All things go in pairs,or the sharks will bite: the antithetical nature of Fijian chiefship

Via an historical-cum-ethnographic analysis of the history of chiefship in the vanua (country) of Sawaieke, central Fiji, this essay argues against the prevailing view that Fijian social relations are fundamentally hierarchical. Rather social relations in general and chiefship in particular are predicated on complementary and opposing concepts of equality and hierarchy, such that neither can become, in Dumont's terms, ‘an encompassing value’. This radical opposition between equality and hierarchy, Hegelian in form, is fundamental to Fijian dualism, so it pervades Fijian daily life and informs, for example, sexual relations, kinship, chiefship and notions of the person. ‘The household’ is the basic kinship unit and while relations within households are hierarchical, relations across households are those of balanced reciprocal exchange, epitomised in the relation between cross-cousins as equals and affines. The analysis shows that Fijian chiefship — past or present — cannot, as ‘value’, encompass the pervasive antithesis between hierarchy and equality. Rather its efficacy and its continuity require that hierarchy and equality remain in tension with one another as opposing, and equally important, concepts of social relations.     

The Qawa incident in 1968 and other cases of ‘spirit possession’: Religious Syncretism in Fiji

Abstract

Government medical officers investigating an outbreak among adolescent Indian schoolgirls in Fiji diagnosed mass hysteria and identified the trigger girl. Their school was temporarily closed and parents were advised to keep their daughters quietly at home. The Hindu parents were not satisfied with reassurances, since they believed that their children had been possessed by hostile Fijian spirits of a sacred pool on the edge of the school playground that had been damaged by an Indian bulldozer operator who later died. The girls were taken to Hindu healers and to a Muslim healer with Fijian‐derived powers. The local Fijian chief performed a Fijian ceremony of appeasement at the pool. A Hindu pujari prayed to the Hindu elephant god and, following Fijian ritual, poured yaqona (kava) into the pool and asked the spirits for forgiveness. Finally a Hindu pandit prayed to Hindu gods to exorcise the evil spirits, conducting the public Om Shanti ceremony. All the girls who attended the final ceremony recovered. The Indian and Fijian communities combined their beliefs and rituals to appease the spirits and, as far as they were concerned, to cause the girls to recover and to remove the troubles from the school and to prevent further troubles from occurring.     

Drinking to Mana and Ethnicity: Trajectories of Yaqona Practice and Symbolism in Eastern Fiji

This paper sets out a transformational history of yaqona use in Fiji from first contact with Europeans to present times. Trying to transcend the familiar history/structure dichotomy, two relatively separate trajectories of Fijian practice are identified, both incorporating enduring cultural premises, both logically and historically transformative. In the older of these trajectories, yaqona drinking is transformed ritually to promote or block the circulation of mana in embodied Fijian ‘lands’. In the younger pathway, by contrast, secular variants of yaqona ceremonial are invented to ethnic effect as one particular transformation of a modern structure that, against the grain of ritual practice, tends to detach ethnic Fijians from ancestral powers. It is suggested that, whilst, in appropriate spaces, contemporary ethnic objectifications of yaqona are formulated in opposition to other ethnic presences as expressions of ‘authentic’ Fijian‐ness, the underlying ritual transformations of yaqona produce a range of Fijian states that exceed this authenticity and challenge the otherwise hegemonic claims of ethnicity.     

Viti,the Soil from Eden: On Historical Praxis as a Mode of Connecting in Kadavu

Looking at Fijian Methodism and its role in discourses on identity in Fiji leads to the question of the relationship between Christianity and the vanua, the complex notion of land so crucial for ethnic Fijians' traditionalistic identity constructions. How is it possible to retain important dimensions of the vanua within a Christian worldview? An attempt to understand this relationship using the example of a Fijian meke makes clear that specific ways of constructing the past are crucial here. A concept of history as a symbolic form renders these ways of constructing the past understandable as historical — and it is exactly this historical character which opens the possibility of establishing a relationship to the Christian God while retaining essential dimensions of the vanua, a possibility which can provide one experiential background for the plausibility of an ethnic interpretation of Christianity.     

Averting ‘Irresponsible Nationalism’

ABSTRACT

Historians of politics in colonial Fiji highlight the contrast between Indian leaders' challenge to European dominance and Fijian chiefs' alignment with European political leaders in defence of colonial rule and against a perceived ‘Indian threat’. While this was the major political divide, its emphasis has neglected a moment of disaffection on the part of the leading chiefs that perhaps had the potential to provoke a challenge to the colonial order. The upset of the established pattern of political relations between Fijian leaders and the colonial government on the eve of the Pacific War, involving some unity with Indian leaders in the Legislative Council, influenced a Fijian policy change that shaped the development of Indigenous Fijian leadership and its quest for state power as British rule drew to an end. This paper suggests that Ratu Sukuna's Fijian Administration, established at the end of the war, be understood not simply as the last, and paradoxically the strongest, stage of colonial indirect rule, but more significantly as both an institutionalised expression and containment of a Fijian nationalist potential, initially energised by a tension in government – Fijian relations that, in part, reflected a white racialism in both official and unofficial attitudes and practices.     

