Exhibition to showcase historical artifacts

A STUNNING range of historical artifacts will be on display at the Fiji Museum as part of its new exhibition titled Voyages: Stories of an Ocean People.

The one-day exhibition will be open to the public for free on December 10.

A statement from the Fiji Museum stated the exhibition would feature stories of people of Fiji who had a close connection to the sea.

“Pacific Island peoples have a history of discovering uninhabited islands by navigating unaided over great distances,” the statement read.

“This includes the early Lapita people who arrived on Fiji’s shores over 3000 years ago and the skilled iTaukei craftspeople who traversed the vast Pacific highway in large oceangoing drua.

“More recent migrants who came as whalers, missionaries, labourers, and traders from the East and West will be highlighted alongside girmitiya and Pacific Island labourers, all communities and people who have made Fiji home have had an impact on the Fijian coast and way of life.”

As part of the exhibition, the heritage icon Ratu Finau, the last of the great ocean-going drua, will be showcased as well as a number of other exhibits that have never been outside the museum’s storage rooms.

Members of the public can also expect to see a tabu and shark vertebrae walking stick from Norfolk Island, a tuluma (food box) from Tuvalu, a walrus tusk scrimshaw cribbage board and a model of the first facial reconstruction of a Lapita person, whale ivory and shell body adornments, Chinese silk clothing and girmitiya jewellery.

The exhibition is funded and supported by the Fijian Government, Tokani: Friends of the Fiji Museum, Evolution of Fiji Fashion Show, iTaukei Trust Fund Board, Embassy of France, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, Fiji Airways, Bebe Enterprises (Fiji), The Greenhouse Studio, Erasito Consultants, Japan International Cooperation Agency Fiji (JICA) and the Grand Pacific Hotel.