Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the value of land in the central highlands of East Timor and argues that rather than placing the value of the land on agricultural production, the people of this region emphasise the spiritual and ancestral connections to the landscape.

Paper long abstract:

Many of the people living in the central highlands of East Timor were forcibly re-settled during the Indonesian occupation of the country. Since independence, they have started to return to their ancestral lands, despite the fact that these areas are very remote, cut off from water, markets, schools and health facilities. The people say that they become ill if they don't live on their ancestral land. The paper explores the significance of ancestral connections to land and seeks to understand why people move back to places that are so remote and inaccessible. It will argue that the value of land in this region is expressed not in terms of subsistence and agricultural produce, but through the emphasis on the spiritual and ancestral connections to the land. On the one hand, people say that they can appropriate the spiritual energies of the land through ritual and turn them into productive and protective forces. On the other hand, the invisible imprints of death and war have turned places in the landscape into sites of danger. The papers will discuss the value of land as a source of life and death and it will juxtapose official and shared descriptions of particular places with personal and sometimes painful memories of loss and death that have been inscribed into the landscape throughout the past.