Unity and Division: Caring for Humans and Non-humans in a Divided Land

The border bifurcating the island of Timor was arbitrarily created in the late nineteenth century by the Portuguese and the Dutch. It is a border that has divided and separated the people of the ancient kingdoms of Koba Lima ever since, constraining relationships with their ancestral sacred sites, lands and waters. Timor’s wild animals, plants and natural phenomena challenge this division. Their free co-existence and movement through the region remain essential to the material and spiritual unity of life for people along the border. The ancestral and metaphysical connections they embody and enable are continually honoured in people’s ritual practice and speech, connecting and binding together what cross-island politics has otherwise held apart. In this article, we trace the effects of this constant mingling of places, words, and more-than-human beings, and elucidate the ways they subtly re-work the material divisions of colonial and now postcolonial borders. The effects of such re-workings are, we argue, to continuously extend boundaries, to celebrate multiplicity and diversity and, despite the many challenges, to determinedly maintain a commitment to practices that ensure cross-species unity and the flow of life.