Ancestors and Visions: Reemergence of Traditional Religion in a Catholic Village in Flores ...

38 Pages·2013·0.71 MB·English

Working Paper Series
Studies on Multicultural Societies No.18
Ancestors and Visions:
Reemergence of Traditional Religion
in a Catholic Village
in Flores, Eastern Indonesia
Eriko Aoki
Afrasian Research Centre, Ryukoku University
Phase 2
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Today'ʼs globalised world has witnessed astonishing political and economic growth in
the regions of Asia and Africa. Such progress has been accompanied, however, with a
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Afrasian Research Centre, Ryukoku University
Ancestors and Visions:
Reemergence of Traditional Religion in a Catholic Village
in Flores, Eastern Indonesia
Eriko Aoki
Working Paper Series
Studies on Multicultural Societies No.18
2013
2013
978-4-904945-21-6
Ancestors and Visions:
Reemergence of Traditional Religion in a Catholic Village
in Flores, Eastern Indonesia

∗
Eriko Aoki

Introduction

Flores is a beautiful, mountainous island in southeastern Indonesia. If you fly from Bali to
Ende, the capital of Ende regency, you can view the splendid landscape under the tropical sun,
like a precise diorama, with the shadow of your plane on it. If you sail into Ende port, you
can be amazed by Mt. Ia, with volcanic smoking points on its surface, and a small vibrant
town surrounded by other mountains. Traversing Flores by bus on the main road can satisfy
your exoticism with changing light, air and types of local houses and clothing. However, as
soon as you arrive at the airport, port or bus terminal, the tranquility of the self-satisfied
traveler is broken by the hustle and bustle, mostly by the bus, taxi or motorbike-taxi drivers
competing for passengers.

After being caught by one of them, I usually get to my ‘brother’s’ house in Ende and spend a
whole day and night celebrating our reunion. Then the day after, I depart for a village where
there is life different not only from the exotic diorama, but also from the hustle and bustle
spots in Ende. The life there, just like ours, is full of daily conflicts and reconciliation,
emotional attachment, influences from the outside world and specific cultural and historical
concerns of specific natures and textures, which are different from ours.

I have done anthropological fieldwork since 1979 in the Ende-speaking area and the
West-Lio-speaking area1 in Ende regency, central Flores. This article sheds light on religious
practices in the interlacing of the local, the Catholic and the nation-state cultures among the
Wolosoko2 people in the West-Lio-speaking area.

Wolosoko people live at the south foot of Mt Lepembusu. Their population numbers about
1,700 and they are all (registered as) Catholic. I would like to discuss the reemergence of

∗
Professor, Faculty of Sociology, Ryukoku University, Japan
1 I additionally did fieldwork in Nga’o-speaking to the west of Ende-speaking area.
2 I use pseudonyms for place and personal names.
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‘traditional’ religion, which started around the year 2000, when Wolosoko become a 100
percent Catholic village following the death of a few elders who had chosen not to be
baptized. While about 90 percent of the Indonesian people are Muslim, about 90 percent of
the population of Flores is Catholic.

In the following, first I clarify my theoretical stance concerning the study of religions, with
which stance I write this article. The second part puts forward the historical, political and
cultural contexts, in order to render the events and occurrences understandable. The third part
describes events that are revitalizing their ‘tradition’ and an emergent healing séance. The
article ends with some concluding remarks. In doing this, I would like to explore how to
understand religion without rendering it to issues other than religion, while paying attention
to the sociocultural interlacing.

1. Theoretical Framework

Religion has been one of the hottest and most enduring issues in anthropology for more than
100 years. It is difficult to discuss religion without any fascination, enthusiasm, obsession or
seriousness. While anthropologists have taken it for granted that religious phenomena can
occur any time, any place, and that they are studying the same theme, they find it difficult to
define what religion is. Let me briefly sketch a history of anthropological studies of religion.

From the late 19th to the early 20th century, religions —especially magic or primitive
religions— were studied vis-a-vis scientific, rational and logical thinking, with evolutional
perspectives.

In the first half of the 20th century, under the strong influence of Durkheimian sociology,
primitive religions and their constituents, such as totems, myths and rituals, were dealt with
as social facts.

From the middle 20th century, symbols, signs and texts became the main topics of
anthropological studies. Religions were dealt with as one of the cultural issues, on the basis
of linguistics, semiotics and interpretation theories. The Linguistic Turn came to take shape
in anthropological studies, whose focus was on epistemology. Structuralism worked as one of
the most influential theoretical frameworks.

