Writing history in post-conflict Timor-Leste

In 2005, 25 years after independence, the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu produced its first comprehensive high-school history curriculum (Lightner & Naupa 2005). According to its authors, resources and capacity were not the only factors in the delay. Writing a national history curriculum after colonialism proved to be an inherently difficult negotiation in a community divided between Anglophone and Francophone communities, with an intricate and complex legacy of resistance and accommodation so close in the past (Lightner & Naupa 2004). For East Timor, emerging from two consecutive colonial eras, these challenges are profound (Leach 2006, 2007). This paper looks briefly at the practical and symbolic challenges facing history curriculum developers, some historiographical debates over writing postconflict history, and concludes with some recommendations.