Negotiating Place: "Indigeneity" in an Independent Timor Leste

• In Event: 130. The Transformation of Religion, Culture and Society in Timor-Leste. Sponsored by the AAS Southeast Asia Council (SEAC)

Abstract

Since 1999, when a UN sponsored referendum triggered the effective independence of Timor Leste from Indonesia, the Government of Timor Leste has been engaged in the task of confirming the state as a ‘geobody’ (Winichakul 1994). Successfully achieving nationhood under a banner of what Anderson (2003) terms ‘aggregated nativeness,’ Timor Leste is Southeast Asia’s newest nation. Yet as Anderson asserts, ‘for the culture of nationalism … survival cannot be enough’ (2003: 184), and as with all other nationalisms, Timor Leste’s nationalist agenda is now engaged in the search for futures. Within this new context, what, we can ask, will survive this ‘new “national” cultural survival?’ In this paper, I examine the extent to which Timor Leste’s trajectory for independence has included the active involvement of indigenous Timorese traditions, practices and priorities in the governance of the new nation. By theorizing these shifting ‘indigenous’ ontologies and examining the ways in which they correspond (or not) to the tensions evident in more internationalized approaches to Indigeneity, I illuminate the socio-political challenge of carving out spaces for plural identities and meaningfully diverse economic futures in Timor Leste.

Author

• Lisa Rebecca Palmer, University of Melbourne