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Hybridising Justice: State-CustomaryInteractions over Forest Crime andPunishment in Oecusse, East TimorLaura S. Meitzner YoderPublished online: 06 Jul 2007.
To cite this article: Laura S. Meitzner Yoder (2007): Hybridising Justice: State-CustomaryInteractions over Forest Crime and Punishment in Oecusse, East Timor, The Asia Pacific Journal ofAnthropology, 8:1, 43-57
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Hybridising Justice: State-CustomaryInteractions over Forest Crime andPunishment in Oecusse, East TimorLaura S. Meitzner Yoder
This case study illustrates one effort to create a place for traditional justice, including
formal recognition of both the authorities and the mechanisms for customary land and
forest control, within the national system. Reflecting an explicitly political intention to
undo the customary authorities’ displacement under the Indonesian administration, the
Oecusse enclave district Agriculture Department also found this a pragmatic strategy to
extend their forest control. Granting significant autonomy and power to customary
leaders, especially in naming protected areas and setting village-specific fines, curtailed
but did not eliminate district government involvement in enforcing the regulations.
Resulting local environmental regulations reflect a blend of government and customary
land use priorities.
Keywords: East Timor; Customary Law; Traditional Justice; Tara Bandu; Environmental
Regulation; Institutions; State
Introduction
Recent decades have seen much scholarly attention paid to decentralisation of natural
resource management and accompanying devolution of land and forest authority to
local levels (Agrawal & Ostrom 2001; Badenoch & Dupar 2001; Barrett et al . 2001;
Berkes et al . 2006; Larson 2004; Lynch & Talbott 1995; Ostrom 1990; Peet & Watts
2004; West & Kloeck-Jenson 1999; White & Martin 2002). Studies document the ebb
and flow of these phenomena over a century or more in multiple regions, in
accordance with national-level political changes, relative popularity of community
empowerment ideologies and state capacity or priorities in centrally managing forest
resources (Aggarwal 2006; Agrawal & Ribot 1999; Ballabh et al . 2002; Peluso 2003;
Laura S. Meitzner Yoder is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne and is affiliated with Syiah Kuala
University, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Correspondence to: Laura S. Meitzner Yoder, c/o MCC, Kotak Pos 567,
Banda Aceh, NAD 23001, Indonesia. Tel: �/62 0813 6053 3168. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1444-2213 (print)/ISSN 1740-9314 (online)/07/010043-15
# 2007 The Australian National University
DOI: 10.1080/14442210601161732
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
Vol. 8, No. 1, March 2007, pp. 43�57
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Ribot & Larson 2003; Zerner 2000). In Indonesia, the movement towards forestry
decentralisation that accompanied the reformist political shifts of the late 1990s
contributed to a renaissance of interest in formalising customary institutions to
bolster their legitimacy and to revitalise their authority across the archipelago
(Thorburn 2006), though this wave has already receded on legislative and governance
fronts (Colfer & Resosudarmo 2002; Dermawan et al . 2006; Safitri 2006). Studies of
decentralisation and devolution have drawn new attention to matters of institutional
interconnectedness on local, national and global scales (Cash & Moser 2000; Dove
et al. 2003; Young 2002).
When East Timor was newly independent from Indonesia, the practical matters of
defining realms and roles for a state-administered justice system and actions by non-
state, customary authorities immediately confronted individuals in leadership
positions (Babo-Soares 2004). Throughout previous administrations’ attempts to
legislate and to monitor natural resource use, many rural East Timorese continued to
rely primarily on customary authorities and mechanisms, addressing localised issues
of forest, land and other resource disputes and regulation outside the purview of the
state. After independence, a confluence of political opportunity and a weak fledgling
government made state and customary leaders revisit the questions of who defines
what constitutes a forest crime and which party or parties are responsible for setting
penalties and enforcement.
This study traces the development and effects of one hybrid state-customary effort
to regulate forest use in East Timor’s Oecusse enclave district from mid-2001 to late
2004. District officials formulated a government-sponsored programme of ‘tradi-
tional’ forest regulation and reinstatement of marginalised customary land-forest
authorities. Following a description of the program, we examine de facto effects,
various actors’ purposes and some tensions arising from this interaction of local state
and customary figures.