Since the 1970s, in which the second wave of feminism arose and Said published Orientalism,
the Linguistic Turn took shape in the social sciences as social constructionism and political
consciousness, which shed light on power relations in sociocultural and epistemological
issues. In this intellectual climate, anthropological researches, including those on religions,
were critically politicized and ‘historicized.’ In the difficult processes of coping with
modernization and globalization, or national integration and capitalization, phenomena of
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re-enchantment, such as revitalization of religions, unique developments of local Christianity,
and violent religious collisions have been occurring. Recent anthropological studies tend to
postulate these issues as part of the local manifestation of geopolitical historical processes.

While I admit the significance of these anthropological studies of religion and their
viewpoints, this article differs from them in two points. The first point is that while these
studies deal with religions from viewpoints that reduce religions to other than religions —that
is, scientific, rational and logical thinking, social facts, cultural system, meanings, historical
processes and power relations— I would like to deal with religious issues as they are.

Geertz defined religion as a cultural system, rather intellectualistically, on the basis of his
conceptualization of culture and meaning. According to his well-known metaphorical
definition of culture, meaning and human beings, humans are animals that weave cobwebs of
meanings and live on them. He maintains that since religion is a cultural system, it can or
should be explained within a bounded system of meanings, which is made by humans as
subjects. The above-mentioned other types of studies also postulate that humans are subjects
that produce meanings. However, religious phenomena cannot be explained thoroughly by a
system of meanings; in other words, there is something remaining after such an explanation.
That is paradoxically why all these anthropological studies still agree that they are working
on the same theme called religion, although they reduce religions to different fields of
meaning.

It can be posited that religion is practice pointing to and working toward that something
remaining—that is, the outside of the cobweb of meanings. People in any society know the
limits of humans and have the conviction that the cobweb is supported by something. This
becomes clear, even in secularized societies, when people experience the death of those close
to them, disease and misfortune, or keenly long for good luck. Then they start to point to the
outside of the cobweb in some way or another, which might be twined around the cobweb
they are on.

In ‘Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,’ Wittgenstein pointed out what ceremonial and
religious beings we are, just like the peoples whom Frazer had tried to explain. Wittgenstein
also pointed out that explaining religious practices is wrong because they are carried out
neither like scientific nor like any other practices.

Even the idea of trying to explain the practice —say the killing of the priest-king—
seems to me wrong-headed. All that Frazer does is to make this practice plausible
to people who think as he does. It is very queer that all these practices are finally
presented, so to speak, as stupid actions (Wittgenstein 1979: 1e).

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Like ‘kissing the picture of a loved one (Wittgenstein 1979: 4e),’ ceremonial practices are
also embedded in our life. Our religious practices are not different in kind from those of
others (4e), while ours and theirs are realized differently from each other as St. Augustine and
Buddhist holy men practice differently (1e). Putting forward what others do as stupid, or
giving it the label of otherness, does not help us understand it (6e). What we can and should
do toward ceremonial and religious practices is to describe and say ‘human life is like that’ or
‘that is what took place here’ (Wittgenstein 1979: 3e).

Why in anthropology have religious practices been explained from the viewpoint of scientific
thinking, social activities, political relations, meanings, cultural systems and so on? I can
point out several intertwined reasons. In his book about the encounter between Protestant
missionaries and local people in Sumba, which is southeast of Flores, Keane points out that
the criticism by Protestants against the local religion converges with familiar ideas, such as
the Kantian claim that human freedom depends on moral autonomy, which became central to
later secular liberal institutions (Keane 2007: 7). I would like to argue that anthropology has
also been penetrated by the Kantian ideologies, so deeply that it has been taken for granted
that religion is dealt with in secular liberal ways. The constructionist influences on
anthropology after the Linguistic Turn has strengthened this tendency by making
anthropologists refrain from talking about the nature or the Thing Itself. As Taylor pointed
out, in modern societies academic arguments should be conducted in public spaces, where
‘the norms and principles we follow, the deliberations we engage in, generally don’t refer to
God or to any religious beliefs (Taylor 2007: 2).’ Notwithstanding those modern norms and
principles, religions have often become problematic in the modern history of colonization,
national integration and postcolonial situations. Especially since 9/11, ‘Religion has
definitely played an important role in public debates about violence in the West,’ and ‘Many
people feel that religion is a very important factor in the rise of violence, even at the level of
the local community (Borg and Henten 2010: 3).’ This political and social climate also seems
to influence anthropological studies of religions.

The theoretical frameworks for anthropological studies of religions have been historically and
politically oriented, and consequently have limited the possibility of study. I would like to
consider religious practices by describing them instead of reducing them to spheres other than
religion.

