Reconfigurations of Place and Ethnicity: Positionings, Performances and Politics of Relocated Banabans in Fiji

Kempf, W.; Hermann, Elfriede

doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.2005.tb02897.x

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…The lack of high ground on atoll islands means that off-island relocation is the only long-term adaptation option for many. Welldocumented examples of relocation from atolls that relate the efficacy and challenges of the process for Pacific islanders come from Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, from which people were moved after it became clear that atomic testing had polluted their environment (Davis 2005), and Rabi Island in Fiji, which is occupied by people displaced from Banaba in Kiribati (Kempf & Hermann 2005).…”

Section: Relocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responding to the challenges of climate change in the Pacific Islands: management and technological imperatives

Nunn¹

2009

Clim. Res.

180

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Pacific Island nations face similar challenges from climate change to those faced by other developing nations, yet these are exacerbated by the comparative smallness, remoteness, and archipelagic character of many of the islands. Proposed solutions to the effects of climate change in the Pacific Islands have often been uncritically imposed from elsewhere and have often proved unsuited to both their environmental and cultural contexts. Effective solutions to challenges of climate change in the Pacific Islands should acknowledge their unique environmental characteristics, particularly their high insularity (coastal length to land area) ratios, their topographic and geological diversity, and the raw materials available to support adaptation. It is important for policy makers to understand the cultural influences that have helped shape current environmental decision making, and the ways in which adaptations to climate change can be sustained. The efficacy of donor preferences for aid funding of policy development (top-down) rather than empowering community-level decision-makers (bottom-up) is questionable. Pacific Island governments are focused on economic growth, with little tangible investment in non-profit environmental sustainability. In the future they should take on ownership of the climate-change adaptation process to a greater degree than they do at present, with external assistance brought in only for special cases and for the trialling of novel solutions, rather than for routine adaptation. Globally, there should be less emphasis on sea-level rise as the principal challenge posed by climate change to Pacific Island nations and a better appreciation of the other challenges, particularly inundation and salinization of economically critical lowland, as well as coral-reef degradation.

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Section: Relocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responding to the challenges of climate change in the Pacific Islands: management and technological imperatives

Nunn¹

2009

Clim. Res.

180

160

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“…It was incorporated into the Colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the early 1900s and is today part of the Republic of Kiribati. The Banabans were displaced to Fiji in 1945 because of this valuable phosphate rock which was mined by a company owned conjointly by Britain, Australia and New Zealand (see K. Teaiwa, 2000, 2004& Kempf & Hermann, 2005.…”

Section: The Festival Of Pacific Arts and Banaban Dancementioning

confidence: 99%

Culture moves?: The Festival of Pacific Arts and Dance Remix in Oceania

Teaiwa

2014

DRA

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This reflective essay is a journey through my dance studies work with a discussion on the role of the Festival of Pacific Arts in shaping dance in Oceania, and particularly its impact on Banaban dance from Rabi in Fiji. I encourage future discussion and development of a field of 'Pacific Dance Studies,' with preliminary thoughts on the role of 'remix' in Pacific dance practices, especially as they are shaped by and reflected in this important regional festival.

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“…To shore up this vision and also for more pragmatic reasons, the settlers on Rabi Island decided to transfer the identity-conferring structures of ancestral Banaba to the landscape of their new island, duplicating the number and names of villages. With the backing of the colonial administration, they built their new home island into a geographically, politically and culturally distinct enclave within Fiji (Kempf and Hermann 2005). When Fiji and Kiribati achieved independence in the 1970s, Rabi and Banaba now found themselves in two different sovereign states; however, this hardly changed the historically sanctioned practice of equating homeland with home island (see Figure 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The diversification of return: Banaban home islands and movements in historical perspective

Kempf¹

2017

Mobilities of Return: Pacific Perspectives

Self Cite

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The international return mobility of the Banaban community has been significantly influenced by post-Second World War collective resettlement and the resulting transnational space of multiple belongings. Thus, with their politics of translocal linking of original and new home islands, the first generation of Banabans prepared the way for crossborder movements between Fiji and Kiribati. The central issue here is a historical development that extends from the organised return of younger Fiji-Banabans-as part of the repossession politics of the island of origin, Banaba, during the 1970s-and the more recent migration of members of the second and third Banaban generations to the capital atoll Tarawa in Kiribati through to imaginings of return from Tarawa to Rabi Island in Fiji, should the atoll country be rendered uninhabitable following possible future climate changes and subsequent rising sea levels. Viewed over the course of time, the directions and places of return have proven multiple MoBILITIEs of RETURN 16and mutable. This diversification of return mobility is the product of the historical practices of different generations of Banabans in the context of a networked world of Pacific islands and island states.

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Reconfigurations of Place and Ethnicity: Positionings, Performances and Politics of Relocated Banabans in Fiji

Cited by 14 publications

References 27 publications

Responding to the challenges of climate change in the Pacific Islands: management and technological imperatives

Responding to the challenges of climate change in the Pacific Islands: management and technological imperatives

Culture moves?: The Festival of Pacific Arts and Dance Remix in Oceania

The diversification of return: Banaban home islands and movements in historical perspective

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