas of lowland forest with networks of remnant limestone garden walls and sites of former habitation. As distinctive cultural markers, these intersecting walls provided objective historical evidence of former occupation and land claims; all associated with former members of the Paichao ratu community, according to my guides.
By the late afternoon, in light rain, we reached the first of three historical settlement sites (lata paru) located at high points in the forest and characterised by distinctive and substantial stone-walled fortifications with strategically guarded entrance ways. Although long abandoned as a settlement site, possibly for more than 100 years, the social history of the lata paru of Pariloho ratu (or one version of it) was quite familiar to my guides. According to this view, Pariloho ratu had been granted permission from the original landowner, Paichao ratu, to settle temporarily in the area. Over time, relations had soured between the two groups and Pariloho ratu was pushed out and forced to seek a new settlement site outside the region. Although a number of old graves remain untended in the defensive walled complex, members of the Pariloho ratu are not known to return for ceremonial activities, and the Paichao ratu group has reasserted its ownership over the area.
As night fell, we camped in a spacious limestone rock shelter on the eastern face of the old settlement, a site used by former Falantil and Indonesian Army troops alike. The next morning we walked for another three hours through the forest to the principal origin site for Paichao ratu. Further numerous useful tree and plant species were identified, [28] including a massive Pua ara forest tree, which for generations has housed ‘honey-bee hives’ (wani le: lit. ‘bee house’) with their white wax head (ucu pacu) structures hanging off the upper branches.[29] Beeswax was formerly a lucrative commodity sold by the kilo and recognised as ratu property. [30]
By midday, we arrived at the massive elongated limestone outcrop of Veteru, heavily overgrown with large fig trees (hama) and tangled vines, and barricaded with metre-wide limestone walls. Culturally, Veteru is understood to be a fossilised seagoing stone boat (loiasu matar), which carried the Paichao ratu ancestors to Timor and lodged in the foothills of the Paichao Range. It is oriented on an east-west axis, with the head (cao) of the boat to the east and the tail (irik) to the west. The centrepiece of the lata paru complex is a large double stone grave believed to be that of the first Paichao ratu ancestor and his wife (a woman from Tutuala). Cleaned of invading vegetation, the grave is oriented with its headstone to the east towards the mountain of Paichao (Paichao ili). It forms the key sacrificial site for the group in times of illness and misfortune.
At the time of the Indonesian Army invasion of East Timor in 1975, the Paichao ratu and their resident affines (vaianu) lived in scattered households around the base of Veteru, then classed as an administrative povoção (hamlet) by the Portuguese Colonial Government. Remnant areca and coconut palms still grow scattered among the rubble of abandoned swidden garden walls, but otherwise secondary forest regrowth has obliterated most evidence of prior settlement.
From this vantage point, the forest land of Paichao ratu extends in all directions. To the west is the River Karo’o, the boundary with Reme Latu Loho ratu, whose contemporary members now live in the main settlement of Muapitine near Malahara. [31] To the east is the boundary known as Vekase Vero’o, the border of Tutuala lands and the senior patrifilial owner, Renu Ratu (see following case study). Formerly, on Mt Paichao itself were the traditional lands of another group, Huamai ratu. Their members are said to have all died out and their lands remain unclaimed to the present.
Little more than 500 metres to the west of Veteru on a ridge overlooking a steep slope to the forested stone country of the coastal lowlands lies another abandoned lata paru. Known by the placename Lamira, the old fort was formerly occupied by an allied group known as Kanaluri paca. According to oral tradition, this group fell into enmity with their western neighbours, Reme Latu Loho ratu, from the lata paru Voviara. In the murderous hostilities that ensued, Paichao ratu went to the aid of Kanaluri Paca, but lost two of its members in the fighting. The survivors of the settlement, unable to pay the compensation demanded for the deaths of their allies, agreed to abandon their site and gift their lands to Paichao ratu as payment. They subsequently sought refuge with Serelau ratu on lands near Lake Ira Lalaru where their descendants live today.
From the crumbling ruins of Lamia, our party continued west and then north on a circuitous return route to Malahara. At a certain point, we joined a major footpath that links Malahara to the beach, Vaiara, on the southern coast. This site provides the location for the annual gathering of sea-worms (meci; Eunice virides), which assemble in massive numbers in late February and early March. All households from Malahara reportedly make the trek to the beach on the appointed full moon for this ceremonial harvest of the sea’s bounty (see McWilliam 2003).
