Through a study of Ra Province (northeast Viti Levu Island, Fiji) involving both archival research and community engagement, we highlighted a long history of Indigenous population mobility. Many coastal settlements have mostly undocumented histories of relocating inland due to shoreline retreat and land loss over recent decades. Studies of Navutulevu and Vunitogoloa use oral histories and nineteenth-century accounts to show this. More recent autonomous relocations, identified through field surveys in Madhuvani and Navuniivi, are regarded as ‘invisible’ because such major adaptation responses are not usually included in most formal or published reviews of community relocation in the Pacific. Based on our results and a broader understanding of societal evolution in the Pacific Islands region, we concluded that population mobility and settlement relocation have historically been common on (comparatively small and remote) oceanic islands, often in response to changing environmental conditions. Therefore, the possibility of future relocation might seem less intimidating for many coastal residents because of this history. The idea that future relocation is rare and therefore requires extensive funding and policy support, rooted in post-globalization norms, is inaccurate. In reality, it could undermine the resilience of Pacific Island communities by dismissing their histories of autonomous adaptation.

Pacific Islands, many relatively remote and small, have been occupied by people for more than 3000 years during which time they experienced climate-driven environmental changes (both slow and rapid onset) that challenged human survival and led to the evolution of place-based coping strategies expressed through traditional knowledge (TK). In today's globalized Pacific Islands region, into which western worldviews and global adaptation strategies have made significant inroads, most plans for coping with climate-changed futures are founded in science-based understandings of the world that undervalue and sideline TK. Many such plans have proved difficult to implement as a consequence. This paper reviews the nature of extant Pacific TK for coping with climate change, something that includes TK for anticipating climate change (including climate variability and climate extremes) as well as ancillary TK associated with food and water security, traditional ecological knowledge, environmental conservation, and settlement and house construction that represent coping strategies. Much of this TK can be demonstrated as being effective with precedents in other (traditional) contexts and a compelling plausible scientific basis. This study demonstrates that Pacific Islands TK for coping with climate change has value and, especially because of its place-based nature, should be central to future climate-change adaptation strategies to enhance their uptake, effectiveness and sustainability. To this end, this paper proposes specific ways forward to optimize the utility of TK and ensure it has a realistic role in sustaining Pacific Island communities into the future. This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Modern Climate Change Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Observed Impacts of Climate Change

The Australian Journal of AnthropologyEarly View BOOK REVIEW Review of Evadne Kelly, Dancing spirit, love, and war: Performing the translocal realities of contemporary Fiji, studies in dance history. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2019 Paul Geraghty, Corresponding Author Paul Geraghty [email protected] University of the South Pacific, Suva, FijiSearch for more papers by this author Paul Geraghty, Corresponding Author Paul Geraghty [email protected] University of the South Pacific, Suva, FijiSearch for more papers by this author First published: 17 January 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12458Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

In the aftermath of the last ice age, when sea level rose along most of the world's coastline, the activities of coastal peoples were impacted by coastal submergence, land loss and sometimes isolation as offshore islands formed. In some parts of the world, there is clear evidence that people encoded their observations of postglacial sea-level rise into oral traditions that were communicated across hundreds of generations to reach us today in an intelligible form. In other contexts, people's observations of rising sea level are likely to have formed the foundations of 'legends' about undersea places and the peoples inhabiting them. For a selection of coastal sites in Australia and northwest Europe, this study discusses a range of contrasting situations in which culturally-grounded stories about coastal submergence, land loss and isolation plausibly recollect the nature and effects of postglacial sea-level rise. Using science-based histories of postglacial sea-level change, minimum ages are determined for each group of site-specific stories; in the case of Australia, these range from 7000-11,500 BP, for northwest Europe from 5500 to 9500 BP. For selected sites in the Pacific Islands, where human settlement about 3000 years BP post-dated the end of postglacial sea-level rise, localized sub-mergence is recalled in traditional stories of local people.It is argued that studies of late Quaternary coastal evolution can often be filled out by adding details from stories preserved in local cultures, something which leads to a clearer picture of the human-societal impacts of coastal submergence and land loss than can be obtained from palaeoenvironmental reconstructions and geological evidence alone.

