Modern Fijian

Examined

By Old Resident

(A Letter to the Editor) AS an old resident I should like to com ment upon Mr. Price’s letter, pub lished in June PIM, wherein he de fended Indian workmen in Fiji, and was rather critical of Fijians. It was rather bluntly put; but, rather than chide him for indiscretion, I should like to con gratulate him on having the courage to sign his name to what was obviously an honest expression of his views about Fijians generally.

His letter prompted two Fijians, attend ing Auckland University, suddenly to remember what a noble race they rep resented. They greatly deprecate that all Fijians, including .themselves, should be classed with the “unfortunate speci mens who attracted Mr. Price.” No doubt Mr. Price had not met educated “speci mens” like them. I have had the pleasure of knowing many, so I take it upon myself to speak for Mr. Price.

Like most natives of their type, your correspondents have only the sketchiest idea of Fijian communal life and history and have their whole conception of them selves and their people embodied in Rous seau’s theory, as a result of their sojourn in New Zealand, where they have learned that they are Nature’s gentlemen, or children of nature, or both; and if, as a race, they have any faults they were en tirely due to the advent of the white man with his “vices and diseases.” Such is the outlook of our Anglo-Saxon idealists to-day, and this is instilled into these unfortunates who come to be “edu cated.”

That the Fijians are a proud race is news to me. I know much of their vanity; but racial pride is a new term for them and, in their own language, it had to be coined for them—like the words “grati tude” and “love,” which qualities were never known, and hence had no place in their vocabulary.

With the usual “Fijian educated” com plex, they refer to “colour” and “full blooded Fijian,” showing the usual prejudice of their type to the race that is educating them. Their prejudice at present is probably in the embryo stage, and will come to full maturity when they return to Fiji and find that the local Europeans, unlike those in New Zealand, maintain the racial barriers.

The suggestion that the book written by Helen D. Cato should be accepted as the truth about the Fijians is a trifle humorous. I should rather suggest “His tory of Fiji” by R. A. Derrick, who did know a little. When your correspondents suggest there are no “rogues, vagabonds and other personalities” among the Fijians, I can only imagine they mean criminals and, if this is so, a perusal of the Fiji papers over the last year would be enlightening.

IFEEL, in writing this letter, I am at tempting to be a kindergarten teacher; the position would be comical if it were not tragic. Your correspondents are two of many natives who are train ing in the outside world to be something they can never be; that is, reasonable substitutes for Europeans. As parasites on their community, grabbers of public funds, autocrats and general oppressors they will probably be quite successful as so many of their kind are.

The old Fijian, between whom and the Whiteman there was always genuine af

fection, has passed on, to the detriment of Fiji. He would work, not because he “worshipped a man whose skin hap pened to be white,” but because he loved work for work’s sake, as all honest men do. He respected the white man for what the white man was—not just white in skin, but something your two correspon dents will probably never understand—and the white man respected the Fijian for what he knew the Fijian to be.

We now live in another era and. though the conditions are the work of my own race, I can only say, what an appalling result of their efforts! With their usual good intentions, they are making a race of worthless beings out of a hitherto likeable people. Education will do every thing (they argue)—and here are two of the results.

With very little knowledge of their own race, and far less of the race that has nurtured them, they are supposed to be fitted to lead their own people into a better way of living. The first noticeable result of their higher education will be a considerable increase in the alcohol consumed in the Suva hotels, and a greater number of bad debts on the Chinese storekeepers’ books.

That is now tne Government hopes to fight the Indian problem: by backing a horse that has already lost. The Indian does at least justify his existence. The modern Fijian does not —or, rather, the modern Fijian is as the Native Adminis tration would have him be.

I am, etc.,

Fiji, 22/10/49.

New Era.

Ravuama Vunivalu, who has been studying co-operative methods in the United Kingdom, Europe and Ceylon, has returned to Fiji.