Indigenous Spirits and Global Aspirations in a Southeast Asian Borderland

Dr Michael Rose is a research fellow at the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific. He is an anthropologist and author with a passion for narrative ethnography and a varied, even colourful, background working jobs in policy, agriculture, international development and education throughout Eurasia and Australia.

"[This book's] highly creative, evocative and humorous prose makes for a joyful read. The ethnography comes alive through friendships, character portrayal and drama. Indigenous Spirits does not plunge the reader into the thick satay sauce of abstract theory and repetitive jargon, but presents Rose’s journey as, simply, a slow-moving encounter between an Australian anthropologist and Timorese. [...] Anthropologists may find Indigenous Spirits refreshing, as I do; students may find it inspiring; lay readers interested in Timor, anthropology and animism will find it unusually accessible."- Christopher Shepherd, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, South East Asia Research (2021)

• Chapter 1: Frontiers imagined, frontiers observed, A short of history of a small country, Life between lines: an outline of Oecussi, The kase, the meto, and the threefold division of indigenous life in Oecussi, Urban highlanders: movement and authority in Oecussi, Encounter. Change. Experience, Theories of encounter, Theories of change, Theories of experience, Encountering Oecussi: serendipity and the social imperative, Chapter 1 works cited, Chapter 2: Body and belief in Timor-Leste, His name was Octobian Oki, The dual utility of ritual in urban Timor, Spirits, somatic experience, and the limits of belief, Jake's story: Atauro, Jake's story: Oecussi, Land as life in Timor-Leste - the embodiment of knowing, Chapter 2 works cited, Chapter 3: The ruin and return of Markus Sulu, Precedence and the modern pegawai, The Sulu, their supplicants, and the shame of Markus, 'All Timor knew about the Sulu', Rain and money: meto tales as a way of controlling kase fortunes, Conclusion, Chapter 3 works cited, Chapter 4: Angry spirits in the special economic zone, ZEESM - Timor's special economic zone, High modernism, Oecussi's indigenous political/spiritual system, Growing food and relationships: Meto land practices, Affect, angry spirits, and resistance in Oecussi, Illness, anxiety, and affect in an inspirited land, Conclusion, Chapter 4 works cited, Chapter 5: Stones, saints and the 'Sacred Family', Religion in Oecussi: the concept of le'u, the coming of the Catholic and the influence of the Indonesian state, 'Heat', healing, and the meto in Oecussi, 'Strangeness', Mr. Bean and meto healing in 2015, The book of Dan. The door in the tree, Stones that look like saints, Healing and the Sacred Family, Conclusion, Chapter 5 works cited, Chapter 6: Meto kingship and environmental governance, Forests, failed states, and the local as a way of getting by, Jose and forest: personal ecologies of governance in the 21st century, Cloaking kingship - the Besi and the consolations of a failing state, The constraining - and enabling - effect of meto perspectives on kase law, Conclusion, Chapter 6 works cited, Chapter 7: Ritual speech and education in Kutete, Eskola Lalohan, Ritual speech in Oecussi, Children of the charcoal, children of the pencil, Conclusion, Chapter 7 works cited, Concluding thoughts: encounter, change, experience, An animating interior: the meto and economic development, Seeming like a state, Lives in motion: the meto as movement in a global age, Concluding thoughts: works cited, Selected Glossary, Bibliography, Index.