A MISSION DIVIDED RACE, CULTURE & COLONIALISM IN FIJI’S METHODIST MISSION A MISSION DIVIDED RACE, CULTURE & COLONIALISM IN FIJI’S METHODIST MISSION KIRSTIE CLOSE-BARRY Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Close-Barry, Kirstie, author. Title: A mission divided : race, culture and colonialism in Fiji’s Methodist Mission / Kirstie Close-Barry. ISBN: 9781925022858 (paperback) 9781925022865 (ebook) Subjects: Methodist Church--Missions--Fiji. Methodist Church of Australasia. Department of Overseas Missions. Methodist Mission (Fiji)--History. Religion and politics--Fiji--History. Christianity and culture--Fiji--History. Missions--Political aspects--Fiji--History. Fiji--Politics and government--19th century. Dewey Number: 266.02399409611 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photograph by R H Rickard and others for the Methodist Church of Australasia, Department of Overseas Missions, ‘Series 01: Photographic prints of missionaries and Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa and India, ca 1885–1938’, PXA 1137, 490- 535, pic acc 7061, neg 46, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. Published with permission of Uniting Church of Australia. This edition © 2015 ANU Press Contents List of Maps and Figures . vii Units of Currency . ix Acknowledgements . xi Preface . xiii Introduction . 1 1 . Foundations for an Indo-Fijian Methodist Church in Fiji . 17 2 . A National Church Built in ‘Primitive’ Culture: Communalism, Chiefs and Coins . 37 3 . Theories of Culture: Responding to Emergent Nationalisms . 53 4 . Indigenous Agrarian Commerce: Yeoman Claims to Soil . 79 5 . Leadership with Limitations: Constrained Leadership for Indo-Fijian and Fijian Methodists in the 1930s . 103 6 . Colonialism and Culture Throughout the Pacific War . 123 7 . Defining the Path to Independence . 145 8 . Devolution in a Divided Mission . 161 9 . Disunity: Failed Efforts at Integration . 179 Conclusion . 195 Glossary . 203 Bibliography . 205 List of Maps and Figures Map 1: Fiji ..................................................viii Map 2: Fiji Methodist Mission Circuits, 1874 ........................viii Figure 1: ‘The lali’ ............................................xiii Figure 2: ‘Navuso’, Benjamin Meek and students ..................... 70 Figure 3: Richard McDonald in front of Methodist Mission Office, Suva ... 76 Figure 4: ‘Ploughing bullocks — Nailaga’ .......................... 89 Figure 5: ‘Native Ministers, Nabouwalu, Welcome to Us’ ...............107 Figure 6: Inside of mission house, Nabouwalu .......................107 Figure 7: ‘Front verandah’ ......................................108 Figure 8: ‘Esau’s/Native Minister’s house’, Nabouwalu .................113 Figure 9: ‘Mr and Mrs Deoki’ ....................................115 Figure 10: Setareki Tuilovoni ....................................133 Figure 11: Proposed church structures .............................185 Figure 12: Fijian quarterly meetings in each circuit ...................185 Figure 13: Fijian and Indian quarterly meetings sending resolutions to integrated annual meetings ................................186 Figure 14: Conference and synod structure .........................186 vii Map 1: Fiji. Source: CartoGIS, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. Map 2: Fiji Methodist Mission Circuits, 1874. viii Source: CartoGIS, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. Units of Currency 1 penny (d) = 1 cent 1 shilling (s) = 12 pence (d) = 10 cents 1 pound (£) = 20 shillings = 2 dollars (when the Australian pound was converted to the dollar in 1966, the rate of conversion for the new decimal currency was two dollars per Australian pound) ix Acknowledgements There are many people who I need to thank for their help in bringing this book into being. Firstly, I thank the three people who supervised my thesis. My primary supervisor was Helen Gardner, who helped me wrangle my ideas into logical prose. My associate supervisors, Joanna Cruickshank and David Wetherell, also provided thoughtful feedback at crucial moments. All continue to be great sources of support. I am deeply indebted to the generosity of people in Fiji such as Deaconess Una Matawalu, Tauga Vulaono and Save Nacanaitaba, as well as the families who accommodated Una and me on our fieldwork in the north-west of Viti Levu in 2010. I was greeted warmly by the descendants of Ratu Nacanieli and Apolosi Rawaidranu at various stages of my research and it has been amazing to share our histories. Scholars from the University of the South Pacific have also welcomed and cared for me during my field work. I note especially Max Quanchi, Morgan Tuimalealiifano and Christine Weir. I also want to note the kind guidance and hospitality of Carolyn and Andrew Thornley during my trips to the Mitchell Library in Sydney. Thank you to willing interviewees, the Reverend Cyril Germon, Wendy and Peceli Ratawa, as