Bunak

The Bunak are a Papuan people of the mountainous interior of central Timor, their villages straddling the later border between West Timor and East Timor. Unlike their Atoni and Tetun neighbours, who speak Malayo-Polynesian languages, theirs belongs to the Trans-New Guinea family and shares a non-Austronesian vocabulary with other Timor Papuan tongues.

Papuan place names in their heartland suggest descent from Melanesian settlers who reached Timor around 3000 BC and were already there when Austronesian migrants arrived after 2500 BC. Without writing, they preserved history and custom in orally recited verse and, like the southern Tetun, organized society along matrilineal lines.

Portuguese influence reached Timor in the sixteenth century, and mid-eighteenth-century Dutch expansion split Bunak lands into Dutch and Portuguese spheres, though local traditional rulers long held real power.