Fehi bananas are a Pacific Islands and eastern Indonesian assemblage of parthenocarpic diploid and triploid cultivars in Musa series Australimusa. Fehi cultivars were derived principally from M. maclayi, M. lolodensis and M. bukensis s.l. and related entities. Eleven Fehi cultivar groups comprising morphologically similar cultivars are described, along with naturalised forms from eastern Polynesia. Fehi cultivars have been referred to particular species such as M. troglodytarum and M. fehi, but further genetic research is needed to ascertain how human-selected cultivars are interrelated and derived from any particular species.

FIJI AND FIJIAN. 1962. A dialect survey of Viti Levu. PhD diss., Cornell University. 1963a. A phonemic typology of Fijian dialects. Oceanic Linguistics 2:62–79. 1963b. Lexical differences between generations in Fiji. Te Reo 6:28–29. 1963c. Sources for the study of Fijian dialects. Journal of the Polynesian Society 72:254–60. 1966. (Albert J. Schütz and Jerome Wenker). A program for the determination of lexical similarity. In Computation in linguistics: A case study, ed. by Paul L. Garvin and Bernard Spolsky, 124–45. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1968a. The phonetic nature of Fijian consonant correspondences. In Papers in linguistics of Melanesia No. 1, 49–52. Series A, no. 15. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 1969–70. The languages of Fiji. Working Papers in Linguistics. University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Published as Schütz 1972b. 1971. (Albert J. Schütz and Rusiate T. Komaitai). Spoken Fijian. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 2nd ed., 1979. 1972a. Say it in Fijian. Sydney: Pacific Publications. Revised ed. 1974, l976, l979, 2003. 1972b. The languages of Fiji. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1972c. (Albert J. Schütz and Tevita Nawadra). A refutation of the notion “passive” in Fijian. Oceanic Linguistics 11:88–109. 1974. The forerunners of the Fijian dictionary. Journal of the Polynesian Society 83:443–57. 1975a. The first Fijian dictionary for Fijians. South Pacific Bulletin, Third Quarter, 54–56. 1975b. At a loss for words: The problem of word classes for Fijian. Oceanic Linguistics 14:100–18. 1976c. Fijian prosody I: Syllables and groups.University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 8(2): 75–100. 1977. (ed.) The diaries and correspondence of David Cargill, 1832–1843. Pacific History Series No. 10. Canberra: Australian National University Press. 1978a. Suva: A history and guide. Sydney: Pacific Publications.

John attended Prouille Dominican and then Christian Brothers primary schools.In 1958 the Lynches moved to Melbourne, where John attended the Jesuits' Xavier College.In an autobiographical fragment about his childhood years he says little about his school subjects and a good deal about playing cricket and rugby football and keeping cricket statistics.But his brother Brendan writes that "John always had a love and a talent for languages.In his high school years he studied Latin, French, Greek

Sixteen hillforts constructed and occupied perhaps several centuries before contact in the early nineteenth century are described from Bua district in northern Fiji. These hillforts represent inland settlements in fortifiable locations on high volcanic islands, plausibly established in response to the outbreak of sustained conflict. The chronology and functions of these hillforts were investigated through mapping, excavation, and collection of oral traditions. Four groups of hillforts are recognized. The Seseleka and Yadua (Island) groups represent single polities, comprising a mountaintop site surrounded with fortified narrow steep-sided basalt ridges with tributary sites at lower levels functioning as lookouts and/or food-processing sites. The Northwest Bua group comprises mountaintop sites occupied only when aggressors threatened, and are otherwise characterized by occupation around their bases. The Inland Bua group ranges along one of the highest ridges in the area and were all reportedly in conflict with each other. The Buan hillforts represent those found elsewhere in Fiji and on other high Pacific Islands. Insights from the study of these hillforts illuminate this period of Fiji history and help interrogate broader questions about drivers and proximate causes of the conflict that may have seen hillforts established near simultaneously on high Pacific Islands during the last millennium.

