La diversidad disciplinaria de los estudios en comunicación

East Timorese have multiple layers of national and localised cultures defined by geographical boundaries, and common ancestral and ethno-linguistic heritage. Da Silva (2006, p.1)

elaborates: “Being East Timorese means both belonging to a nation and also to a locality”. Indigenous social, economic and cultural life in Timor-Leste is constructed around complex physical and temporal systems of uma lulik that unite seemingly antagonistic or opposing/binary principles. Babo-Soares (2003), Bovensiepen (2014b), Brown (2009), da Silva (2006), Fox (2000a), Hicks (2004; 2008), McWilliam (2005; 2007a), Traube (1986; 2001; 2011), and

Trindade (2006; 2012; 2014) all stress the physical and metaphorical importance of the uma lulik across Timor-Leste.

Uma lulik are the basis for identity in Timor-Leste, they are the central physical repositories of memory and culture, embody and localise all social relationships and ritual exchanges between people, and provide structure for all Indigenous East Timorese governance, judicial

mechanisms, leadership, decision-making and conflict transformation processes. Uma lulik are the “fundamental epistemological orientation” of Indigenous East Timorese society and governance and are the basis for relational systems of social and moral order (Fox cited in McWilliam, 2005, p.32). Hicks (2008, p.167) highlights that uma lulik are not merely “ritual artefacts”, but “objects engaged in continuous dialectic relationships with the human beings they serve”.Babo-Soares (2003, p.39) cites a lia-nain (Tetum: owner of words, spokesperson, responsible for ritual authority and moral behaviour) describing the importance of uma lulik:

“We, human beings should know our house and our siblings. Those who do not know these do not know their roots. If people do not know their roots, they do not know their future; people of this kind live as an animal, no origins - no future. The East Timorese also say 'ran ida be mai housi hun' (Tetum: the blood inherited from the source), a reference to one's origin, identifying someone to a clan due to the blood inherited from their lineage”.

Each uma lulik is hierarchically ordered in sequence from the oldest to youngest ancestor who settled that land and provided it with security and fertility (Hohe & Nixon, 2003, p.14). The

uma lulik contains the origins of the sacred ancestors, identified through use of sasan lulik

(Tetum: ancient relics) and oral histories, and ritually remembered, reaffirmed and respected through ceremonies and rituals that unify and bind family members to the specific geographic territory of the uma lulik (Trindade & Castro, 2007, pp.19-20). Sasan lulik allow East Timorese to acknowledge, relate to and position themselves appropriately to the past–the dead, the ancestors–and the future through the marriage ceremonies. Marriage ceremonies create and reaffirm a web of gendered relationships and peaceful alliances to form continuously larger social units to extend the family into the future (this matter is discussed in the section below on relationships).

Architecturally there is great variety in uma lulik across Timor-Leste; they differ regarding their orientation, structure, construction techniques, materials and symbolic properties. Like other nearby Indigenous South-East Asian communities, these sacred structures, while different, share “common properties and cultural concerns” within which “configuration of space and structural elements is encoded a rich cosmological and cultural system of meanings connected with ideas of life, death and gendered symbolism” (McWilliam, 2005, pp.29-30). For example, Traube (1986, p.140) describes the Mambai uma lulik as “polysemous”, where each built structure

symbolises the complexity and multiple layers of the gendered human body and geographic landscapes to form social and physical enclosures that both divide and unify.

During, but particularly at the end of Indonesian occupation in 1999, uma lulik were burnt by militias and the Indonesian military. They were viewed as a central symbol of resistance and cultural resilience (Bovensiepen, 2011; Brown & Gusmão, 2009, p.4; McWilliam 2005; 2007a; 2007b; Trindade & Castro 2007: p.20). Indeed, McWilliam (2005; 2007a; 2007b) and Taylor (1991) place the reason for Indonesia’s failure directly on the continuation of strong Indigenous systems.

Since 1999, many communities are focused on rebuilding their uma lulik. The rebuilding process, including the reinterring of the sacred objects, is critical to community healing. This process is connected to laying to rest ancestors who have died without attendant funerary rituals, where appropriate rituals at the site of the umu lulik can consecrate the bones, or

symbolic bones (stones) of the dead, and rebuild relationships across generations (Brown, 2009, p.153; Loch, 2007). To fail to undertake processes of rebuilding and interring the dead risks disturbing the ancestors who may react by cursing their uma lulik, causing further imbalance or violence. Due to the isolated location of many killings during the Indonesian occupation and the suppression of Indigenous practices, often no customary burial, sacrifices or other rituals were enacted by relatives as per customary obligations (Rawnsley, 2004). Some East Timorese say that the 2006 Crisis was a “malisan husi matebian sira”(Tetum: curse of the martyrs) resulting from the failure to restore balance and respect the sacred lulik power (Trindade & Castro, 2007, p.18).

Prioritising the rebuilding uma lulik is a good example of the different perspectives of local communities versus international development practitioners. The latter often did not perceive rebuilding as critical given the range of development needs. However, Loch (2007, p.291) estimates that between 1999 and 2004 approximately 150 to 200 uma lulik were built or reconstructed in the Baucau area alone. Each required their makers to follow correct ritual processes and to rebuild took between two and five months work and at least 1000 days of labour. “Rebuilding ancestral origin houses is a collective, traditional affair. It mobilises an array of social groups, combines technical with ceremonial activities, and is part of a complex, contested process of negotiating local and national identities” (Traube, 2001, p.2).