Sauvaka Culture Consultancy

FIJIAN FOOD SECURITY

A Culinary Take

In visiting rural community in Fiji to expound on notions of indigenous resilience, Nature Based Solutions, a simple way of framing it is by asking -

How would resilience and food security look to you in a meaningful and satisfactory way?

This image sums up the traditional social, agricultural and marine dimensions.

- boiled breadfruit
- boiled kawai (a wild yam)
- baked reef fish
- lemons, chillies
- freshly squeezed coconut milk (not seen in image)

This meal was presented by a matriarch from Navetau village in the Tunuloa District, Cakaudrove province, Vanualevu.

Our arrival was unexpected but her food security plan enabled her to proudly and confidently prepare this meal within an hour. Everything was sourced from the backyard and the sea.

This is how indigenous resilience looks...and tastes like. It is being prepared using old food preservation techniques that don't rely on electricity or fossil fuels.

It is slow food that takes time and effort to obtain and prepare.

When asked what are risks to this facet of resilience?

Her answer: Laziness and convenience food (store- bought!)

Realisation from the field today.

1. Cultural continuity depends on the intentional inclusion of children in spaces where knowledge is shared.
Without this, the chain of transmission weakens, and the knowledge that sustains sautu risks fading.

2. Traditional food systems are the beating heart of cultural continuity, ecological resilience, and community wellbeing.

Initial Findings from fieldwork in Vanualevu - Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and Nature Based Solutions.

IK is not merely agricultural - it is governance in practice

Without strong vanua leadership,

I. Planning becomes individual rather than coordinated

ii. Food security becomes unpredictable

iii.youths disengage from land-based responsibilities

iv.knowledge transmission becomes accidental rather than intentional

Nature based solutions depend on collective discipline, not individual effort.

May....the traditional month in Fiji marking the end of the hurricane season and onset of cooler dry weather.

The rain that marks the beginning of this month is traditionally known as "na ivakabona ni duruka" (the rotting of the Fijian asparagus").

The rains will continue until the next early waning 🌘 of the moon and also to conclude the seasonal duruka i.e. April.

Experts don’t change communities.
Communities change communities.

Quite often people message me expecting immediate answers to their community challenges.

I’m truly honoured.
But I’m not an expert.
And I don’t have the answers.

After 20 years in community work, here’s what I know:

Only the communities themselves hold the answers.

No outsider - no matter how experienced - can prescribe solutions for a place they’ve never lived.

I’ve seen it repeatedly:
Projects designed FOR communities rarely achieve anything of significance nor sustainability.
Projects shaped WITH communities grow and have a greater opportunity of legacy.

Because communities aren’t represented by single voices, regardless of status, experience, or role.
They’re many voices united to achieve a vision together.

As a community practitioner, my role isn’t to instruct or to teach.
It’s to listen.
To convene.
To ask better questions.
To create opportunities where communities lead the conversation.
To help people recognise their own strengths.
To support small experiments, reflection, and shared learning.

Some individuals have the ability to spark conversations.
But only communities start movements.

Communities don’t need more experts leading them.
They need more people willing to listen and work alongside them as equals.

(Paul Stepczak)

Why Indigenous Weather Indicators Still Matter — And Why the World Should Pay Attention

Across the world, Indigenous communities have forecast weather long before satellites, radar, or digital models existed. These systems are not superstition — they are scientific frameworks built on centuries of observation, encoded in stories, language, land-based practice, and ecological relationships.
A UNESCO Courier (How Indigenous Knowledge Drives Scientific Discovery) notes, Indigenous knowledge is “rooted in the careful observation of ecosystems and passed down orally from generation to generation” (UNESCO Courier, p.4). These systems are not static; they evolve with the environment and remain deeply relevant today.
Indigenous Weather Indicators: A Living Science
Indigenous weather forecasting draws on:
• Cloud formations
• Bird migration and behaviour
• Ocean swells and currents
• Plant flowering cycles
• Insect activity
• Winds, humidity, and seasonal rhythms
• Lunar cycles and star patterns
These indicators form complex knowledge systems, not isolated signs. As the article explains, Indigenous skills and wisdom are “codified to form complex systems of knowledge” (UNESCO Courier, p.5).