The upper reaches of the Vero River lie close to the contemporary settlement area of Tutuala. The single constituent village (suco) of Pitilete comprises four hamlets (aldeia), namely Pitilete, Cailoro, Iyoro and Vero. Extensive areas of dry monsoon forest and fallow swidden gardens surround the settlements, which are located about 400m above the coast with commanding views over the surrounding seas. For the most part, the location of current settlements is an artefact of recent colonial history reflecting, in particular, the dictates of the Indonesian Government and its policy of containing Fataluku populations in closely supervised proximity. This included former residents of the Vero Valley, who were forced to relinquish their swidden fields and tree crops in the lowland forests in favour of concentrated settlements adjacent to the sealed road. Here, their movements were restricted and monitored closely by local government staff and military commanders.
The small hamlet of Vero is a case in point. Staunch supporters of the resistance struggle and the Falantil guerillas who continued a cat and mouse insurgency in the surrounding forests for more than 20 years, most of the households of the hamlet had little opportunity to maintain their swidden gardens on ancestral lands. [32] During this period they gained access and cultivation rights to nearby garden lands from allied local ratu groups, usually strengthened through marriage alliances and the lifelong reciprocal obligations that characterise these relationships. With the achievement of independence, however, residents of Vero are once again considering the possibility of returning to their ancestral country and re-establishing their attachments to the area. [33] While not opposed to the idea of a national park that would incorporate their lands within a conservation zone, many have expressed concern over the future of their inherited rights or resource use and ownership under a new management regime.
My visit to the valley and subsequent insights into its cultural landscape was facilitated by the political leader of Vero hamlet and a patrifilial member of Serelau ratu that maintains entitlements in the Aleara Lafae area of the Vero River Valley. A kilometre or so from the main Vero settlement, Mario dos Santos Loyola cultivates a block of dry-land swidden maize garden with members of his extended family. [34] The southern garden fence marks the contemporary edge of cultivated land and it was from here that we entered the forest proper and joined the well-trodden path that leads down through the hills to the coast. At this point the mouth of the Vero River lies some six kilometres to the south-east, with the dense coastal forest rising into the Paichao mountain range extending into the western distance.
Though evidently drier than the forests of the western Paichao Range, the path descends through dense-canopy forest, broken occasionally with patches of open grassy knolls and fields. In the upper reaches, evidence of former cultivation is less apparent and lends credence to Mario’s claim that there remain extensive areas of old growth-forest. [35] Along the way, he pointed out numerous plant species used for traditional medicine and remedies that people continue to rely on in the absence of alternatives. Like many of his kinsmen, Mario has spent periods of time living in the forests and has a keen eye for edible plants, fruits and leaves. One specimen he described as ‘presidential food’, the leaves of which, eaten raw with fresh coconut, were a preferred forest food of former guerilla leader Xanana Gusmao, during his days secreted in the area.
Although the specifics of Fataluku land and forest tenures to the Vero River Valley require further research and articulation, a general consensus of the broad outline is readily accepted. In this view, the mythic original immigrant settlers of the area arrived in seagoing boats (loiasu) at the mouth of the river. At this location is an ia mari tuliya (ancestral footprint) commemorative site known as Telu’o. [36] Collective sacrificial ceremonies are regularly undertaken at this location, which also still forms the focus for the annual sea-worm (meci) gathering festivals among contemporary descendants affiliated with the site.
The origin ancestors to the area are referred to as two named pairs of ratu: Renu/Paiuru and Marapaki/Keveresi. Mythically, they are distinguished from the time of their ancestral maritime arrivals. After a period of intense feuding, they are said to have divided the land along a common border following the Vero River inland. Over time, other immigrant boats arrived and sought rights of settlement from these founder groups. The subsequent history of the Vero Valley, including its population dynamics, the impact of warfare and marriage alliance has seen the land become consolidated under the authority of a range of ratu groups with defined boundaries and claims, all lying within the historical administrative jurisdiction of Suco Pitilete.
