Adat, Adaptability and Ritual Speech (Uab Natoni) among the Meto of Oecussi

Abstract

Like many of their Austronesian neighbours, the Meto people of Timor-Leste’s Oecussi enclave have a history of accommodating foreign ideas and technologies without compromising their distinctive, socio-political identity. Now living on the site of Timor’s first special autonomous zone and exposed to an unprecedented program of megaproject construction, the task of better understanding this remarkable adaptability has taken on a new importance. In this article, through the detailed exegesis of ritual speech (uab natoni) used in one of its highland villages to render the concept of school based education comprehensible to ancestral spirits, I seek to highlight the inherent flexibility of Meto customary thought and belief in a time of profound and ongoing social and economic change.