CULTURE
Fiji's mixed racial background
contributes to a rich cultural heritage. Many features of traditional
Fijian life survive; they are most evident in the elaborate investiture,
marriage, and other ceremonies for high-ranking chiefs. These
ceremonies provide a focus for the practicing of traditional crafts,
such as the manufacture of masi, or tapa cloth, made from the
bark of the paper mulberry; mat weaving; wood carving; and canoe
making. Drinking of yanggona (kava, made from the root of Piper
methysticum) is a part not only of important ceremonies but also
of everyday life. Displays of “traditional” Fijian
culture, music, and dancing make an important contribution to
tourism; model villages and handicraft markets are popular.
Most Indian women continue
to wear the sari together with traditional jewelry in gold and
silver. Traditional marriage ceremonies are practiced, as are
customs such as fire walking and ritual self-torture as part of
important religious ceremonies. Cinemas showing imported Indian
films are popular. Diwali, the Hindu Festival of the Lights, is
celebrated every October and is a public holiday.
Fijian culture is more closely
related to that of the Polynesians. Indians, whose ancestors were
brought between 1879 and 1916 to work on British plantations in
Fiji, comprise about 45 percent of the population. The remainder
consists of Europeans, Chinese, other Pacific Islanders, and people
of mixed ethnicity. About 52 percent of the people are Christians,
with Methodists and Roman Catholics forming the largest groups.
Hindus comprise 39 percent of the population, and Muslims, 8 percent.