Post-independence Practice of Tara Bandu
Seasonal and temporal restrictions on resource use are common throughout insular
Southeast Asia (Benda-Beckmann et al . 1995; Thorburn 2000; Zerner 1994). In East
Timor, the Tetum term tara bandu refers to such prohibitions (bandu), normally
symbolised by hanging (tara) some symbol in a prominent place to inform and to
remind passers-by of a limitation enacted on harvesting forest products or hunting in
a given location for a defined period of time. A tara bandu is initiated by a ritual
involving spoken prohibitions, animal sacrifice and a feast. Terms for these
prohibitions are also found in many other Timorese languages (Azerino 2001;
Coimbra 2002; Manehat 1990), and are known as kelo or kero in Oecusse’s local
language Meto (also known as Baiqueno or Dawan).
Practice of these customary restrictions faded during the Indonesian administra-
tion (1976�99), and there was broad nationwide interest in their revival following
independence. Tara bandu received particular notice in Agriculture Department
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documents, and its practice received a prominent place in a national forestry policy
draft because of its potential to enlist local regulation in support of state interests in
forest protection (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 2003, pp. 5�6). The
forestry policy posited that tara bandu works best in four circumstances: with remote
rural areas, among older and uneducated community members, where local
government strongly supports local authorities in the prohibition and treats it as
an enforceable local ordinance and when people are not economically pressed to
transgress the prohibitions (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 2003,
p. 6). In October 2003, the national Forestry Department formally solicited non-
governmental organisations’ experiences with tara bandu to gather data on locations,
results, difficulties and environmental impact of post-independence tara bandu
ceremonies around the country (Nunes 2003).
In the Oecusse enclave district, the resurgence of temporal restrictions resulted
from perceived crises in forest resource depletion following the 1999 political
transition. In 2001 and early 2002, some villages independently enacted generalised
harvesting restrictions and punishments on individuals who opportunistically
violated long-held bans on cutting trees in locally protected or sacred forests during
the chaos and population mobility of 1999�2000. Facing a severe palm-leaf thatch
shortage as the vast majority of Oecusse families needed to simultaneously rebuild
their homes following the 1999 burning,1 one lowland community took the initiative
of placing a three-year total ban on palm-leaf harvesting in their region out of
concern that severe over-harvesting was threatening the long-term viability of their
palm forests and critical thatch supplies.
In late 2002, two communities requested district government presence at the
dispute settlements and fine payments of individuals who violated local prohibitions
on cutting village-protected forest areas.2 Central to the district government’s
participation was the provision of an official letter (sulat) detailing the community’s
charge, the punishment enforced in the payment of the fine, and statements that any
further breaches of this nature would result in similar fines. Village leaders repeatedly
reminded government officials to remember to bring the letters to the village for the
ceremonial fine payment. At these ceremonies, district officials from the core
administration, land and property unit and agriculture department made short
speeches about the importance of protecting Oecusse’s forest areas after indepen-
dence. Officials frequently mentioned the sharp decline in the enclave’s sandalwood
stocks that occurred in the early years of Indonesian administration of East Timor,
urging villagers to protect forested areas and sandalwood, in explicit contrast to what
occurred during Indonesian times (Meitzner Yoder 2005, pp. 228�49).
Evolution of the District Government Tara Bandu Programme
Through involvement in these ceremonies, district government officers saw the
potential for expanding the role and practice of customary restrictions on forest use.
By early 2003, the Oecusse Agriculture Department3 had developed a framework for
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working in Oecusse’s villages (sucos) by mobilising the customary authorities to
oversee forest control within their domains and to facilitate two-way communication
on agricultural requests between the district officials and villagers. Two types of
village authorities were central in this initiative: the naijuf , a village head who held his
position by virtue of his lineage; and the tobe , ritual figures with specific authority
over matters of land and forests, including agricultural rituals, approval of swidden
sites and sandalwood harvesting.4 Each of Oecusse’s (18�24) sucos 5 had one or two
naijuf , with each averaging three to four tobe responsible for named, bounded areas
nested within the naijuf domains.
