The proposal to develop a national conservation park in East Timor, the first in the context of national independence, has created the requirement for a better understanding of customary Fataluku land tenures within the forest reserve. This paper has highlighted something of the emplaced significance of Fataluku customary attachments to the area and the structure of social relationships within which land tenures are embedded. Further research and cultural mapping will undoubtedly provide a more detailed perspective on the complex networks of engagement with the forested landscape. ^[41] Arguably, such studies are critical to the development of strategic approaches to effective park management and a more informed basis for negotiating management agreements. Nevertheless, these preliminary observations are perhaps sufficient to indicate something of the character of Fataluku attachments to ancestral lands; attachments that appear to have much in common with neighbouring ethno-linguistic groups in the wider region. These attachments also highlight something of the complexity of and challenges for incorporating customary tenure regimes within national land administration structures.

The comparative ethnography of eastern Indonesia, and particularly the Lesser Sunda Islands of which East Timor is a constituent part, has focused on the predominantly Austronesian-speaking language communities of the region. Many of these studies have highlighted a range of common cultural features and conceptions about locality and landscape that are thought to reflect aspects of a shared Austronesian heritage (see Fox 1997; Fox and Sather 1996; Bellwood, Fox and Tryon 1995; Atkinson and Errington 1990). These shared characteristics are varied and numerous but may be thought to minimally include the following aspects. Firstly, there is an attention to the valorising of space through symbolic coordinates. Two axis systems are prominent in eastern Indonesia, whereby the primary orientation follows the east-west axis with a secondary orientation utilising an upstream-downstream, or right-left axis. Secondly, there is a common indigenous focus on ‘discourses of origin’ and the relative precedence of origins as a basis for structuring social relations. This orientation to the past is expressed frequently through the reproduction of narrative topogenies (discourses of place) for the encoding of social memory in cultural landscapes. ^[42] All these societies have also been demonstrated to share an abiding interest in the representation of relationships and processes by paired metaphors of complementarity and difference. Social meanings are constructed culturally through such ‘symbolic operators’ as trunk and tip, male and female, elder and younger, right and left, hot and cold. Typically, too, these culturally significant asymmetric categories are applied recursively and thus generate orders of difference or precedence within social contexts. These combinations of elements, applied creatively, have been shown to be highly illustrative of the dynamic and often contested relationships characteristic of eastern Indonesian and wider Austronesian societies (see Fox and Sather 1996; Vischer forthcoming).

Although clearly of non-Austronesian linguistic origins, the schematic outline of Fataluku land and forest tenures presented in this paper appears to share many of these characteristics of Austronesian ideas of place and landscape. The principal coordinate of orientation among Fataluku is ordered along the east-west axis. Typically this is expressed as an associated distinction between head and tail: mua cao, mua ulafuka ‘head of the land, tail of the land’. A second-order orientation is marked in relation to the seas to the north and south. The terms tahi tupurru—tahi calu (‘female’ sea—‘male’ sea) represent a composite linguistic construction of Austronesian and Papuan terms. ^[43] We can also identify a strong and continuing focus on ancestral origins and the complex locating of mythic narratives and ancestral itineraries within the Fataluku landscape. Moreover, there is evidently a persistent emphasis on such classificatory binary categories as male/\female (nami tupurru), younger/elder (noko kaka), small/large (moko lafae) among numerous other key organising distinctions. The systematic use of ritual speech couplets is also marked, as in the phrases hitu ho coro (sword and spear), ete ho taru (tree and vine), ira ho oco (water and tree crops), iniku ho poku (fine-grained sand and course sand), among others. Seen in these terms, Fataluku society shares much in common with its Austronesian speaking neighbours, both in terms of cultural principles of social order and relation, as well as in the forms of attachment they reproduce in relation to their ancestral lands. As a non-Austronesian-speaking language community with clear evidence that they have borrowed extensively from Austronesian registers and concepts over many generations, their example highlights the limitations of the linguistic distinction—Austronesian/non-Austronesian—to define the scope of cultural comparison in the region. This is not to deny the utility of what may be termed ‘Austronesian cultural characteristics’. Rather, as the example of Fataluku and other proximate non-Austronesian-language communities indicates, significant cultural overlap and hybridity offer the prospect for extending comparative analysis beyond the linguistic boundary (see also Platenkamp 1984 and 1988). Recent studies arguing for thematic comparison across this language boundary offer directions for future research (Strathern and Stewart 2000).

