Paper short abstract:

By studying the return migration of a highland village in East Timor, this paper examines the way people make place by negating recent historical events of war and displacement. However, despite their attempts to keep history at bay by connecting themselves to a ‘golden’ ancestral time, the recent past continuously imposes itself onto their daily lives.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the way people make place by negating history. The focus is a village in the highlands of East Timor, whose inhabitants were forcibly resettled during the Indonesian occupation of the country (1975-1999). After over twenty years of absence, the villagers moved back to their ancestral lands and I examine how they relate to their past and the ways in which they reconnect themselves to their place of origin. Despite their long absence, local inhabitants rarely spoke about the occupation and the forced displacement. Instead of framing their current situation in relation to the violent events of the recent past and their dislocation, the people I worked with stressed the importance of 'following the ancestors'. In the ancestral past, they said, they were so prosperous that golden discs hovered over the village. People said that if they followed the ancestral ways today, they would be able to revitalise this ancestral time and the prosperity associated with it. My main argument is that the emphasis on a utopian ancestral past is a way in which people negate the ever-changing nature of history. However, the dramatic and violent events of the past have inscribed themselves onto the landscape people inhabit, which means that it is hard to keep history at bay. I examine how despite the negation of history, the recent events impose themselves onto people's daily lives, forcing them to engage with the way history continues to shape their lives and the environment they inhabit.