Under Portuguese administration, the naijuf was nearly always automatically
named to the administrative position of village head (chefe suco), and control of
sandalwood harvest was under strict control of the tobe . With the transition to
Indonesian governance, both naijuf and tobe lost much of their power. Indonesian
village heads (kepala desa) were often selected for merits other than their traditional
status, and Oecusse people often claim that ‘Indonesia did not even know who the
tobe were’ as their roles in land and forest monitoring were supplanted by civil
servants. This official neglect made it comparatively easy for the tobe to reassert their
authority in the atmosphere of new independence; while individuals who had served
as village heads under previous administrations were closely associated with those
unpopular regimes, villagers never perceived the tobe as allied with the formal
governance structures. Although tobe control over land use and forest harvesting was
much diminished under Indonesia, the tobe maintained their village-level legitimacy
through that era by continuing to perform the agricultural rituals deemed critical to
producing the rains and winds most favourable for food production.
From April 2003, the Agriculture Department programme consisted of two central
elements in each village: forming five-member ‘Agri/Cultural Associations’ (in the
national language Tetum, Asosiasaun (Agri)Cultura)6 responsible for forest oversight
and establishing tara bandu prohibitions. The associations were meant to restore
some of the former forest-monitoring powers of the tobe and naijuf , and to lend new
official recognition to their roles. While earlier ceremonies were held in direct
response to a breached prohibition, these tara bandu ceremonies were intended to
initiate formal prohibitions that the associations would subsequently enforce. By
November 2004, fifteen villages had held tara bandu ceremonies,7 and most had
named members to an (Agri)Cultural Association. The tara bandu letters list 402
named locations (from eight to sixty-three per village) protected in twelve sucos ,
ranging in size from a small circumscribed area containing a sacred rock and spring
(often including palm irrigation schemes or semi-cultivated zones known as sources
of medicinal woods) to entire forested mountainsides. Those villages that were unable
or reluctant to hold ceremonies gave various reasons: absentee customary leaders, fear
that any restrictions put in place would limit income possibilities from local resources
sold throughout Oecusse (for example, palm ribs or leaves) or demands for full
political recognition as a formal village from the national government before
participating in government programmes. Once the Agriculture Department
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programme was under way, villages were expected to participate by forming
associations and holding a tara bandu in order to benefit from government
programmes including extension, experimental project funding, livestock vaccina-
tions and other departmental activities. Villages unable or reluctant to follow the
mandated model risked exclusion from desirable programmes.
From the perspective of district government, the associations were an economical
extension of the state’s reach to remote rural areas, via customary leaders whose
discrete domains covered the entire district. Government recognition of displaced
authorities was also a rhetorically powerful action for the newly independent
government to improve its local credibility by explicitly differentiating its policies
from those of the Indonesian administration. Customary leaders sought state
legitimation of their power to re-establish restrictions and their power to assess
fines, as well as recognition of the (oft-contested) administrative boundaries of the
domains under their jurisdiction. The programme channelled approval for villagers’
timber harvest requests through the associations, which were presumed to be at a
local level appropriate for judging the validity of the request and to monitor tree use.
The tara bandu ceremonies reflected both government and customary priorities:
placing limitations on shifting cultivation; forbidding the killing of productive
animals; controlling natural resource harvest (in particular, of forests, animals and
especially sandalwood); reducing certain social practices and traditional festivals; and
formalising social regulations regarding theft, inter-village cattle disputes and fence
maintenance to minimise livestock damage to crops.
Writing Letters and Establishing Fines
Before a tara bandu ceremony was held, there were several Agricultural Department
meetings with village leaders, held at villages and then once at the district government
office, to compose the all-important letter using word processing on government
computers. While this practice lent a certain standardisation to the letters once the
official in charge developed a template format,8 each village association composed
unique documents, naming specific restrictions and protected areas within their
domains and establishing fines. These letters served as documents making official the
interaction of state and customary authorities, although most of the signing
customary authorities responsible for the letters’ contents were illiterate.9 Once the
letters were finalised, the village held a ceremony, attended by villagers and
government officials: following a ritual opening, village leaders read the restrictions
aloud, sacrificed one or more animals, discussed the restrictions at length, and
members of the association thumb-printed or signed the letter, witnessed and signed
by government officials. Each ceremony concluded with a feast.
