X-files in the Pacific

  Last week, before heading off on a two day trip to the West of Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island, we bowed our heads in prayer. After a few minutes of Christian prayer in Fijian, our voyage was blessed and we were ready to leave. Throughout the trip we would say grace before any sit-down meal. Similarly, we would pray before and after interviewing the potential living human treasures we were visiting. While my family sings grace in Samoan before dinner, this worship was more integrated in day-to-day life than I had ever experienced.

The only remaining pre-Christian 'temple' on Bau.

  Indigenous Fijians, like our colleagues on the trip, are very religious. When we visited the chiefly island of Bau, we learned about Fiji's first missionaries. Once they converted the powerful warlord Seru Epinisa Cokobau, the rest of Fiji followed suit. Cokobau was so taken with the new religion that he had all the ‘heathen temples’ on Bau island destroyed. Only one remains and is used as a meetinghouse.The island’s first Minister was the only person allowed to live on land above Cokobau’s house. This represented the Minister’s higher status, as a man of god, than the chief. 

  After this full-hearted adoption of Christianity, religion now influences almost all aspects of indigenous Fijian’s lives. Expression of faith can be very overt, like the grace before all meals we experienced and an almost universal attendance of church. It can also be subtler, for example, it influences acceptable dress-codes for women. One of our group recently overheard two indigenous Fijian women criticising another about her increasingly promiscuous outfits - she was wearing fitted clothing and exposing her shoulders. This stemmed from the missionaries promoting their version of modesty on indigenous Fijians that wouldn't have worn much clothing. 

  Something I find really interesting is the comfortable co-existence of this Christianity alongside pre-Christian myths and legends. On the trip to the West, we interviewed Fereti Mario, a 70 year old from Kalvaka in Rotuma. He told us about his visit to a portal to the underworld while fishing off the coast of his village. The room listening intently and we recorded his story and will archive it with the Fijian National Trust. Master Masi, the man who organised and translated the interviews, dubbed this ‘the real X-files of the Pacific’ and taught us more superstitions and beliefs. For example, in Polynesian cultures, spirits of the dead leave their islands by the western side and remain in the ocean. 

  

  The indigenous Fijians we have interacted with, like Master Masi, are devout Christians that seamlessly combine their faith with beliefs that are native to Fiji. I initially questioned this but, then thought that this could reflect the ‘indigenisation’ of Christianity in the Pacific (Wednt). That is, how Pacific Islanders have embraced and made the religion their own. Christianity is not viewed here as a negative infiltration of indigenous Fijian society, but truly part of the fabric of life. I think that this ownership might be the reason that certain traditional beliefs can co-exist in this harmonious way.