The Land of Gold: Post-Conflict Recovery and Cultural Revival in Independent Timor-Leste

In the village of Funar, located in the central highlands of Timor-Leste, the disturbing events of the twenty-four-year-long Indonesian occupation are rarely articulated in narratives of suffering. Despite the experiences of forced resettlement and their marginalization in contemporary nation-building processes, Funar villagers emphasize their geographic centrality and the significance of the sacred land of the ancestors, a place where gold is abundant and life itself is thought to have originated. The Land of Gold argues that attempts to re-establish a mythical primordial unity with the land by reinvigorating ancestral practices are key to understanding the ways people in Timor-Leste are coming to terms with experiences of conflict and forced dislocation. Never leaving out of sight the intensive political and emotional dilemmas that the troublesome past imposes on people’s daily lives, The Land of Gold seeks to go beyond prevailing theories of post-conflict reconstruction that prioritize human-human relations. Instead, it explores the significance of the highlanders’ affective and ritual engagement with the environment and with their ancestors, while taking into account how processes of essentialisation can be a central part of social and political change.