Several procedural and substantive changes occurred as the district’s tara bandu
programme developed. In one early ceremony, village leaders named certain disputed
land areas as protected areas within their customary domain.10 When a neighbouring
village learned that the district government officials had signed the tara bandu
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document, apparently lending unwitting support to the first village’s claim, a major
dispute erupted that remained unresolved even after multiple public meetings and
attempts at mediation and arbitration over the course of two years. This experience
led to a district government guideline that authoritative figures from all neighbouring
villages had to be invited to attend a tara bandu , so they could raise such concerns at
the time the letters were read, before signing.
As the tara bandu programme progressed, the letters became increasingly detailed
and elaborate. Villagers increased the number of named protected tree species, and
some specified the extent of named protected areas in square metres and listed the
distance from certain regions that were included in the restrictions. Three villages
with particular traditional practices of communally hunting certain forest animals
reinstated multi-year restrictions on individual hunting of those species.11 From May
2003, the letters composed in Indonesian referred to the tara bandu fines as
customary law sanctions, ‘sangsi hukum adat (lei cultura [in Tetum])’. Fines also
became increasingly specific: early letters listed simply ‘one pig, 50 kilograms of rice,
and 5 litres of palm wine’, while later letters gave more specific ages or sizes of
acceptable animals and amounts for items to be paid. Later ceremonies saw additions
of special items of high traditional value among the fines charged, including bead
necklaces (of specified lengths) and old coins, in addition to the food items to be
provided for the feast. Some added cash payments in United States dollars, and some
gave a cash value equivalent to the traditional items named.12
Over time, more nuanced fines reflected relative seriousness of different offences,
and sometimes villagers’ political sentiments. Several later letters differentiated
‘heavy’ and ‘light’ offences, with specific fines proportional to the named action; in
most cases, sandalwood damage, felling or sale was the highest-ranked prohibition, in
many cases having its own category for punishment, while all other offences from
disallowed hunting to destroying sacred sites carried the same fine. A few letters
named very specific fines for cutting individual tree species or killing different types
of animals, applying fines many times higher for intentional acts than for
unintentional breaches (for example, escaped swidden fires destroying a protected
area). One village, with particularly hostile relations with its neighbouring villages
due to unresolved grievances from theft and murders committed in late 1999,
used the tara bandu to highlight these matters. Village leaders set exorbitantly high
fines (for example, cash fines of US$500 for offences that other villages listed at
US$10�50), and several hours of discussion revolved around problems created by
wandering cattle, reflecting the ongoing dispute among the villages in that region and
the host village’s resentment over not receiving adequate compensation (in cattle) for
the lives and possessions lost.
In small cases involving individual perpetrators, the letters’ punishments were
selectively applied. When one tobe discovered that several large sandalwood trees had
been stolen from his own property, he chose to apply a different strategy of
supernatural penalties on the perpetrator, and said he did not intend to carry out the
procedure as listed in his tara bandu letter. But in cases with groups of perpetrators,
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for example a farming group with fifteen or more members whose communal field
preparations burned some protected forest, villagers held protracted negotiations
over the stipulated fines, indicating that the quantities outlined in fines often serve a
symbolic function (cf. Fox 2002, this volume).