‘We visit the colo towns … when it is safe to go’: Indigenous Adoption of Methodist Christianity in the Wainibuka and Wainimala Valleys,Fiji, in the 1870s

ABSTRACT

The Methodist mission in Fiji was from its inception maritime in nature and was slow to move into the interior of the largest island, Viti Levu. In the 1870s, only two European missionaries ministered to most of Viti Levu, leaving the greater part of evangelism and teaching in the hands of Fijian native ministers (talatala itaukei) and particularly teachers (vakavuvuli). Using evidence from mission and secular travellers in the eastern highland areas of the Wainimala and Wainibuka valleys, this paper suggests that the measles epidemic of 1875, while horrific in its direct effects, did not lead to widespread rejection of Christianity in the valleys of eastern Colo. Rather, Methodism progressed slowly, developing in ways that maintained Fijian priorities and customary practices, and the forms of education and fundraising adopted included Indigenous modes of learning and exchange.     

Review

Mind, Materiality and History: Explorations in Fijian Ethnography. By Christina Toren. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Price: $pD16.99     

Review

Customs of respect: the traditional basis of Fijian communal politics. By John Nation. Monograph 14, Development Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1978. Pp. xx + 168.     

The Republic of the Marshall Islands since 1990

Rioting that followed clashes between police and strikers in Suva in December 1959 was interpreted by the authorities and the European minority as being motivated by anti-European feeling. But the racial interpretation of the strike tells us more about the authorities' own fears of solidarity between Indians and Fijians than it does about the strikers actual motivations, which were simply to advance an economic demand. The racialisation of the dispute came afterwards, in the suppression of the strike, and the reassertion of traditional Fijian authority vested in the Council of Chiefs, whose appeal to Fijians was made in specifically anti-Indian terms. The return to traditional authority prevented moves to modernise Fijian society.     

We Branded Ourselves Long Ago: Intangible Cultural Property and Commodification of Fijian Firewalking

ABSTRACT The Fijian firewalking ceremony (vilavilairevo), traditionally performed only by members of the Sawau people on the island of Beqa, is a prime example of a propitiation ritual that has become commodified to suit the requirements of tourism. The Sawau ‘gift’ of walking on white‐hot stones introduces another dimension of the gift practice. Although gifts and commodities are often treated as ideal‐type opposites, and a tradition of Melanesian scholarship has focused attention on the inalienability of gifts, I argue that the self‐consciously traditional firewalking practice of Beqa Island, Fiji, is an inalienable sui generis commodity that becomes effective by ‘branding’ Fijian concepts of different places' distinct custodianships. Over the last two centuries, the gift of firewalking has transmuted itself into a sociocultural tool that has consistently indigenized the power of the foreign. The gift of firewalking has allowed its custodians to locally sustain their community, to gain a reach and respect across the nation and beyond, and to intensify the group's social sentiment and social capital.     

'You are not a White Woman!'

During her trial for assault in Fiji in 1915, Stella Spencer was accused of improperly associating with and even making love to native Fijians, in such a way as to prejudice the order of the colony. The background to the trial was Spencer's work on behalf of the populist Fijian leader of the Viti Company, Apolosi Nawai. As well as using the trial in an attempt to vilify Nawai as a crook, the European colonists asserted a harsh racial division with regard to sexual conduct between the races. Sexual intercourse symbolised a diminution of white prestige. This article tells the story of Apolosi Nawai and Stella Spencer from contemporaneous reports, the Fijian National Archives and the Colonial Office Archives     

Geochemical Characterization of Lapita Pottery Via Inductively Coupled Plasma–mass Spectrometry (ICP–MS)

We have obtained high‐resolution elemental data on Lapita ceramics (3200–2700 cal year bp ) from Fiji, Tonga and New Ireland using chemistry‐based inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICP–MS). These data show clear elemental distinctions between Lapita pottery manufactured in Fiji, Tonga and New Ireland, and demonstrate significant elemental variation in Fijian ceramics collected from settlements in close proximity to one another. Therefore, we anticipate that ICP–MS will become an effective technique for tracking the transfer of Lapita pottery within and between different island groups in Oceania.     

