Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba

Chapter 2: Locations, Histories, Identities

n the southernmost region of Indonesia, Sumba sits askew from the sweeping arch of islands forming the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur (the Lesser Sunda Islands). Much of the eastern coastal portion of the island (of this account) appears as a largely uninhabited open range—a monotony of savannah etched by gullies—lacking the rich volcanic soil and rainfall of the more verdant Indonesian islands.1 Livestock grazes on eastern Sumba’s sweeping grasslands, and crops along rivers provide patches of greenery. Within the most arid region of Indonesia, Sumba (along with neighboring islands of Savu, Roti, and Timor) slips into the climatic and geographical categories of Australia rather than those typical of Southeast Asia. Indeed, the late dry season (ndau wandu,2 between October and December) in eastern Sumba prompts rain prayers (hamayangu wai urangu), ritual processions of chanting men calling down the longawaited monsoon. Rivers to the sea might be impregnated by mythical red crocodiles (wuya rara) at this time, signaling that rains are immanent . Such images of potency and penetration as well as danger, borne through passages and undercurrents, reflect exigencies of life in Sumba as beings move between realms. East Sumba In international tourist guidebooks, as well as scholarly publications, Sumba is often located three or four islands to the east of Bali or Java, a “marginal” place to the rest of Indonesia when considered in relation to the heavily populated central islands. Although incorporated into an Indonesian nation in the 1950s, the island is distant from Jakartan centers of power and public awareness. In fact, Javanese and people from western Indonesia often confuse Sumba with the island of Sumbawa, which sits to its northwest. Sumba is not known to have possessed a writing system until the arrival of Dutch mission schools in the late nineteenth century. Material cultural records of the past (accessible to outsiders) exist in the stone funerary megaliths occupying most villages and in older textiles and artifacts that have for the greater part been exported and preserved in foreign collections.3 Yet despite extensive world collecting, objects of value remain hidden in village households or lie buried in Sumba’s graves. In East Sumba as in other regions of the island, male ritual specialists (ratu) recite accounts of regional history (lii ndai) as part of ritual oraChapter 2 Locations, Histories, Identities I tory. Myths in the region generally relate that Sumba’s first inhabitants arrived by boat, or sometimes from the heavens, at the northernmost peninsula (Cape Sasar), and dispersed into clans (kabihu), which migrated and populated the remainder of the island.4 Ancient forebears established the numerous political districts of eastern Sumba, centered in capital villages (paraingu). Such village centers continue to anchor origin myths that legitimize noble families still claiming sovereignty in their domains. People from lower-ranking lineages generally inhabit villages (katoku) outlying the noble settlements. Although currently people are far more dispersed from their ancestral regions than in the past (through occupations brought about by modern economic changes),5 attitudes of many people in the region of my study echo what Marie Jeanne Adams concluded thirty years ago: “the Sumbanese individual is primarily conscious of his identity as a member of a household, uma, linked with a localized lineage, kabihu, while at the same time his loyalties and duties are organized in complex ways within a territorial unit, the tana, or district” (1969:22–23). The indigenous eastern Sumbanese maintain a basically three-tiered caste system, composed of nobility (maramba), commoners (kabihu), and slaves (ata). Following Sumba’s incorporation into an Indonesian national system, the nobility no longer has legal control with which to enforce customary law (uku marapu), but it nevertheless retains considerable social control. The maramba caste still possesses extensive resources, especially in terms of land (tana) and livestock (banda luri, ‘living wealth’), and persists in demonstrating status through display. Social power has manifested visibly through time in large, often elaborately carved funeral megaliths (reti), strikingly graphic textiles (hinggi maramba) worn as clothing, and clan homes (uma kabihu) with immense, high-peaked roofs (ndidung). Through such display, Sumbanese elites assert—visibly—status and dominion.6 In current times, however , systems of local power are challenged by forces such as Indonesian national law and ideology, religious conversion, public education, increased ethnic pluralism in Sumba, general access to print media and television, and growing local interaction with foreigners through the tourist and textile trades. “Ethnicity” as a category in Sumba has taken on more definition as people have...