In the early tara bandu ceremonies, villagers did not discuss at length the matter of
what to do with any future fine payments collected, causing extensive debates at the
time fines were actually to be paid. In one such case, three full days of discussions
centred on whether individual members of the guilty group would have to pay the
mandated two cattle each, or merely contribute towards two cattle provided by the
entire group; the compromise reached, and actually paid, was that each group
member had to pay just one animal. The final resolution in this case was to sell all the
cattle (except one used in the tara bandu restoration feast) and to store the cash
obtained*amounting to over US$1000*in an association-controlled account at the
district government office to be used to purchase emergency food during the
following year’s predictable hungry season. In other villages, residents spent hours
during the initial tara bandu ceremony discussing the fate of collected fines. Some
villages mandated that any items not used in a restoration feast be used for the benefit
of the entire village. In other villages where the tobe or naijuf furnished the animal
killed in the tara bandu , any animals paid in fines would go to replace those offered
by these individuals.
Heavy reliance on fines, largely composed of traditional items, was said to reflect
how such payment both restores the offender and repairs the cut trees, thus making
right the wrong perpetrated. One customary leader likened the animal’s sacrifice to
replacing the cut trees, similar to pouring water so that the cut trees could grow
again. In no cases were perpetrators required to replant the cut or burned trees; at
most, they were charged to monitor the recovery of the affected area and to protect
emergent seedlings.
Interaction of Local State and Customary Authorities
The tara bandu programme illustrates how state and customary figures found a way
for both authorities to play some role in controlling land and forests. The state
offered a new level of legitimation to displaced customary figures, who then drafted
regulations that were transcribed and acknowledged by the district government
officials who witnessed the ceremonies. In turn, the fledgling state drew a measure of
legitimacy from embracing a highly valued local institution, thus emphasising its
distinctiveness from the previous Indonesian administration.
The letters reflect a blend of customary prohibitions and national environmental
guidelines. While the locations to be protected and the fines assessed were entirely
named by the tobe and naijuf , the letters also borrowed from national forestry
guidelines as they listed protected ‘economic species’ and permissible cultivation
distance from water sources. Starting in May 2003, after establishing the (Agri)Cul-
tural Association programme, the letters all contained restrictions on ‘irresponsible
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swidden farming practices’, defined as burning established forest to open new fields,
farming on exhausted soils and cultivating landslide-prone land. This capitalises on
the traditional tobe role of annually permitting or denying requested use of a given
area for swidden agriculture, but uses criteria as established by the Agriculture
Department.
The issue of the village association’s autonomy to enforce the tara bandu without
further state involvement became a major issue in several cases. When the Agriculture
Department initiated the programme of forming associations and holding the
inaugural tara bandu , the departmental officials emphasised that further enactment
of the restrictions would be carried out by the associations, and not by the
Agriculture Department. In the question-and-answer period (usually) preceding the
letters’ signing, several district agriculture officers would redirect specific questions
asked of them to members of the village association, stating that the village
authorities, and not district officials, would be the ones to enforce those regulations
after the ceremony and thus should be the ones answering villagers’ concerns.
During the discussion period in most villages, a villager asked the question of what
would happen if an individual perpetrator refused to comply with the association’s
punishment as laid out in the tara bandu letter. Agriculture Department officials
answered that, in such cases, perpetrators could be subject to police arrest and trial in
the state court, an answer that seemed largely satisfactory to villagers, although a few
protested any state meddling in customary matters. (In actuality, the Oecusse court
was not functioning during the period under consideration due to lack of lawyers and
judges, so such promised state backing may have represented more a threat than a
real consequence*but it did convey a serious level of binding power for the
regulations.)
In reality, however, district government officials from the Agriculture Department
and the core administration were usually involved in subsequent negotiations and
payments of fines, if largely as observers of negotiations led by customary leaders. In
one remarkable case, the state proved subject to the terms of the village tara bandu .
When a public works project cut palm trees protected in the first (village-initiated)
tara bandu without permission from customary village authorities, the district
government paid the full tobe-mandated fine to the affected communities.
Tensions in Hybridised Justice
Through Oecusse’s tara bandu programme, the district government promised to back
up, as necessary, the actions of the association composed largely of customary leaders.
Tensions around the boundaries and extent of this shared authority arose in one
village when a district official bypassed the association’s authority and granted some
individuals an exception to the local tara bandu’s ban on cultivating a given region
that year. The association threatened to disband if the district government did not
respect its decisions; clearly, village leaders felt that they were voluntarily involved in a
government-initiated programme which would suffer if they withdrew. In another
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area, district agriculture officials reprimanded the association members for permit-
ting excessive burning to occur in a protected zone named in the village tara bandu ,
but, given the formal hand-over of local forest control authority to the associations,
the Agriculture Department took no further measures.
