Abstract
In the South Moluccan island of Tanebar-Evav (Tanimbar-Kei), relations with the overseas world are constitutive of the village society. In Welcome to Tanebar-Evav—Can One Be Incorporated in a Village Society?, Cécile Barraud relates how ‘spirits’ originating abroad are the supreme guardians of the social and ritual order. Newcomers since times immemorial have been assigned a social status in a House and the ritual tasks and exchange participations accruing to these without denying them their foreign provenance. The collective gift to her of a house built on ancestral land signalled that Barraud had been taken into village society without needing to relinquish her status as stranger. She argues that this relation between village inhabitants and newcomers entails a social ethics of reciprocal service that is grounded in a morality of collective responsibility, allowing for the incorporation of strangers.
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Notes
- 1.
Tanebar-Evav (Tanimber-Kei) is the name of the island, of the village, and of the society, situated in the southwest of the Kei Archipelago, Southeast Moluccas, in Eastern Indonesia. The village is composed of two parts, the traditional one situated on a high cliff, the other one at the foot of the cliff, on the shore and facing the harbour. Here they are referred to as ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ village.
- 2.
At that time, the small town of Tual was the capital of the district of the Southeast Moluccas (Maluku Tenggara), situated on the island of Kei Kecil, one of the main islands of the Kei Archipelago. When reference is made to the town here, it concerns Tual.
- 3.
The choice of the appropriate word, futile as it may seem, is difficult, for I have never been able to decipher whether he had decided himself to play the role of host or if he had been assigned this task because of his command of English. From now on, I will refer to him as my ‘assistant’. Another young man replaced him soon afterwards and is still now my assistant.
- 4.
The Indonesian Constitution (Pancasila) identifies them as Islam, Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
- 5.
Mitu is the generic name given to ‘spirits’; it is different from the names given to the god, the dead, and other specific deities—all non-human beings. The name also differs from the words nit, nitu, and so on, often denoting in other Austronesian languages ‘the dead’ or ‘the ancestors’.
- 6.
In Tanebar-Evav, ‘going northwards’ is understood as ‘going down’.
- 7.
The word for ‘house’, rahan, designates both a building and a social group. As a social group it is associated with a proper name, for instance rahan Meka. There are twenty-three such Houses constituting the village, a fixed number, even though the dwelling houses are more numerous.
- 8.
The Indonesian construct tuan tanah is usually translated as ‘master of the land’ or ‘owner of the land’, but I prefer to translate it as ‘the ones who take care of, watch over, the land’; see presently.
- 9.
All over the Kei Archipelago, societies are composed of two status orders, mel and ren (often translated by scholars as ‘migrants’ versus ‘autochthons’, or, wrongly, as ‘nobles’ versus ‘commoners’), and of a third order, that of ‘dependants’, whose members belong to a high-status order’s House. Mel means the ‘right’, ‘to grow’, while ren or renren comes from the word renan, ‘mother’. The terms ‘nobles’ and ‘commoners’ do not reflect the relationship of the type ‘elder–younger’ that exists between the two orders, mel and ren, while the dependants are considered the ‘nephews’ of the mel.
- 10.
An old story tells how Muslim refugees from the Banda Islands (Central Moluccas), persecuted by the Dutch United East India Company (VOC) in 1621, asked permission to settle in the village of Tanebar-Evav. Its inhabitants refused, stating that a ‘religion’ could not enter the land of the ancestors. The refugees agreed to settle in a village in the north of the island of Great Kei. As a token of this agreement, a stone wall was constructed in the bay in front of the village of Tanebar-Evav. Since then, no ‘religion’ should penetrate the territory beyond this limit. Conflicts with the Protestant and Catholic churches taking place in the second half of the 20th century were never unequivocally settled (Barraud 2017).
- 11.
To refuse the establishment of a world religion on ancestors’ land is a form of exclusion that the society decided upon. But if the converts, who are no longer allowed to be ritual elders of a House, leave this task to their brothers, fathers, or sons, they still participate in the rituals and do not reject the ideas-values of lór-haratut.
