It's a Match!!!!

Probably the most exciting thing in ages. Check this out:

It's a Match!!!

If you don't understand the picture, rumour had it that Cambridge University had the actual breastplate worn in the iconic and famous historical drawing of "A Native of Feejee Islands" so Our Venerable Leader, Bainimarama, himself flew to England to check it out.

As you can see here, it was a righteous call because it is indeed the very same breastplate. Exciting, right?

And isn't it just creepy that this Rawdon sketch is called "Native of Feejee Islands" when it is actually Tanoa Visawaqa, Vunivalu of Bau, the father of Fiji's very own King George (Seru) Cakabau, who ceded Fiji to Queen Victoria in order to stop the Americans from acquiring it in order to turn our beloved islands into a single giant cotton plantation. Hardly your typical "native", right?

That type of thing - European ethnography's habit of misrepresenting foreign Kings and such as "Natives" - happens a lot because just about all of 17th and 18th century explorers' "Native" portraits are actually representations of very important people.  It's because the common people and the poor people the world over tend to dress pretty much the same way - just covering up the dangly bits however they can - whereas it's the important people in most cultures who are the ones with the very best examples of those classic "native costumes".

When Queen Elizabeth made her historic first visit to Fiji back in 1953, her gifts won everyone's hearts and minds because what she'd done was gather together all the Fijian "ethnography" from around England and Europe, identify who was who in each of these "Native" photos, paintings, drawings and sketches, and then gift copies of each image to those "Native's" descendants. 

Nice, right? It was like saying "I recognise that you are NOT "natives"; that you are people in your own right, with names and lives and all the rest of it, just like WE do."  

Keith was saying she did the same thing on her first visit to New Zealand as well. No wonder she has been such a beloved Monarch for so many decades. 

However, what is really happening here - why someone in Fiji can now say things like "Tui Tanoa's breastplate in this picture is to be found at Cambridge University." - is that Fiji Museum has spent this entire year visiting England and European ethnographic collections to see who has what that came from Fiji, recording and photographing and giving Fiji back an idea of its own heritage:

 

 Cambridge University shows Bainimarama

its Fiji Collection.

And what is particularly exciting is that the UK itself has become so excited by the scope and extent of Fijian cultural material objects they have in England that they are putting together an Exhibition called "Fiji" that will open for the Summer of 2013, so we can see all of it put together in one place.

AND Keith informed me yesterday that, during the Summer of 2013, WE will be walking the length of Hadrian's Wall - sooo not doing this - which means we'll be in UK then so I'll definitely be agitating to see it for ourselves.