West of the Vero River and extending to the border (Vekase Vero, Ili Mimiraka) [37] with Paichao ratu mentioned earlier, all groups agree that Renu ratu is the senior authority. [38] Renu ratu is referred to as the nalu lafae, the ‘great mother’, by virtue of the continuing marriage of its daughters to in-marrying settler ratu groups (tupurrmoko). This accords them a ‘progenitor’ status for subsidiary groups that maintain received and nested rights to land in this process. In other words, Renu ratu maintains the status of a wife- and life-giving group (arahopata: ‘base and post’) in relation to their subsidiary allies (tupurrmoko). These allies include members of Paiuru ratu, Pae Lopo ratu, Aca Cao ratu, Pai ratu, Tana ratu and Serelau ratu among others, all of whom were allocated settlement rights in the forested hinterland of the western Vero River Valley and maintain connections to former settlements and grave sites in the area. [39]
In the present day, these ancestrally constituted relationships are recalled and reproduced in continuing alliance relationships between descendants of the founding ancestors. Although long displaced from the forested Vero Valley, members of these ratu maintain a vital link to their origins in the narrative histories and emplaced mythologies of settlement, made manifest in the sacred geography of the land. The former fort (pamakolo) and barricaded settlement (a lata paru named Haka Paku Leki) of Renu ratu, situated midway between the sea and the upper reaches of the Paichao Range, is a case in point. Along with the ritual landing site of Telu’o, the former settlement with its ancestral graves provides a key site for the sacrificial enactment of attachment by members of the Renu ratu group. Allied ratu maintain their own sacrificial and culturally significant sites in the area. They include the identification of the mythic ‘fossilised’ boats of immigrant ancestors across the valley, numerous abandoned walled settlement sites (lata paru) and aged cultivars such as coconut and lontar palms, which mark earlier swidden gardens. Upstream from the mouth of the Vero River is the ‘stone boat’ of Marapaki, standing in an area of grassy flats and covered with a tangle of vegetation. Nearby, I was shown the imprint of the ‘boat’ of Serelao ratu, a shallow elongated dry waterhole, marked by a sacrificial post (ete uruha’a) where the ancestral boat was said to have rested before moving higher up to its current position at Alaera Lafae. The subsequent move was prompted, reportedly, because of its overly close proximity to the ‘boat’ of Marapaki. Nevertheless, the site remains a defined location for ritual sacrifice and prayer among members of the ratu owning group. Like its mythic counterparts emplaced across the cultural landscape of the lower Vero, the imprint of the ancestors attests to the continuing cultural connections that contemporary Fataluku people maintain with this area, lying deep within the proposed boundaries of the national park.
For all the intense connections to the lower Vero, however, the forested landscape remains ‘unsettled’ and generally uncultivated, a condition thatappears to have existed for about 50 years since the end of Japanese wartime occupation in 1945 and the reinstatement of Portuguese colonial rule in East Timor. According to local memories, this period saw the displacement, relocation and concentration of Vero Valley farming communities north to the main settlement area of Tututala. Before 1945, the population of the Vero community in the forest is said to have numbered more than 150 households dispersed along the coastal hinterland, and was seeking to be recognised as an autonomous village (suco) in its own right. The depredations of World War II, and the postwar history of East Timor, meant that the population of Vero community suffered demographic decline and still remains less than one-third of its earlier size.
Despite this displacement of the former settled population, the proximity of contemporary settlements in Tututala means that there remains a continuing and comparatively intensive utilisation of resources. Timber and rattan vines, as well as medicinal trees and plants are gathered, and hunting for a wide range of species is undertaken regularly. The use of spears (choro), hunting dogs (iparu), traps and blow-pipes (tutufa) represent the main hunting implements. Favoured forest species include monkeys (lua), deer (vaca), marsupial cuscus (acuru, lo), feral pigs (pai hoto) and bats (maca), along with a range of bird species (olo), freshwater fish (api), prawns, lizards and snakes. All provide a rich and varied supplement to rural diets. In the lower Vero River Valley, I was introduced to my guide’s father’s younger brother (kin term: Palu noko). At the time, he and his wife were busy curing fleshy strips of a large sea turtle (ipitu), which he had caught on the beach and was intending to take back to the settlement for consumption and sale. [40]
The importance of forest fauna is also highlighted in ceremonial practices associated with the dry-season cultivation of maize gardens and associated food crops, the so-called temuru pala (‘eastern gardens’; cultivated from June to early September). As part of the ritual management of cropping and the successful gathering of an abundant yield, maize harvest rituals (cele sakawahine, cele masule and cele sipile) are accompanied by the hunting and shared consumption of ‘forest meat’ along with quantities of locally produced sugar-palm wine (tua piti) and spirits (tua haraki). The collective nature of harvesting with participating family groups means that a significant ‘harvesting’ of local forest species occurs at this time and undoubtedly contributes substantially to rural diets as well as periodic pressures on forest fauna.
For the resident populations of Tututala with ancestral links and attachments to the Vero and Paichao Ranges, the forest and its resources represent a region of abiding socioeconomic value. Simultaneously, an ‘archive of past habitation and sociality’ (Fairhead and Leach 1996: 113) and ‘landscape of memory’ (Hviding and Bayliss-Smith 2000), the forests also form a complex ecological arena for practical resource exploitation and a rich store of arable land, which may yet be brought back into production in the future. Although its potential value as a conservation area of national importance and the location for eco-tourism or bio-research might be appreciated and understood, it is by no means obvious to local Fataluku that these prospects will prove to be consistent with local interests and inherited rights.