- 12.
Other stories attribute to a foreigner a high status because of his noble appearance, a reference to the first migrants who founded the Houses and were incorporated as mel nobility. Conversely, physical or behavioural defects resulted in the degradation of a person’s status and ultimately her or his exclusion from society (Barraud 2005).
- 13.
Orang Kaya is the name of one of the socio-ritual tasks attributed to an elder. He is responsible for leading the rituals and settling disputes; he is also in charge of relations with the world beyond.
- 14.
Nowadays, one of these houses in the central part of the lower village is the house of the village deputy headman, who has the task to receive guests and to offer room and food to some (not very numerous) tourists.
- 15.
These exchanges occur each time a new house is built, and the participants bring gifts according to their position in the relationship, either on the wife’s or on the husband’s side.
- 16.
Geurtjens (1921: 22) translates batang as ‘to protect/to preserve, watch/watch over, to pay attention to, to pay attention to oneself, to preserve, to take care, to preserve/protect, to look after, […] be aware that … not’ (Dutch ‘beschermen, bewaken, oppassen, zich in acht nemen, bewaren, zorg dragen voor, behoeden, hoeden […] pas op dat … niet (Malay djangan)’).
- 17.
See note 9.
- 18.
This status does not give rise to any form of superiority but creates a relationship that looks like that of duan, often translated as ‘master’, ‘lord’, or ‘owner’, that I formerly analysed as meaning ‘to be at the service of’. I prefer not to use the word ‘owner’, since that is too close to the meaning of ‘owning a property’. ‘To lord over’ or ‘to rule over’ is in no way linked to some sort of property. I discussed at length the ideas of duan and dutu in Barraud (2010: 131 sqq.).
- 19.
Another example of the meaning of duan is for instance in the construct ve’e duan, ‘the one who takes care of a garden’, ‘the master of the garden’, who is ‘in charge of the garden’ but not its ‘owner’. Other examples are in Barraud (2010: 124 sqq.).
- 20.
To ‘be concerned’ is also different from the notion of ‘protecting’. The word fa’ar expresses this idea of protection; it applies to the stone wall traditionally surrounding the village in defence against attacks. The same word designates a fence added to the stone wall surrounding the gardens as a protection against wild boars and the wooden shields used in war canoes. The word rereng also designates ‘protection’ but in this case connotes ‘to protect from filth’ or ‘obstacles’—as in rereng yeyan, literally, ‘to protect the feet’, removing stones from the path, an image of smoothing the way in front of somebody, as compensation for her or his help. Protection has a sense of closing around something, to cover, to make some sort of fence or barrier, which is not included in the idea of ‘taking care of’.
- 21.
This is evidently not the case with the foreign fishing vessels that destroy the coral reefs with their industrial fishing techniques. They come very close to the shores that belong to the village without asking permission. It is a form of piracy that is hardly controlled by the Indonesian marine authorities.
References
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———. 2010. De la résistance des mots. Propriété, possession, autorité dans des sociétés de l’Indo-Pacifique. In La cohérence des sociétés. Mélanges en hommage à Daniel de Coppet, ed. André Iteanu, 83–146. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.
———. 2017. A Wall, Even in Those Days! Encounters with Religions and What Became of the Tradition. In The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond, ed. Michel Picard, 185–216. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Geurtjens, H. 1921. Woordenlijst der Keieesche taal, Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. Weltevreden: Albrecht & Co.
Platenkamp, J.D.M. 2005. Des personnes incomplètes aux sociétés accomplies. L’Homme 174: 125–160. (Numéro spécial Moitié d’homme).
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Barraud, C. (2019). Welcome to Tanebar-Evav: Can One Be Incorporated in a Village Society?. In: Platenkamp, J., Schneider, A. (eds) Integrating Strangers in Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16703-5_9
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