Beyond the authority to enforce violations, another issue that villagers raised
during the tara bandu discussions was the matter of which party or parties could
grant permission, assess punishment and receive payment for cutting trees for
personal use. The procedure for getting permission to cut named ‘economic species’
of trees was to go through the association, who would take an approved request to the
district government for several steps of additional written approvals. This proposed
system proved so cumbersome that its mechanism was rarely used, and permission
tended to be handled by the customary leaders alone.
Villager discussions also highlighted the matter of government intervention and
self-regulation of association members. Several tobe of one border village were
actively involved in one extensive violation, cutting hundreds of trees in a protected
forest to sell the timber during the refugee crisis of 1999 and 2000; direct district
government intervention forced the perpetrators, including the tobe , to surrender
some of the timber and to sponsor a feast for the affected community. In later
incidents of communal farming groups burning protected forest, some association
members were always part of the group that was fined; although only one or several
group members actually violated the prohibition (even going against the warnings of
other members), each group member was implicated in the breach and had to pay
some portion of the fine. Association members did not escape the fines by virtue of
their positions.
A pervasive tension throughout the tara bandu programme was the customary
leaders’ lack of active support for the district government’s agricultural modernisa-
tion agenda of moving away from Oecusse’s widespread swidden cultivation and
towards settled and irrigated agriculture. Many village leaders viewed the purpose of
the tara bandu as a return to a past, idealised state encompassing both the former
local political authority structure and traditional agricultural practices; some insisted
that the ‘new’ prohibitions should apply only to places and trees that had been truly
under customary restriction in Portuguese times. In a few regions, this raised the
problem of previously protected areas which had been converted to now-productive
flooded rice fields or irrigated orchards during the Indonesian administration, which
the district government preferred to keep in active cultivation and which the
association sought to return to their former protected status. There were also
instances of previously claimed, forested, riparian areas government designated as
protected areas during Indonesian times that villagers wanted to reclaim for
agriculture, against Agriculture Department interests in maintaining those waterways
as conservation zones. Where government and customary priorities for conservation
areas were incongruent, the association played an important role as intermediary in
ongoing negotiations over regulating and enforcing land uses.
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Limitations and failures of the tara bandu programme occurred primarily where
the programme went beyond agrarian areas or institutional scales with strong
histories of active customary authorities. For example, the Agriculture Department
experienced difficulties in locating the proper customary figures to conduct a tara
bandu for and to oversee management of the hydrologically complex seasonally
flooded areas adjacent to Oecusse’s capital town. The former authorities over these
waters were directly linked to a centuries-old kingship that retained certain
ceremonial functions but had lost its practical involvement in natural resource
management, leaving a customary authority gap in this peri-urban region. On
another front, customary authorities’ marked inability to resolve inter-village
disputes, including those precipitated as a result of the tara bandu programme itself,
without mediation by government officials is an important weakness in this
mechanism. This stems in part from the nature of village-specific tobe domains
without overarching leadership with broader geographical range. Resource disputes
within the boundaries of customary villages (encompassing multiple tobe domains)
are extremely rare, but inter-village disputes are frequent and long-standing.
Violations involving wood sale to outside actors also highlighted the customary
authorities’ inabilities to address such issues on their own, requiring the involvement
of government administrators and even police in several instances.
Conclusion
The post-independence tara bandu and (Agri)Cultural Association programmes in
Oecusse concretely illustrate how state and customary authorities redefined their
roles in relation to each other in the nation’s new political context. Both authorities
sought to re-create and to formalise a place for traditional forest regulation in the
district, goals addressed largely by legitimising customary authorities and mechan-
isms. The resulting activities represented a hybridised justice: traditional figures and
regulation mechanisms regaining legitimacy by state recognition, the state voluntarily
backing and itself subject to some customary regulations, and customary leaders
enforcing protected area and protected species restrictions that reflected both
customary and government priorities. This case demonstrates the process of forming
state-customary linkages that can provide mutually acceptable, intermediate regula-
tion following a major sociopolitical transition.