While these academic questions are unlikely to trouble policy-makers in East Timor, the more practical issues of integrating Fataluku common property regimes within a park management regime are of central concern. To its credit, the Government appears to have recognised the strong and continuing attachment to and dependency on the diverse resources of the proposed park of local Fataluku communities. Under the present government structure of Timor Leste, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Ministerio de Agricultura, Floresta e Pesca) has, to date, taken the formal responsibility for park management. An indication of their intentions can be seen in a 2002 draft ‘letter of agreement’, which seeks to establish a mutually agreed framework for management between the Government and local communities bordering the forest boundaries. Under this agreement, the park will be accorded a ‘Category 5’ status, following the guidelines of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), which establishes the region as a multi-use landscape permitting a range of extractive activities within its boundaries. These activities include limited cultivation of fallowed former swidden fields along the park boundary as a temporary concession recognising the impoverished economic circumstances of farmers in the region. Hunting and gathering is to be confined to two months a year with restrictions covering protection of habitat and types of animals available for consumption. Some limited extraction of trees for construction purposes is allowed subject to an agreed permit system. To monitor and coordinate these arrangements, the agreement also envisages the creation of a management commission combining Government and community representatives to promulgate a regulatory framework. Perhaps most significantly, the government offers the possibility of recognising the existence of customary rights in land (tanah adat) as well as sites of cultural importance (tei, lata paru and calu lutur teino) within the park (Surat Kesepakatan 2002, Direccão Geral de Floresta [draft, Bahasa Indonesia version]).

The draft document requires the signatures of the leadership of the three Fataluku villages (suco) bordering the park. ^[44] Taken at face value, this agreement represents a realistic understanding of the continuing significance of customary claims and this practical use made of the forest. It also concedes the reality that without active local engagement in the management of the national park, the Directorate of Forestry on its own is ill-equipped to undertake the multiple tasks of managing the region. However, by way of proviso, it is worth noting that the ‘letter of agreement’ remains in draft form (as of December 2002) and subject to parliamentary and ministerial approval. Until formal ratification of the document and its legal intent is established, the status of the proposed park and the respective rights of individuals, ratu groups and the National Government remains uncertain. The question of the future legal status of customary land (BI: tanah adat) is particularly unclear given that this form of tenure is not recognised explicitly under the East Timorese Constitution, nor has there been any administrative agreement governing the question of customarily claimed land (see Fitzpatrick 2002).

The prospect of recognising a range of customary attachments and interests within the park boundaries is one that needs to be translated into a workable division of respective rights and responsibilities; one that acknowledges the importance of history in policy practice. In the development of a formal regulatory arrangement there would appear to be at least two prospective avenues for government action. Firstly, and perhaps most likely, the National Government will legislate to assume direct ownership of the park and the primary responsibility for management. Arguably, this is consistent with the recently adopted Constitution, which allocates sovereignty over natural resources to the State. Local communities might be encouraged to participate in management, and specific places of heritage significance within the park such as lata paru and ritual sites (calu lutur, ia mari, ete uru ha’a) could be protected under law. ^[45] The main difficulty with this approach is the constrained financial capacity of the Government to develop its own effective system of management with all the monitoring and protection services it requires. Moreover, the assumption of full government control may give rise to feelings of disenfranchisement among customary rights-holders who will have little interest or legal recourse to maintain the forest as a forest. Economic opportunism and increased exploitation are the likely consequences, if the experience of regional autonomy in Indonesia is any guide (see Potter and Badcock 2001).

An alternative or compromise approach is one that recognises and legally supports the tenurial rights of the customary common property-holders, and accords them a form of collective customary ownership of their ancestral lands within the park, under a broad framework of government supervision. While not without its own set of challenges, many of which could be resolved through greater research and public consultation, the existing Fataluku customary tenure arrangements and understandings within the park arguably represent the only consistent and historically legitimate forms of claim over the forested domain. Recognition of common property rights to the forest, as McKean (2000: 42) and others have argued, gives owners the incentive to husband their resources, to make investments in resource quality and to manage them sustainably and efficiently. Moreover, if legal recognition of Fataluku forest tenures was offered on the basis that the park would then be leased back to the nation for the purposes of managed conservation, the basis for a mutual framework of shared interests could be established. Such an approach offers the possibility of building an effective system of joint or co-management that combines the intimate local knowledge and ancestrally sanctioned attachment of local communities with the authority, technologies and financial assistance of external agencies. It is also one that permits a much stronger role for customary rights-holders in decision-making than if principal control and decision-making resides in the central corridors of national government.

The decision about the locus and distribution of legal rights and responsibilities in relation to the park is likely to emerge in the near future, and it represents a necessary condition for developing an effective management regime, but not a sufficient one. As much of the literature on common property rights and community-based management attests, legal recognition represents only one important aspect in promoting sustainable practices (Ostrom 1990; Gibson et al. 2000). Associated complex issues such as boundary definition, membership status and effective local institutions that have enforceable rules and appropriate dispute-resolution mechanisms are just some of the features that contribute to successful co-management arrangements involving common property regimes (McKean 2000; Kant and Cooke 1999). These and other matters will no doubt form the subject of negotiation and contested development over time. In the interim, this paper has simply sought to highlight something of the scope and strength of attachment among specific local Fataluku communities to a region of enduring and wider public interest.