Welcome to the Hotel Tutuala: Fataluku Accounts of Going Places in an Immobile World

Abstract

In newly independent East Timor, land tenure and land rights are pressing issues. In a recent volume on Land Claims in East Timor, Daniel Fitzpatrick argues that ‘cosmological world views’ cannot be ignored in constructing a new system of land administration. While previous regimes may have ignored these ‘views’, throughout East Timor the issue of cosmological sovereignty is emerging as one of the new domains of struggle and resistance. In the Fataluku-speaking district of Tutuala, in the far eastern reaches of the world's newest nation-state, the assertion of sovereign authority is conveyed and sustained through the ‘production of locality’. In this paper, I focus upon the ‘place-making’ efforts of the Portuguese colonial administration in the early part of the twentieth century to explore Fataluku ideas about movement and being in place. In doing so, I hope to throw some light on the cultural status of the many derelict and decaying Portuguese forts and outposts occupying knolls and hill-tops throughout East Timor.