An important distinguishing feature of this case in relation to many other examples
of decentralisation or devolution is the formal legitimation of the customary
authorities as individual figures with particular responsibilities, as well as the
repeated and public government support for the associations to take the lead in
implementing the tara bandu , rather than instituting rules without the social
mechanisms to enact them. The government programme built on existing social
entities rather than supplanting them: the tobe positions were widely familiar and
acceptable to local people, and their ritual roles were still very active in most areas of
the almost completely agrarian district. The strong impetus to distinguish the
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independent administration from the previous Indonesian rule combined with
financial limitations and local pride in isolated Oecusse’s strong customary
institutions to make the tara bandu programme timely. The practical blending of
government and customary activities and priorities was critical in the areas where this
programme met with success: customary authorities’ own naming of protected areas
and setting of fines lent the programme greater legitimacy than it would have enjoyed
had the government enlisted tobe aid in enforcing government sanctions. This
demonstrates a decentralisation of decision-making as well as of management
responsibility (Ribot and Larson 2003). Local elites were not exempt from the
regulations; it is perhaps surprising the frequency with which customary authorities
who violated the agreements were themselves held accountable to pay fines.
The associations represented new institutional forms by virtue of their formal
linkage to state agencies. The Agricultural Department blended rhetoric of the old
and the new, promoting this programme strongly rooted in tradition as a novel,
modern working model appropriate to a new nation. In practice, both the discourse
of the idealised past and the new state-backed land and forest management
arrangements lent legitimacy to the programme. The new institutional arrangements
were intended to address problems of scale and levels of authority; Agriculture
Department officials openly stated that their knowledge of and capacity to oversee
forests in remote areas was limited, just as they publicly recognised the tobe as a
figure who generally enjoyed local legitimacy among the villagers within his domain.
It remains to be seen how hybrid arrangements such as these will persist in
independent East Timor’s land and forest oversight. No actors involved indicated that
the programme was intended to be temporary; five years into post-Indonesian
administration, neither government officials at national or district levels nor local
customary leaders explicitly portrayed this state-customary relationship as, for
example, an intermediate stage on the way to more comprehensive state control over
these resources. In a time of political transition and much uncertainty regarding
authority in remote rural regions, many different actors found formal state
recognition of both the authorities and the mechanisms for customary land and
forest control an acceptable and pragmatic means to regulate forest use. The resulting
blend of state and traditional justice elements took advantage of customary
authorities’ special knowledge in naming protected areas and village-level legitimacy
in controlling resource access. Yet, it is notable that villagers also sought district
government backing of the village-specific fines, including official recognition in the
form of a letter and willingness to assist enforcement in difficult cases. While forest
control exclusively by the nascent state was neither feasible nor credible, Oecusse
residents deemed the support of district government essential to buttress the newly
revived responsibilities of the customary authorities.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Oecusse government and customary authorities and two reviewers
for helpful guidance. Research for this paper was funded by: a Yale University
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Doctoral Fellowship; Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellow-
ship; International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship, Social Science Research
Council and the American Council of Learned Societies; Dissertation Research Grant,
Yale Center for International and Area Studies; Mustard Seed Foundation Harvey
Fellowship; Southeast Asian Studies Doctoral Fellowship at the Research School of
Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University; and language training
grant, Yale University Southeast Asia Program.
Notes
[1] According to one survey, over two-thirds of homes in Oecusse were burned during the post-
referendum violence of September-October 1999 (East Timor Transitional Administration
2001); later reconstruction figures are as high as 90 per cent. A major non-governmental
organisation (NGO) strategy for housing reconstruction in Oecusse planned to provide
transport for palm thatch for roofing, but it appeared that supplies and access would soon
run short; in response, the organisation changed its package to provide metal roofing, and
some housing kits were still being delivered into early 2003. Even with metal roofing being
supplied to people who had lost houses, most families continued to erect and to use their
familiar thatch-roofed round houses alongside the newer materials; thatch roofs provide the
traditional grain storage space over the central hearth, and they are deemed warmer on cool
mountain nights. Most lowland homes use gewang (Corypha sp.) palm thatch; highland
areas in Oecusse’s interior use Imperata cylindrica grass thatch, but that also came to be in
short supply during 2000, leading to vastly inflated prices for those who purchased the grass
from surrounding (Indonesian) West Timor.
