Spencer Walsh and Dr. Julie Hartley, Anthropology
Ceremonial exchange plays a significant role in Fijian ritual and can be viewed as an activity that seeks to promote the health and prosperity of the community. An example of this is the annual ritual of the isevu sarau, or the offering of the first fruits of the tuberous sarau (plant similar to the yam). This ceremony takes place around the beginning of May each year throughout the Yasawa island group of Fiji when the sarau crop reaches maturity. I observed this ritual while conducting research at the village of Tamusua located on the southernmost end of Yasawa Island.
At Tamusua, the sarau is planted by the men, weeded by both the men and women, and then harvested by the women who cook the first fruits and offer them at the ceremony. During the isevu sarau villagers offer the first fruits to the turaga ni vanua or chief of the land. The turaga ni vanua then accepts the offering and authorizes his matanivanua levu or official herald to redistribute the sarau out in a specific order to the various mataqali or tribes in the village as well as to any foreigners living there. I collected data for my research while living at Tamusua from May to June 2003, wherein I observed the isevu sarau and conducted structured and semistructured interviews with the elders of the village.
The ritual began with the qase ni lotu or minister for the Methodist church offering a prayer of thanksgiving to the Christian god. After the prayer was offered and when the offering of food was ready, the villagers proclaimed to the representative of the chiefly family or vale levu the phrase, “Dua, dua, dua!” A woman of chiefly status represented the vale levu and responded with the phrase, “Oi…Dua!” In this way the villagers recognized the woman’s chiefly status and indicated that their offering of food was prepared and in place. Once these words were pronounced, one of the elder men spoke, announcing the purpose of the gathering—to offer the first fruits of the sarau, making the proceedings of the offering known to all the villagers living in the area. Before the offering is officially made it is tabu or forbidden for anyone to partake of the sarau.
When the elder announced the purpose of the gathering, he clapped his cupped hands (cobo) and the people responded by clapping in a similar manner. The people’s clapping showed their gratitude to the chief for being present to receive the offering. The elder man then knelt down near a tanoa or yaqona bowl. Yaqona or kava is a ceremonial drink prepared by mixing the pounded root of the Piper methysticum plant with water. The elder touched the tanoa, and then officially offered the yaqona and sarau to the chief of the land. Once this offering was made, the chief’s heralds responded by touching the offering of food and yaqona and then clapped their cupped hands. When this is complete, it is then the chief’s main spokesman’s responsibility to oversee the distribution of yaqona to those of high status seated on the upper end of the gathering. There was a specific order in which the yaqona was drunk by these individuals of high status which correlated directly with their seating arrangements. Those who sat higher drank the yaqona before the individuals who sat lower than them.
Once the yaqona had been distributed, the chief’s heralds began separating the offering of sarau and its accompanying food into separate piles. The order in which the piles of food were announced by the matanivanua lailai, or chief’s lesser herald, in a specific order. The first pile belonged to the vale levu or the chief over the land’s household. Next, portions of food were announced for the six different mataqali or tribes located within the village. Following this, the Methodist minister’s portion was announced. Finally, portions of food were announced to any foreigners who were present in the village such as teachers at the school and myself.The way in which the sarau was redistributed out to the various members of the community functioned to promote solidarity and recognize the superiority of the natives of the village over those who had no actual claim to the land from which the sarau had been grown.
The seating arrangements at the isevu sarau reveal much about the hierarchy that exists within a Fijian village. The drinking of yaqona in the official part of the isevu sarau ceremony was limited to certain individuals in the community of high status. The order in which the yaqona was drunk follows exactly with the seating arrangements from the high end to the low end at the head of the gathering. Structure and order in the Fijian village are set forth by the yaqona drinking ceremony and are deeply entrenched into village life. Respect is shown and demanded for these individuals who hold positions of power and prestige. At the same time it is important to note that each villager is represented by his tribal leader, the minister, the chiefly house, and the village peacekeepers who all have stewardship over and assist in different aspects of villagers’ lives.
The offering of this food functions to maintain social cohesion in the village within each tribe, within the community as a whole, and of course it is a means of showing respect and gratitude to the chief of the land and the Christian god, both of whom demand the utmost respect in modern Fijian custom. No one in the community was excluded from the ceremony. Even non-natives such as the teachers at the school and I were included in an effort to unify the village together and strengthen bonds between all its members.
Through my interviews I discovered that the ritual of the isevu sarau had been lost for a period of time in Tamusua and was later brought back again as a way to educate the youth and ensure the survival of Fijian tradition in the village. I was told that the elders in the village saw the need for the isevu sarau to come back into practice in order to keep the youth from turning away from how things were done traditionally. Tourism and globalization have changed many aspects of life in the village. What used to be an economy based solely on farming and fishing now depends heavily on money that comes in through selling handicrafts to tourists as well as performing native song and dance (meke) for passengers on Captain Cook Cruises.
Through the interviews conducted at Tamusua, I concluded that the isevu sarau functions to maintain the traditional Fijian hierarchy, promote social solidarity, and combat threats to the traditional Fijian way of life that have arisen due to globalization and tourism.