Fiji Museum

I had a lot of stuff to do this week, but when one of my friends had to go to the Fiji Museum to take notes for a class I figured I'd come with to check things out. The museum itself is kind of funny - it's in this grand building, but the cards explaining everything are just printed out on normal paper with kind of off-English and little punctuation. They have a ton of interesting things there though. They had a special exhibit on body jewelry, where they had collections from the Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, and Rotuma (a little island that's part of Fiji but is geographically and pretty culturally isolated from the rest of the country). Here are some pictures!

A giant restored double-hulled canoe. These would house a number of sailors who would manage the giant oar that you see sticking up to the right of the canoe. The last big war canoe in Fiji was called the Ra Marama, and was used in the mid-1800s by Cakobau (who used it in wars to eventually crown himself the king of Fiji) before being beached and deserted upon his death.

This is interesting: the soles of shoes that belonged to the reverend Thomas Baker. Baker was on a trip trying to convert a particular tribe of Fijians to Christianity, when he was ambushed by the Colo hill people of Viti Levu and eaten. The soles of his shoes were the only thing that were inedible on his body, so they remained.

A killing stone. When a tribe won a battle (or wanted to eat missionaries), they would take the captives (uncooked humans referred to as bokola) and subject them to some ceremonies. Men would perform a war dance (cibi), girls would perform a dance (called wate) around the bokola, and young children were encouraged to torture the captives with sharpened sticks. Sometimes their tongue would be cut out. Eventually, their head would be placed in the groove on the stone, and then would be smashed in with a large wooden club. Cannibalism was pretty common, and Fijians believed that by eating their enemies, they would consume their mana or energy. Nasty business.