Kaute and its derivatives koute, ʻoute and ʻaute are Polynesian names for a red-flowered Hibiscus. Since its first botanical collection on Tahiti by Banks and Solander (1769), this hibiscus has been referred to as H. rosa-sinensis L. and assumed to have been introduced by the bearers of the archaeological culture known as Lapita. Lapita people settled West Polynesia around 2800 BP and spoke a language derived from Proto-Oceanic, the common ancestor of almost all the Austronesian languages of Island Melanesia and Micronesia as well as Polynesia. However, whereas Proto-Oceanic names can be reconstructed for many plants found in East Polynesia, the term kaute cannot be attributed to Proto-Oceanic, the name likely being locally derived in East Polynesia from that of paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) L’Hér. ex Vent.). On the basis of linguistic evidence, we contend that kaute was domesticated in a high island area of Central Eastern Polynesia and then dispersed in relatively recent pre-European times (ca. 500–700 BP) westwards through West Polynesia, to nearby islands such as the Fiji archipelago and Rotuma and to Polynesian Outliers in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Dissemination occurred before the -au- sequence changed to -ou- and k sporadically changed to ʻ, so that kaute rather than contemporary Marquesan koute and ʻoute was the term that was carried westward from the Marquesas. Kaute is here suggested to be an endemic East Polynesian species, different from H. rosa-sinensis L. Further field and genetic research is needed to definitively determine the phylogenetic relationships of kaute and a taxonomic description is required for formal recognition.

Indigenous loanwords comprise an important component of the lexicons of the Englishes of former British colonies. Often these words are used as placenames, which are in turn transported across the country with little knowledge of their origin or meaning. In this article we trace the adoption of gunyah into Australian English, and its use in the house name and toponym Miegunyah/Meigunyah/Mygunyah, extending to a sugarcane plantation near Nadi, on Vitilevu, Fiji.

This article uses comparative linguistic data to arrive at some generalizations about the place naming practices of the early inhabitants of the Central Pacific (Fiji, Rotuma, and Polynesia) who are believed to have arrived there some three thousand years ago. In particular it focuses on a pair of suffixes, -(C)a and -(C)aga, that had similar functions of nominalization and were therefore used quite extensively in various types of derivation, including place naming. Many place names so formed are indicators of the environment that prevailed when the place was named, so have great potential value in the reconstruction of prehistory.

Speech–language pathologists (SLPs) are increasingly aware of the need to minimize the impact of cultural and linguistic mismatch when working with culturally and linguistically diverse clients. Consequently, there is a growing body of literature designed for the SLP to obtain an understanding of the characteristics of languages and dialects that may be outside the SLPs' previous experience. This paper provides a review of the phonological features of two Fiji English dialects (Fijian Fiji English and Fiji Hindi Fiji English). This information is provided to assist English-speaking SLPs' diagnostic decision-making when working with people from Fiji who wish to improve their speech intelligibility and to differentiate between speech difference and speech sound disorder in young Fiji children. The Fiji languages influence the phonetics and phonology of Fiji English dialects to varying degrees. Consequently basilectal (heavily accented) speakers have many differences when compared to acrolectal (lightly accented) speakers. Acknowledging the diversity in Fiji English speech production, this paper provides a review of phonetic and phonemic variants for basilectal and acrolectal speakers of Fijian Fiji English and Fiji Hindi Fiji English.

In the interests of improving engagement with Pacific Island communities to enable development of effective and sustainable adaptation strategies to climate change, we looked at how traditional oral narratives in rural/peripheral Fiji communities might be used to inform such strategies. Interviews were undertaken and observations made in 27 communities; because the custodians of traditional knowledge were targeted, most interviewees were 70-79 years old.The view that oral traditions, particularly those referring to environmental history and the observations/precursors of environmental change, were endangered was widespread and regretted. Interviewees' personal experiences of extreme events (natural disasters) were commonplace but no narratives of historical (unwitnessed by interviewees) events were found. In contrast, experiences of previous village relocations attributable (mainly) to environmental change were recorded in five communities while awareness of environmentally driven migration was more common. Questions about climate change elicited views dominated by religious/fatalist beliefs but included some more pragmatic ones; the confusion of climate change with climate variability, which is part of traditional knowledge, was widespread.The erosion of traditional environmental knowledge in the survey communities over recent decades has been severe and is likely to continue apace, which will reduce community self-sufficiency and resilience. Ways of conserving such knowledge and incorporating it into adaptation planning for Pacific Island communities in rural/peripheral locations should be explored.