[2] Perpetrators had to provide given quantities of palm wine and rice, alongside livestock of
specified type and size, for the feast that accompanied the ceremonies.
[3] This unit came under the jurisdiction of the national Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and
Forestry (MAFF), with six permanent staff based in Oecusse. During the Indonesian
administration, there were more than 160 Agriculture Department staff in Oecusse.
[4] The naijuf and tobe figures have existed throughout Meto-speaking areas of western Timor,
including Oecusse (Ataupah 1990; Cunningham 1962; McWilliam 2002; Middelkoop 1960;
Ormeling 1956; Schulte Nordholt 1971). For details on their origins and changing status in
Oecusse, see Meitzner Yoder (2005).
[5] Oecusse has had eighteen officially recognised sucos under Portuguese (Sherlock 1983, p. 36),
Indonesian and independent administrations. However, there are several other units widely
recognised as autonomous sucos within the traditional system, based on their full
complement of the requisite tobe-naijuf hierarchy and recognisable land domains. While
many administrative sucos have boundaries roughly congruent with customary domains, at
several points since the 1940s the official number of sucos has fluctuated slightly for various
political purposes. The resistance movement body (CNRT) and following United Nations
(UN) administration recognised up to twenty-four Oecusse sucos . In practice, from 2002 to
2004 Oecusse’s district government worked with eighteen to twenty-three distinct sucos ,
depending on the programme, sometimes holding events with as-yet-unrecognised suco
units.
[6] In explaining the purpose and meaning of the associations at village-wide gatherings,
Agriculture Department staff emphasised the close linkage between cultura and agricultura
in largely agrarian Oecusse, and referred to the associations by both names.
[7] The following villages or regions held tara bandu ceremonies from 2001 to late 2004: Cunha
and Cunha-Lalisuk (two events), Ben-Uf (two events), Bob-Uf (officially part of Bobometo),
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Bob-Manat (officially part of Bobometo), Taiboco, Usitaco, Usitaqueno, Usitasae, Bobocasse,
Hao-Uf (officially part of Lel-Uf), Lel-Uf, Banafi, Malelat and Costa (on urban waterway
only). In all but two ceremonies which were part of externally funded agriculture
development projects, the villagers bore the major costs of supplying animals for sacrifice
and feast meat, while the district government furnished some rice.
[8] One village association composed and typed their own tara bandu letter in the village,
without assistance from government staff. This letter was the longest and most detailed,
assessing specific cash fines for killing named species of fish and other animals and various
tree and crop species, also specifying different fines for intentional and unintentional
breaches affecting each species.
[9] Half the naijuf and just 18 per cent of the tobe and other individuals named ‘traditional
leaders’ signed their names on the tara bandu documents, with the rest providing thumb-
prints. One survey gave Oecusse’s adult literacy rate as 31 per cent, less than half the national
average of 66 per cent (Asia Foundation 2001, p. 69).
[10] It should be noted that the inter-village boundary disputes all concerned customary
boundaries, not the margins of state-recognized villages which are not congruent with
customary villages.
[11] Animals subject to tara basdu in the past included wild pigs no longer found in Oecusse,
deer, inland fish (according to a regular harvesting season) and certain species of birds.
Recent restrictions made particular mention of deer and birds, though all the tara bandu
ceremonies forbade the hunting of animals in named protected forest areas.
[12] While bridewealth payments normally take the form of bead necklaces, old coins, cattle and
other traditional items, occasionally the bride’s family accepts a cash payment in lieu of some
portion of the agreed-upon amount, when the groom’s family is unable to obtain the
specified items.
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