Letters from Overseas

August 2008

• ECREA
  189 Ratu Sukuna Rd.
  GPO Box 15473
  Suva
  Republic of Fiji Islands

Hey, Canada,

Haven't slept. So tired. For the past three months I've been making a movie, and now's the deadline crunch. Seriously, I'm leaving the country next week; if it's not done it's not getting done.

Two years ago, when I was trying to figure out what ECREA (the Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy) was and what it did, I interviewed the various program coordinators. Chantelle, the (then) coordinator of the Social Empowerment Program (SEP), told me about SEP using a history timeline as part of its empowerment work in rural Indigenous communities. A lot of people don't have a good sense of their own history, and what they do know is often told in a way that reinforces the status quo and the power of elites. So SEP tells a different version of history, grounded in fact but with an eye to people's liberation. When they tell this history in communities, they present it simply as an alternate story. "You have your own stories which you've been told. That's great. Here's another story. It's just a story."

The key trainer for the SEP program is a retired school teacher whom everyone calls Master Sikeli. Somewhere in conversation a few months ago, someone suggested that a video of the timeline, capturing some of Master Sikeli's telling of Fiji's history, should be made. And somehow I became the director. So we made up a budget, wrote a script, set a shooting schedule, hired a cameraman, and spent a couple of months following Sikeli and the SEP facilitators around to various historic locations in Fiji recording snippets of popular history.

Did I mention that this was all in Fijian? Since the target audience for this documentary is rural Indigenous communities, it had to be in a language they would understand. Unfortunately, other than a few words, I don't understand Fijian. So about a month ago I realized I had 20 hours worth of footage, and no idea what any of it meant. So I started pulling in every Fijian-speaker I knew to help me translate the footage so I could edit the whole thing down to a manageable hour-and-a-half.

Now that it's all done (and not too shabby, if I do say so myself), we've realized there's one large gap in the historical storytelling—the missionaries. We didn't really say anything about the coming of Christianity to Fiji in our video.

This wasn't so much an oversight as a recognition that the story of Christianity in Fiji was such a big topic it probably needed to be a movie of its own.

Methodist missionaries from Europe first came to Fiji around 1835. They found a tribal people engaged in warfare and cannibalism. Over the next 50 years they worked to Christianize the locals and eradicate cannibalism (except for those that were eaten).

All sorts of choices made in that missionary period continue to have social and theological implications today. For example, the missionaries found a very hierarchical social system (which might have seemed comfortable, given the hierarchical nature of Europe at the time), so they focused their energies on converting the chiefs, and once they had the chiefs the people would follow. As a result, Fijian Christianity has always had a high respect for traditional leaders. Romans 13, for example, is translated as "your chiefs are from God," thus giving the chiefs the added benefit of divine ordination. Since that time Christianity and Fijian culture have been seen as somewhat synonymous, making any attempt to change or reform social norms a direct challenge to God's authority.

During the missionary period, Christianity was also seen as a ticket to prosperity and powerful allies. To make friends with the missionaries was to gain the support of the entire British Empire (in the case of the Methodists) or the French (in the case of the Catholics), and so conversion to one denomination or the other was often made based on who your tribal allies and enemies were. Remnants of those divisions continue to this day.

In recent years the church has played a very political role, supporting coups and ethno-nationalism, opposing social reforms, etc. Like many things in Fiji, separating the Good News from the Bad News in complicated, and would take a documentary of its own to sufficiently explore.

The irony of the fact that we're working as "missionaries," from a church with Methodist roots, in a country that has seen benefit but also profound difficulties as a result of its missionary history, is not lost on me. There's a lot more study to be done, but it feels like the sequel documentary if there is one, about the history of Christianity in Fiji, could be called "Clean-Up in Isle Five" or something. Maybe they'll invite me back to do that film.

Maybe I'll learn Fijian first.

And take a nap.

Peace,

Scott Douglas
United Church of Canada overseas personnel
Fiji Islands

Scott Douglas and Nanette McKay are United Church of Canada Overseas Personnel serving with ECREA in Fiji. The work of this ecumenical partner and the work of overseas personnel are made possible through your gifts to the Mission and Service Fund of The United Church of Canada.