Forecasting Disasters Months Ahead

One of the most powerful aspects of Indigenous weather knowledge is its long-range forecasting ability.
Many Pacific communities — including iTaukei knowledge holders — can identify early warning signs of:
• Cyclones
• Drought
• Flooding
• Shifts in seasonal winds
• Ocean warming
These indicators often signal impending disasters at least three months in advance, giving communities time to prepare, relocate resources, and protect livelihoods.
Why This Matters Today
Climate change is making weather more unpredictable. Western scientific models struggle with rapid environmental shifts — but Indigenous knowledge remains adaptive, relational, and deeply attuned to local ecosystems.
According to a UNESCO publication “How Indigenous Knowledge Drives Scientific Discovery” mentions few international examples like:
• Inuit hunters detect ice changes that satellites miss.
• Aboriginal fire knowledge reduces wildfire intensity.
• African farmers use soil and plant indicators to manage drought.
• Pacific navigators read stars, swells, and winds with precision unmatched by instruments.
These examples demonstrate that Indigenous weather knowledge is not folklore — it is a parallel scientific system.

A Call to Honour Indigenous Science

Indigenous weather indicators are not just cultural heritage — they are life-saving technologies. As climate extremes intensify, the world is finally recognising what Indigenous communities have always known:

The land speaks. The winds warn. The ancestors observed.
And their knowledge remains one of our strongest tools for resilience.

[Local indigenous knowledge - straight unfurled young banana shoots indicate no storms or cyclones in Suva, all five photos were taken today, Monday April 06, 2026 from the author's backyard garden].

Human Rights protects the individual,
Your speech
Your safety
Your dignity

Indigenous Rights protects something larger
Land, language, governance

You can fit Human Rights into Indigenous Rights
They work together

But the reverse? Nope!

When you squeeze Indigenous Rights into Human Rights
Something breaks!

The collective disappears!
The land disappears!
The self- determination disappears!

(Ghazali Ohorella)

Cultural Awareness Vs Cultural Understanding
(Image from Michael Connelly)

Instead of making a statement on domestic violence r**e, HIV, drugs, an esteemed man of the cloth in Fiji from one of the mainstream churches goes fire and brimstone against sigidrigi.
He doesn't specifically say why it is bad. It isn't clear whether he had done his research on the ethnomusicology of
Sigidrigi, or whether that was the stand of the esteemed church based on the Annual Conference resolutions, or just his ignorant bias coming through.
Probably he isn't aware of the labour class struggle between his and our common folk forebears in the 1900s, the hegemony of the chiefs' establishment then (GCC) and the colonizers, and how sigidrigi was a form of outlet and creative protest through a music form that is specific and unique to Fiji.
He doesn't realise how the sigidrigi texts capture the systemic racism against our very own people by the colonizers during the 1900s (a system that mirrored the apartheid in South Africa).
No! Instead, as with many narrow minded predecessors of the cloth, they dish out demonism and heathenism without thinking, misusing the pulpit and mixing a fundamentalist concoction of Scripture with inherited institutional bias and ignorance.
Little does he realize that sigidrigi Art form arose from the Same chants (Psalms) when the early church in Fiji had no hymnodies then, which makes sigidrigi the church's own social historical reality.
Little does he realize that the sigidrigi that evolved captured the silent struggles of the people under the yoke of colonialism....and the Church then was distant,. disconnected, apathetic, aloof .....
Alas the inherited institutional bias and ignorance has reared its again....
Without an appreciation of oral history, past mistakes are repeated....and the country continues to diminish because the visions of today refuse to learn from the history of the lowly common folk!

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