Reflections on Applying the Fijian Vanua Research Framework in Indigenous Anthropological Practice

Abstract

In my dissertation research completed in 2020 on the Levuka World Heritage Site, I applied Unaisi Nabobo-Baba’s Fijian Vanua Research Framework (FVRF) as a methodological and analytical framework, alongside deploying the disciplinary conventions of anthropology such as fieldwork, participant observation and the semi-structured interview. In this paper, I discuss how my positionality as a transnational mixed-race Pacific Islander, with maternal links to Fiji and an inherited anthropological path, informed my use of FVRF and my practice of Indigenous anthropology. I explain the essential aspects and principles of FVRF that I drew upon to guide my research, despite having initial reservations about potential limitations of FVRF. I describe how I practically applied FVRF to carry out research in three Fijian villages, and some successes and failures I had in trying to uphold FVRF principles. Carasala (to open the way) was a recurring theme throughout my research experience, as it was the subject of an ethnographic film that my American anthropologist father and Fijian mother produced when I was six months old. The film documented several days of ceremonies to reinstate severed kinship ties between my mother’s village and their ancestral village, which they broke away from during the colonial period. While conducting fieldwork, I shared the film back with the next generation in the village as a reciprocal contribution, where I drew on FVRF to remind me of the importance of carasala as Indigenous Fijian knowledge.