¹ Interview with Abé Barreto Soares, April 2018. All quotes from the poet come from this interview.

² Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 210.

³ On the colonial museum, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, second edition (London: Verso, 1991). On song and national identity in another Indonesian colonial context, see Julian Smythe, “The Living Symbol of Song in West Papua: A Soul Force to be Reckoned With,” Indonesia 95 (April 2013): 73-91, reprinted in David Webster, ed., Flowers in the Wall: Truth and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste, Indonesia, and Melanesia (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2016), 233-259.

⁴ On Timorese history, see among other sources Chega! The final report of the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (Jakarta: Gramedia, 2015); António Barbedo de Magalhães, Timor Leste: ocupaçãoIndonésia e genocîdio (Porto: Universidade do Porto, 1992); Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong, The War Against East Timor (London: Zed Books, 1984); James Dunn, East Timor: A Rough Passage to Independence (Australia: Longueville, 2004); Clinton Fernandes, The Independence of East Timor: Multidimensional Perspectives—Occupation, Resistance and International Political Activism (Eastbourne, East Sussex: Sussex Academic Press, 2011); Jill Jolliffe, East Timor: Nationalism and Colonialism (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1978); Jose Ramos-Horta, Funu: The Unfinished Saga of East Timor (Boston: Red Sea Press, 1987); Geoffrey Robinson, If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die: How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010); and Awet Tewelde Weldemichael, Third World Colonialism and Strategies of Liberation: Eritrea and East Timor Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

⁵ Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons (London: Verso, 1998).

⁶ Constancio Pinto and Matthew Jardine, East Timor's Unfinished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1997).

⁷ “Maubere” was a common name among the Mambai people of Timor-Leste, originally used under Portuguese colonialism to contemptuously describe hill peoples, then reclaimed as a nationalist badge of pride. See Ramos-Horta, Funu. The National Council of Maubere Resistance (CNRM) became the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) in 1998. See Sara Niner, Xanana: Leader of the Struggle for Independent Timor-Leste (Australian Scholarly Pub., 2009).

⁸ Abé Barreto Soares, “East Timor: Towards the Year 2000,” paper presented at Ontario conference on East Timer (1993).

⁹ Hannah Loney, “Speaking Out for Justice: Bella Galhos and the International Campaign for the Independence of East Timor,” in S. Berger and S. Scalmer (eds.), The Transnational Activist (London: Palgrave, 2018).

¹⁰ “Speech by H.E. President Taur Matan Ruak on the occasion of the 13th Anniversary of the Restoration of Independence,” Maliana, Timor-Leste, 20 May 2015.

¹¹ Text of poem from East Timor Alert Network papers, McMaster University Archives, Hamilton, Ont., Canada.

¹² Chega!; Robinson, If You Leave Us Here.

¹³ Leublora Green Village web site.

¹⁴ Text of poem courtesy ABS.

¹⁵ A dance performed by men.

¹⁶ A dance performed by men and women holding hands in a circle.

¹⁷ Among other inspirations, he lists Canadian poets Leonard Cohen, Earl Birney, Louis Dudek, and Margaret Avison. “These four poets really had an influence on my writing. The American poets that inspired me are Walt Whitman, Stanley Kunitz, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, novelists Henry James, Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, American presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, and also Martin Luther King. That is from the north, but from the south there is Pablo Neruda of course, José Luis Borges from Argentina, Eduardo Galeano from Uruguay, also from Brazil Paulo Coelho, from Nicaragua Ernesto Cardenal, from Guatemala Otto Rene Castillo, and from Mexico Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes plus Rosario Castellano. These are the writers from North and South America who really inspired me in my literary career.”

¹⁸ Text courtesy ABS.

¹⁹ See for instance Josh Trindade, “Lulik: The Core of Timorese Values,” Paper presented at: Communicating New Research on Timor-Leste 3rd Timor-Leste Study Association (TLSA) Conference on 30th June 2011.

²⁰ Balai Pustaka was a popular library and literacy program; Anwar and Rendra were nationalist poets writing in Indonesian and influencing the development of the language.

²¹ ABS, “Nationalism of Timor-Leste seen from the eyes of its poets,” posted on the author's blog “Dadolin–poetry from the land of ‘lafaek’ – crocodile,” 2 August 2010.