A promised land in the diaspora: Christian religion, social memory, and identity among banabans in Fiji

Type Journal Article - Pacific Studies
Title A promised land in the diaspora: Christian religion, social memory, and identity among banabans in Fiji
Author(s)
Volume 35
Issue 1-2
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2012
Page numbers 90-118
URL https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322686790_A_Promised_Land_in_the_Diaspora_Christian_Religio​n_Social_Memory_and_Identity_among_Banabans_in_Fiji
Abstract
Religion influences the process of constituting place and identity in the Pacific diaspora. The Banabans, originally from the central Pacific but relocated in 1945 to Rabi Island in Fiji, have linked a politics of emplacement and commemoration to Christian beliefs and practices. This linkage lets Banabans anchor in social memory (and so transmit to future generations) not only the knowledge they possess of Banaba, their original island home, but also a collective self-image of being at once victim and survivor of colonial exploitation, dispossession, and displacement; further, the interplay of identity politics and religion serves them as a tool of empowerment and repositioning in the diaspora. I shall focus on certain public representations of the past in which Banabans relate the time of war, dispersal and resettlement on Rabi to the Biblical narrative of liberation from Egyptian bondage and Exodus to the “Promised Land.” The identification of the settler generation with the Old Testament Israelites corresponds to the Banaban view of the past, in which the community’s survival is attributed to divine providence, the better to reclaim, in the course of this construction, Rabi Island as a God-given second homeland, the Banabans own "Promised Land." Finally, this Christian-based practice and politics of constituting place and identity in the diaspora needs to be seen against the background of a strengthening of ethno-nationalist currents within Fijian society, which, on the regional level, is working to undermine the legitimacy of Banaban claims to ownership rights over Rabi.

Related studies

»