The second point that differentiates this article from the majority of studies is the focus of
description. When events are focused on in anthropology, they are often regarded as
problematic or tense, and are explained as changes caused by or against ‘the History’ such as
colonization, modernization, globalization and so forth. The events focused on here, which
are neither problematic nor tense, are not causally explained by or against ‘the History.’ A
‘Historical’ explanation of the events might be possible. As Wittgenstein maintains, however,
every explanation is a hypothesis and, compared with the impression made on us by what is
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described here, the explanation is too uncertain (Wittgenstein 1979: 3e). Furthermore,
explanation through macrohistory leaves many subtle aspects of the events unexplained and
may blind us to the people’s reality. Wittgenstein suggests that religious events —not only in
primitive societies, but also in our societies— emerge as follows.

We can readily imagine that, say, in a given tribe, no one is allowed to see the king,
or again, that every man is obliged to see him. …. Think how after Schubert’s
death his brother cut certain of Schubert’s scores into small pieces and gave to his
favorite pupils these pieces of a few bars each. As a sign of piety, this action is just
comprehensible to us as the other one of keeping the scores undisturbed and
accessible to no one. And if Schubert’s brother had burned the scores, we could
still understand this as a sign of piety (Wittgenstein 1979: 5e).

After describing the historical and cultural milieu for current religious practices in Wolosoko,
where the nation-state and the Catholic practices have been woven into the daily life, this
article describes how the ‘traditional religion’ emerges and how people live it through the
events.

2. The Milieu Where the Events Occur

2.1. The modern states and the Catholic practices in Central Flores
The first contact of Flores Island with the Western powers was in the 16th century, through
the Portuguese and their Dominican Catholic missionaries. The name of the island, Flores,
derived from a Portuguese name, Cape of Flores, in the 16th century (Suchtelen 1921: 8).
From the 17th century, the Dutch and the Portuguese fought over Flores. In 1851 the Dutch
took over the area around eastern Flores, as guarantee, for a loan of florin 80,000 to the
Portuguese; in 1859, Flores and the smaller islands in the vicinity were taken over for an
additional payment of f 120,000 and for Catholic mission instead of Protestant mission.

Wolosoko people’s first contact with Europeans was in 1907, through the military expedition
by the Dutch colonial government, while before that, the Dutch government policy was one
of non-interference in native affairs, the population inland in the central Flores area never
drawing the attention of the Dutch government. It was reported that Floresians who were
killed on the ‘enemy side’ during the expedition from 1907 to 1909 numbered 413 (Suchtelen
1921); confiscated rifles numbered 5,385 (Vries 1910: 74-75).

According to several old Wolosoko men, during the period of the violent first contact one
Wolosoko man was killed and Wolosoko men killed a Dutch man in requital, burying his
head at the entrance of their village. They enthusiastically insisted that the Dutch army was
defeated, by recounting the following story.

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Once upon a time there were seven villages on Mt Lepembusu3; the rest of the world was
covered by water. Goa people, Tidhu people, Buto people, Melaka people, Jawa people and
other peoples lived in their respective villages. When Buto people felled the buto tree, the
water withdrew. The people dispersed. In separating from each other at Watuwatawanda,
those seven peoples made an alliance-treaty (pore jaji) by slaughtering a tiny male buffalo
(kamba mosa panda) and a tiny male pig (wawi mosa fole). But the white people forgot the
alliance-treaty (pore jaji) and attacked us. When they first attacked us, we defeated them by
making the following war chant (kadha) against them.

nebu se leja ina, kita mera ghaa Lepembusu se papa kita sama sama
nea wi’a waa
miu ata bara de ghawa
kami de ghaa
miu tau too, aro loka ana
kami tau dhawe, uma bo’o gaga
miu de ghawa
kami de ghaa
bagi wi’a kita lau Watuwatawanda
taga no’o kamba eo mosa panda, jaji kita iwa papa langga
rore no’o wawi eo mosa fole, pore kita iwa papa ndore
nebu naa miu mo’o gae wola kami
iwa ale
iwa tanga
sae sa’o
sengga sara
beja kengu
beke gaa
gena gho ana

Once upon a time we lived together here on Mt Lepembusu at the same place
then we separated and divided
you white people overseas
we remained here
you made gunpowder, molded bullets
we cultivated the fields, cleared the forest to be replete
you overseas
we here
we separated from each other down at Watuwatawanda

3 Lepembusu is the highest mountain in that area. It is often told that Lepembusu is the origin place of all the
humans in the world.
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