Other Papers Regarding Rotuma

Rotuma-Historical Dictionary of Oceania (1981) Download PDF
A brief account of Rotuman history from the time of initial European contact until the end of the colonial period.

Rotuma-in Fiji in Transition (1997) Download PDF
A  document originally prepared for the Fiji Constitution Review Commission covering demographics, traditional leadership, land tenure, kinship and chieftainship, colonial administration and the Rotuma district council, local bodies and institutions, and hierarchy.

Rotuma-Encyclopedia of Pacific Islands (2000) Download PDF
A  brief article covering the physical environment, language and population, history and politics, and religion.

The First Rotumans (2000) Download PDF
A   personal account of my humbling but humorous experiences when meeting Rotumans for the first time.

Wilson Inia [Biography]  (2000) Download PDF
A  brief biography of Rotuma's first senator in the post-independence Fiji legislature.

www.repatriating__ethnography.edu/rotuma (2002) Download PDF
This chapter explores the use of websites as vehicles for making available published and unpublished ethnographic texts to indigenous peoples, using the example of "The Rotuma Website," which I created in 1996.

Contextualizing Histories: Our Rotuman Experience (2004) Download PDF
An account of our long-term field work with Rotumans dating back to 1959 and continuing until the present day, and the effect it has had on our ethnographic perspective and commitments.

Presenting Rotuma to the World: The Making of The Land Has Eyes (2006) Download PDF
This paper documents the issues involved in making the film, including the logistic and cultural problems confronting filmakers Vilsoni Hereniko and Jeannette Paulson Hereniko before, during, and after production. Responses to the film by Rotuman and nonRotuman audiences, and by critics, are presented. A number of issues associated with indigenous filmmaking are also discussed.

Websites as Vehicles for Repatriation (2008) Download PDF
An account of the creation and maintenance of the Rotuma Website and the ways in which it serves as a vehicle for repatriation of Rotuma-related materials and as an accessible archive for the Rotuman people.

Land Issues on Rotuma (2011) Download PDF
A discussion of the history of land tenure on Rotuma, including the complications that have arisen as a result of the introduction of a commercial economy and ill-conceived legislative acts by the Fiji Government.

Indigeneity-The Case of Rotumans in Fiji (2012) Download PDF
In the Blueprint for the protection of Fijian & Rotuman rights and interests proposed by the Prime Minister of Fiji to the Great Council of Chiefs in 2000, Rotumans were included as indigenous to Fiji. This paper presents an analysis of a challenge to the grouping of Rotumans with Fijians as indigenes under the Blueprint, and Rotuman responses to arguments denying their indigeneity.

2019 Creating an Archive for Rotuma: A Personal Account. The Contemporary Pacific (2019) Download PDF
An account of Jan's and my experience compiling field notes recorded in Rotuma and among Rotumans abroad and compulsively collecting materials related to Rotuma from every source we have been able to identify and access. Our reflections on the processes of collecting and organizing relevant materials are foregrounded because we were in the process of creating a Rotuman archive at the University of Hawai'i–Mānoa library at the time.

2021 The Changing Anthropological Enterprise: A Century of Ethnographic Research in Rotuma
In this paper we review the accounts of seven individuals who have provided what we consider to be ethnographic accounts of Rotuma beginning in the 1890s through the twentieth century. We aim to assess the purposes for their research, the methods that they used, their intended audiences, and the nature of their resulting products. Download PDF

Interview with Konousi Aisake (Unpublished Paper) Download PDF
An interview with Konousi Aisake, a Rotuman artist who emigrated to Canada after marrying a Canadian woman. He worked in a stained glass factory for ten years where he learned the art of making stained glass. In 1996 he set out on his own as a self-taught woodcarver and maker of art objects from stained glass.

The Parochialization of Memory: Commemorations of Rotuma's Colonial and Missionary Past (Unpublished Paper) Download PDF
In this paper, we attempt to demonstrate, through the example of recent commemorations of Cession to Great Britain and Christian missionization, that despite macropolitical pressures to construct history in accordance with Fiji's national interests, important aspects of the Rotuman mythic code remain strong enough to color historical narratives in distinctive ways.

The Valuation of Photographs:Rotuman Responses (Unpublished Paper) Download PDF
An overview of the history of photography on Rotuma, including our personal efforts to collect historical photos from archival collections and make them available to Rotumans via The Rotuma Website. We also present a discussion of Rotuman responses to various kinds of photos.