Creating a Nation’s Memory: A Comparison of Accounts of Mass Violence in Textbooks from Timor-Leste

History textbooks and curriculum, which serve as tools for constructing historical memory, play an important role in influencing the national imaginings of youth. From 1974 to 1999, Timor-Leste experienced a civil war followed by a 24-year violent occupation under the Indonesian military. Since formal independence in 2002, there has existed a tension between two historical narratives—one from the national government focused on heroic resistance and the other from the Timorese Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) concentrated on the victims’ suffering. Although educational materials related to this time period have been developed for use in Timorese schools at primary and secondary levels, there have been no studies analyzing the content of these textbooks. Using thematic analysis, this paper examines how knowledge of the period 1974-1999 has been represented in three sets of educational materials from Timor-Leste—a grade 6 social science textbook, a grade 12 history textbook and a series of graphic-style books. The paper aims to understand how the violence of 1974-1999 is represented in these educational materials and examines how these representations as historical memory create certain images of the nation of Timor-Leste. Preliminary findings of this research show that these educational materials depict two narratives—one is the narrative of heroic resistance and the other is a narrative of suffering. The results of this analysis have implications for the teaching and learning of post-conflict history in Timor-Leste.