AustLit

'Firmly emplaced within a soundscape incorporating movement, prayer, music, human-made and environmental sounds, the film Holding Tightly (2021) closely observes the performance and practice of a series of healing encounters in the Baucau Municipality of Timor-Leste. The lakadou (tubed zither) played in consort with dance in the opening and closing scenes is used by ritual specialists to communicate with the dai (ancestral nature spirit), which will eventually enable good health and more-than-human flourishing. Integral to conveying a sense of such flourishing are the sounds of everyday Timorese life which are pronounced in the film. The combination of rich and lively co-mingled soundscapes with the variety of healing modalities and exchanges depicted allows the audience to be drawn into the complexities and textures of Timorese pathways and aspirations for life-flourishing. Such flourishing emerges from forms of belief and care that are grounded in deep connections and exchanges between people and their environments. In this paper we explore the ways in which the relational sonic and visual richness of experience recorded in film opens new and productive ways of working with Indigenous knowledge and thinking about ecology.' (Publication abstract)

'Island Encounters is a narrative of Timor shaped by a journey from the outside in. Incorporating the author’s experiences from more than two decades of involvement with Timor-Leste and, more particularly, the months she spent travelling with her family from west to east in 2018, Palmer traces paths redolent in longing and learning, belonging and bewilderment, courage and conviction to tell of an island divided by colonialism and conflict.

'The book’s themes shuttle back and forth across the island, weaving together the past, present and future in deeply felt histories and personal stories that create the shared fabric of Timorese people’s lives. Offering a counterpoint to modernising development narratives, Island Encounters tells of people’s quiet determination to maintain their relationships between their lands, waters, traditions and each other.

'By foregrounding the ways in which ancestral pathways and cultural politics inform and course through everyday life on island Timor, Palmer reveals the richness of the rituals and customary practices that underpin Timorese lives and the lives of those entwined with them. And, all along the way, Island Encounters shows how Timor and its diverse peoples are working with, and re-working, confounding and being confounded by, the ever-desirous heart of development.'

‘A poignant, at times heart-wrenching, honest account of life in Timor-Leste.’
— José Ramos-Horta

‘Island Encounters is a shimmery blend of anthropology, memoir and reportage. Palmer journeys her way across the island of Timor and uncovers human stories of pasts not yet passed and of an uncertain present. Island Encounters will be the definitive contemporary explainer of why things work the way they do on both sides of the border, in West Timor and Timor-Leste. Not only is Palmer a deeply knowledgeable scholar, she is an absolute dream of a writer.’
— Gordon Peake, author of Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles, and Secrets from Timor-Leste

‘Palmer is the best kind of insider-outsider to translate a culture from the inside so outsiders can understand. Living with Timorese family, Palmer has had access to levels of cultural knowledge not usually shared with outsiders and she takes readers on a journey into the Timorese psyche. Island Encounters is a great intellectual gift to everyone wanting to better understand the complex new nation of Timor-Leste.’
— Sara Niner, author of Xanana: Leader of the Struggle for Independent Timor-Leste

Source : publisher's blurb