well as the descendants of Robert Green and Doug Telfer for lending me material from their archives. I would also like to make special mention of Talatala Josateki Koroi, who I interviewed for my thesis and who passed away while I made the final edits for this book. He was an exceptional person and I am blessed to have known him. I have also been aided immensely by the employees at the various archives I have worked in. Not only have they assisted my research in finding documents, but also in providing biscuits and cups of tea (Monte Carlos at the Uniting Church Archives in Elsternwick hit the spot), conversation and company, and even xi A MISSION DIVIDED thread and needle when I ripped my pants on a filing cabinet in the National Archives of Fiji reading room. Thank you to all of the archivists and librarians at the National Archives of Fiji, Queen’s College Library, Uniting Church Archives in Elsternwick, the St Marks National Theological Centre archives (where the Tippett Collection is housed), the State Library of Victoria, and the Mitchell Library in the State Library of New South Wales. I am also very grateful to Kylie Moloney and Ewan Maidment from the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau for facilitating my access to Methodist records, and thank you to the leaders of the Fijian Methodist Church too. Thank you also to Tiffany Shellam, Christopher Waters, Sophie Loy-Wilson, Victoria Stead and the other staff at Deakin University, the Australian Catholic University and more recently the Pacific Adventist University with whom I have worked with throughout my years of study. I would like to acknowledge my friends from the Professional Historian’s Association, Way Back When and the Pacific History Association for the moral support and shared passion for the past. These have been some of the more quirky, creative, and unashamedly enthusiastic historians I have ever known. This book is dedicated to my kind, wise family who constitute the best bunch of fruitcakes I know: to James and Hamish; Mum, Dad and Andy; my brilliant uncles, aunts and cousins. They are always with me, through thick and thin. I’m grateful to all of my great aunts and uncles and all of my grandparents who shared their own stories with me and fostered my interest in the past. This book is particularly for Gran, though, who introduced me to Fiji through her childhood stories, and the generations of our family whose paths I have followed back to Fiji. Were it not for my family, I would not be who I am. While I know that my ancestors’ place in the colonial past is fraught, I do believe we can learn from their stories and those with whom they shared their lives to build histories that can inform the building of better societies today. xii Preface In 2010, when I conducted fieldwork at Nailaga, a small village in the north- west of Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu, the lali (drum) was one of the significant sounds that marked time in the village, signalling the start of church-based events, including Bible studies and women’s groups. Figure 1: ‘The lali’. Source: Photo by R H Rickard and others for the Methodist Church of Australasia, Department of Overseas Missions, ‘Series 01: Photographic prints of missionaries and Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa and India, ca 1885-1938’, PXA 1137, 327-535, pic acc 7061, neg 79, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. Published with permission of Uniting Church of Australia . xiii A MISSION DIVIDED Nailaga has a special place for my family, so I felt at ease there. It was my Granny’s stories that first took me to Nailaga. Members of my family had lived there for years at a time, working as missionaries for the Methodist Church of Australasia. In fact, my family was, for generations before Granny came along, part of the processes of colonisation in the Pacific. Leaving England for Hobart in 1839, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather John Waterhouse took up the position of General Superintendent for the Methodist Mission of Australasia, overseeing the Pacific Island mission sites. Several of his sons subsequently travelled to Fiji in later decades to spread the Word. Most notable among them was Joseph Waterhouse, who lived at Viwa throughout crucial years of deliberation for Ratu Epinisa Cakobau, who in 1874 negotiated the cession of the islands to Britain. Joseph Waterhouse was the brother of my great-great-great-great- grandfather, Roland. A few decades later, the first of my ancestors arrived in the north-west of Viti Levu. This was Roland’s grandson, Charles Oswald Lelean. Nailaga was Uncle Charlie’s first port of call after arriving in Fiji fresh from theological training at Queens College in Melbourne. His first wife died and was buried there. Approximately 30 years after Charlie had started working in Fiji, his nephew Arthur Drew Lelean followed.