Timor-Leste: Respect for the Dead - or Disrespect for a Culture?

ETLJB 10 October 2012 - A commentator on East Timor recently wrote an item under the title Better to look after those alive than worry about the remains [of the dead] in which he said that [i]n a poor country like East Timor, there is huge investment in revering remains. In early years after liberation, whole villages might combine and hang tough to save the money for a 'suitable' burial. Coffin making, while giving some employment, was excessive in manufacture and cost, but to suggest less was to invite outrage. Not sure right now that people are wealthier, probably costs are proportionately higher. And a lot of good wood wasted. The writer of these observations clearly has no knowledge of the centrality of the ancestors in East Timorese culture and in the everyday lives of the people and communities. To relegate the efforts and resources put to the reverence of the dead in East Timor to a waste of wood is exceedingly abhorrent. These observations are ignorant, disrespectful and offensive and warrant condemnation and a response. Even a cursory glance at the literature informs us of how important the ancestors are in East Timor. For example, an article on the Mary MacKillop East Timor Mission in East Timor website [1] recites the words of Jose Ramos Horta when he was sworn in as Prime Minister July 2006, who stated: Timorese people are deeply spiritual. Their lives are inspired and influenced by the spirits of the past and supernatural beliefs fused with Christian beliefs. We must not impose modern secularism or Europeanism to disturb the symbiotic relationship of Timorese animist and Christian beliefs. The article on the Mary MacKillop Mission in East Timor website goes on: This symbiosis is shown in the traditional animist practices and beliefs which are still strong in Timor. Prominent among these is ancestor worship, devotion to the souls of the dead. Matebian, second highest peak in Timor, is the Mountain of the Souls of the Dead.

Pre-Christian beliefs in Timor include the concept of lulik, an all-pervading and powerful force, not easily classified by those outside the culture, and one which operates in the lives of many Timorese people even today. Another example of the importance of the ancestors in East Timor is manifest in a recent article published by Fundasaun Mahein and entitled Impunity and Respect for Our Dead? [2] which discusses the problem of impunity for crimes committed during and after the occupation of East Timor by Indonesia. The opening paragraph of that article reads: What do our ancestors think of us? Do they smile with pride, or do they cry with shame? Megaliths are also a manifestation of ancestor worship and are feature of preChristian belief systems in East Timor and parts of Indonesia which have been traced back 6500 years. The following extract which primarily focuses on Sumba but references East Timor as well emphasises the importance of megaliths related to, among other things, funerals for the dead and the maintenance of connections with the deceased ancestors. Customs or traditions that produce large stone artefacts or structures related to ceremonies or funerals are megalithic traditions. These artefacts are related to attempts by the leaders, chiefs, kings, or heads of clans to maintain their reputation and prestige. Societies that uphold megalithic traditions believe that the souls of their dead ancestors still live in the world of the spirits. They also believe that their lives are influenced by the spirits of those dead ancestors as health, safety, fertility, and prosperity of the people are decided by their attitudes towards the dead. Good treatment of their ancestral spirits therefore protects them against all and any kind of danger. Almost all Indonesian and East Timor megaliths are used to maintain closer relationships with the spirit of dead ancestors. Marupu, or worship, of the powerful invisible forces is a prevalent element in a megalithic culture and inseparable in the daily life of many such societies [3]. But the most prominent and obvious example of the centrality of the ancestors in East Timor is the uma lulik itself. David Hicks eloquently describes the process and significance of uma lulik in East Timor in Afterword - Glimpses of Alternatives the Uma Lulik of East Timor. Hicks writes: [T]he construction of uma lulik not only calls for the raw muscle of up to 100 men and women for weeks on end, but also requires the attentions of skilled craftsmen, who devise the buildings architectural form, as well as input from local ritual specialists, whose duty it is to ensure that form and function correspond to ancestralsanctioned fiat. In erecting an uma lulik , traditionally oriented families are acknowledging the authority that their ancestors command and are making a public statement of their own special and distinctive history, one that distinguishes them from other families in their neighborhood.

In addition, the huge amount of labor involved in building such a massive edifice proclaims that the house and its diverse associations is one of the central driving forces in their lives. In this way, the fruit of these labors defiantly reaffirms the commitment of descent groups and families to a past when alternatives to ancestral authority were few, in contrast to the present time when, with villagers well aware of the sceptical attitudes of their more educated fellows toward all things lulik and increasingly familiar with the diversity of values they learn from their encounters with agents of NGOs, they have come to understand that there exist alternatives to traditional beliefs whose premises may differ radically from those bequeathed to them by their ancestors. And so it is with the utmost revulsion that one should come upon the observations referred to at the beginning of this comment and an apology is due from the writer to the East Timorese people whose reverence and respect for the dead transcends his shallow and repugnant conceptualisations of the matter. In the end, what he fails to appreciate is that respecting the dead is in fact a critical aspect of looking after the living. The breathtaking arrogance of such statements is appalling. ----Notes [1] http://www.mmiets.org.au/about/culture/animism.html Accessed 10 October 2012 [2] http://www.fundasaunmahein.org/2012/10/15/impunity-and-respect-for-our-dead/ Accessed 20 October 2012 [3] http://pareraz.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/sumba-megaliths.html Accessed 20 October 2012 [4] http://www.scribd.com/doc/49944272/The-Uma-Lulik-of-East-Timor Accessed 20 October 2012 Author: Warren L. Wright BA (Soc & Anth)/ LLB Photo: Warren L. Wright (c) 2004