During the 24-year Indonesian occupation of East Timor, thousands of people died, or were killed, in circumstances that did not allow the required death rituals to be performed. Since the nation’s independence, families and communities have invested considerable time, effort and resources in fulfilling their obligations to the dead. These obligations are imbued with urgency because the dead are ascribed agency and can play a benevolent or malevolent role in the lives of the living. These grassroots initiatives run, sometimes critically, in parallel with official programs that seek to transform particular dead bodies into public symbols of heroism, sacrifice and nationhood.
The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste focuses on the dynamic interplay between the potent presence of the dead in everyday life and their symbolic usefulness to the state. It underlines how the dead shape relationships amongst families, communities and the nation-state, and open an important window into – are in fact pivotal to – processes of state and nation formation.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- The Dead, the State, and the People in Timor-Leste
- Introduction
- Martyrs, Ancestors and Heroes: The Multiple Lives of Dead Bodies in Independent Timor-Leste
- Lia Kent and Rui Graça Feijó
- Part I: Ancestors, Martyrs and Heroes
- 1. Ancestors and Martyrs in Timor-Leste
- 2. Remembering the Martyrs of National Liberation in Timor-Leste
- Part II: The Dead in Everyday Life
- 3. Spirits Live Among Us
- Mythology, the Hero’s Journey, and the Supernatural World in a Community in Ataúro
- 4. ‘Sempre la’o ho ita’
- Ancestral Omnipresence and the Protection of the Living in Timor-Leste
- 5. Unfulfilled Peace
- Death and the Limits of Liberalism in Timor-Leste
- 6. The Politics of Loss and Restoration
- Massive Bad Death in the Oecussi Highlands
- 7. Death Across the Border and the Prospects of Improved People to People Relationships
- 8. Working for the Living and the Dead
- Challenges Associated with Personal Identification from Skeletal Remains in Timor-Leste
- Part III: The Dead and the Nation-State
- 9. Remembering the Dead in Post-Independence Timor-Leste
- 10. Gender, Agency and the (In)Visibility of the Dead and the Wounded
- 11. On the Politics of Memory
- Cult of Martyrs, Contested Memories and Social Status
- 12. Gathering the Dead, Imagining the State?
- Examining the Work of Commissions for the Recovery of Human Remains
- 13. Selling Names
- The ‘Material Dimension’ of State Recognition of Martyrs in Timor-Leste
- Index
- List of Figures
- Figure 0.1 Garden of Heroes Cemetery, Metinaro
- Figure 2.1 Nicolau Lobato statue, Dili
- Figure 4.1 Familial grave-site for Knua Baduria, Uatu-Carbau (Viqueque)
- Figure 6.1 Revamped Graves
- Figure 7.1 East Timorese in West Timor carrying bones of family member for reburial in Atabae, Timor-Leste
- Figure 9.1 Santa Cruz commemorations. Banner reads ‘My whole life I gave to the people and beloved land of Timor’
- Figure 10.1 Street Art in Dili by Tony Amaral depicting Rosa Muki Bonaparte Soares, January 2019
- Figure 11.1 Falu Cai’s memorial under construction
- Figure 12.1 Feeding the dead at the Quelicai ossuary
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