The indigenous Fataluku-speaking population of East Timor, currently numbering about 35,000 speakers, forms the largest linguistic community of Lautem district. Lautem itself is composed of five subdistricts (posto) and Fataluku speakers form the dominant population group in the three most easterly areas (Tutuala, Fuiloro and Lautem). [6] Among Fataluku native speakers there are numerous dialect forms, reportedly up to seven varieties, which are nevertheless mutually intelligible. The term Fataluku can be translated as ‘plain’ or ‘straight’ speech. Although the Tutuala dialect in the eastern extremity of the region is generally considered to express the purest form of the language, the most popular and widely spoken version of Fataluku centres on the district capital, Los Palos, and the more populous central subdistrict of Fuiloro. [7]
Fataluku is one of the principal non-Austronesian languages of East Timor classified as part of the Trans-New Guinea phylum with strong West Papuan substratum features (see Hull 1998: 22). [8] While linguistic differences distinguish Fataluku populations from their more numerous Austronesian-speaking neighbours in East Timor, it is by no means obvious that the different phylogenetic origins of Fataluku as a language have produced a corresponding degree of cultural distinction (see Bellwood et al. 1995: 3-4). As Hull has observed, Fataluku society reflects a hybrid cultural identity, being more ‘Proto-Malay than Melanesian in racial type’ and possessing the ‘most typical Austronesian material culture in Timor’ (1998: 165). [9] In this regard, the existence of a remnant Austronesian linguistic island of Lovaia or Makwa [10] within the dominant Fataluku language area suggests a long-term engagement with Austronesian social and cultural ideas and practices, however these might be defined.
A predominantly agrarian society, Fataluku people have for centuries pursued systems of smallholder dry-land swidden agriculture combined with irrigated rice production in favourable areas, as well as extensive systems of animal husbandry focused on buffalo, domesticated pigs and goats. Hunting in the forests and coastal margins is also undertaken regularly and most of the population relies on a wide variety of forest products for domestic and household use.
At the present time, settlements in Lautem tend to form concentrated residential groupings and linear developments along arterial roads. Residential populations are grouped administratively into villages (suco), [11] a legacy of Portuguese colonialism, and usually contain a varied number of constituent hamlet (aldeia) settlements within the wider land area of the village. These patterns of settlement, however, are, for the most part, comparatively new. By and large, they reflect the policies of successive Portuguese and Indonesian administrations to concentrate and spatially contain Fataluku sociality in the interests of facilitating administration and control. More traditional patterns of residence were dispersed. People tended to live in small clusters of family based households (otu) in swidden gardens, moving with the rhythm of forest clearing and fallow, and affiliating to one or another larger settlement and ritual centres known as lata.