History,Hermeneutics and Fijian Ethnic ‘Paramountcy’

The historical context in which Fiji's Deed of Cession was formulated satisfied the necessary conditions for British annexation and included safeguards for Fijian land rights. Both Fijian and English texts implied that the incoming government would respect Fijian custom. For over 60 years, Fijians benefited from a special administrative status in territorial government, restrictions on land alienation and privileged access to departments of the colonial executive. But Fijian commoners were disadvantaged in education, and resisted payment of head taxes. The tax crisis exposed the inability of chiefs to grapple with reform of local government. Faced with electoral competition in the post-war period, Fijian leadership took refuge in a racial view of political legitimacy, derived from an interpretation of the Deed as a ‘charter’ of Fijian rights.

After independence, Fijian need for reassurances about preferential treatment in a parliamentary democracy was fuelled by commoner dissatisfaction with Alliance administration and by a political party formed by the Council of Chiefs. This faction provided a considered ideology for a racial view of ethnic ‘sovereignty’ in a plural society by ignoring the issue of citizenship and over-emphasising the role of the monarch in the language of the Deed. Other commentaries have also favoured an anachronistic interpretation of the political legacy of the Deed, but none of the post-1987 regimes has adopted its terms in Fijian municipal law. Such a suggestion has been made, however, as a defence of commoner rights against Fijian government agencies on the model of the Waitangi Tribunal.     

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: The Method of Hope: anthropology, philosophy, and Fijian knowledge By Hirokazu Miyazaki Wehali the Female Land: traditions of a Timorese ritual centre By Tom Therik Papua New Guinea Prints By Melanie Eastburn The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania By Paul D'Arcy In Colonial New Guinea: Anthropological Perspectives Naomi M Mc Pherson Texts and Contexts: Reflections in Pacific Islands Historiography Edited by Doug Munro Yumbulyumbulmantha ki‐Awarawu. All kinds of Things from Country. Yanyuwa Ethnobiological Classification By John Bradley, Miles Holmes, Dinah Norman Marrngawi Annie Isaac Karrakayn, Jemima Miller Wuwarlu and Ida Ninganga     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Substantial Justice: An Anthropology of Village Courts in Papua New Guinea by Michael Goddard Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney's Georges River. By Heather Goodall and Alison Cadzow . Contesting Native Title By David Ritter The Native Title Market By David Ritter Melanesian Odysseys: Negotiating the self, narrative and modernity. By Lisette Josephides . Tattooing in the Marshall Islands. By Dirk H. R. Spennemann The Warm Winds of Change: Globalisation in Contemporary Sāmoa. By Cluny and La'avasa Macpherson In God's Image: The Metaculture of Fijian Christianity. By Matt Tomlinson A CRITIQUE: Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability and the Aftermath of Empire. Edited by Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee     

The Capture and Curation of the Cannibal ‘Vendovi’: Reality and Representation of a Pacific Frontier

ABSTRACT

The United States Exploring Expedition into the Pacific launched in 1838 was marked, like the continental expansion westward, by violent encounters with Native peoples. By examining the record of the expedition's kidnapping of the Fijian Ro Veidovi, the fate of his body after death, and the ways his story came to be invoked in the official narrative of the expedition, the popular press, the ‘National Gallery’ and, more recently, the Fijian press, this paper demonstrates how violent contacts on the Pacific frontier were remembered, effaced, and reconceived. The changing story of Ro Veidovi permanently bridged distant locales in an emerging ‘Pacific World’, setting in motion transcultural negotiations that continue to this day.     

Book reviews

The New South Pacific. By R. G. Crocombe. Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1973. 130 pp. $A4–50.

Lae Village and City. By Ian Willis. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1974. 173 pp. $10.80.

Fijian Way of Life. By Kingslev Roth. Second Edition with a new Introduction by G. B. Milner. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1973. XXXIX, 176 pp. $6.00.

Contention and Dispute: Aspects of Law and Social Control in Melanesia. Edited by A. L. Epstein. Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1974. 354 pp. $11.95.

A new system of slavery: the export of Indian labour overseas 1830–1920. By Hugh Tinker. London, New York, Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1974. xvi, 432.     

The trial of consul pritchard

Abstract

William Pritchard, Fiji's first British consul, quickly became a pivotal figure after his arrival in 1858, negotiating an offer of cession, establishing a court, stabilising relations among the resident populations, and resisting Tongan threats to the power of Cakobau, the leading chief. In 1859 the Fijian chiefs gave him ‘supreme authority to govern Fiji’. His resistance to the Tongan faction put him at odds with Wesleyan missionaries, who influenced Col. William Smythe, who was sent by the British government to investigate the offer of cession. Smythe recommended against cession and campaigned for the government to send a commission to investigate Pritchard's conduct, charging him with financial irregularities and interfering in Fijian native affairs. Pritchard was dismissed from office, but records reveal the commission to have been a travesty. Pritchard influenced events in Fiji at a crucial time, and his reputation and career deserve reassessment.