Telling What was not Told: Acehnese Women’s Narratives of Conflict and the Tsunami

This study investigates how Acehnese women experience, remember, and transmit narratives about prolonged armed conflict and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. In-depth interviews were conducted with women across two generational categories: those who had directly experienced these events (experiential narrators) and those who have learned the stories through familial or community transmission (post-memory narrators). The study situates narratives as a social practice, exploring how women’s experiences, survival, and resilience are interpreted, negotiated, and passed on. The study reveals a striking divergence in how these two crises are remembered and narrated. The tsunami, often seen as a divine test, has been spiritualized, moralized, and publicly commemorated through museums, school drills, and religious discourse. This structured and didactic form of storytelling fosters intergenerational compassion and preparedness. In contrast, conflict memories are fraught with moral complexity, silence, and fear. These narratives, often fragmented, emotionally restrained, and selectively told, have been shaped by past surveillance, suspicion, and unresolved trauma. The study underscores the importance of integrating women-centered approaches into post-disaster and post-conflict recovery. It also shows how the recognition and protection of women’s voices is vital to understanding long-term resilience, collective memory, and processes of social repair.