I sat under the shade of a large marquee, and watched a flatbed truck drive haltingly by, while tears escaped from behind the cover of my sunglasses. On the back of this truck, and two which followed it, dancers performed vignettes from Butakoci, a dance-based production which (in its entirety) tells stories about human trafficking in Fiji’s past and present. The parts adapted for performance on Friday 8 November, 2024, at the 160th Commemoration of the Arrival of Melanesian Labourers to Fiji, related to the experiences of ‘blackbirded’ people. Many of those blackbirded were kidnapped from the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu and brought to Fiji to undertake hard agricultural labour on plantations for a minimum of three years (unless they died first): these were the ‘Melanesian labourers’ mentioned in the commemoration event’s name. Over the period 1864–1911, around 27,000 contracts were signed for terms of indenture in Fiji (many other Solomoni and Ni-Vanuatu people were taken to Queensland and some to Sāmoa). Many decades later, dancers expressed the grief, pain and desperate fear of this group of people, while a haunting song played.
The song, Lai tei dalo ko tamaqu, doesn’t sound as haunting when you look for recordings of it online. A nursery rhyme of sorts, it is widely sung by children in Fiji. Plenty of nursery rhymes have been understood to contain coded stories about historical events (Ring a ring of roses has been explained a plague story, for instance); the words to Lai tei dalo ko tamaqu read quite clearly as a story of kidnapping, forced labour, and the tearing apart of families (this Coconet.tv post includes the lyrics in both Fijian and in English translation). This song persists in plain sight (or plain hearing), though the story expressed in the lyrics seems not to have been widely known or discussed in Fiji. For many of those watching, the bringing together of this familiar childhood song—recorded and rescored with adult voices—and a representation of the traumatic and relatively-unknown experiences of those in the situation of their own ancestors, must have been paradigm-shifting. For me, a Pākehā historian from Aotearoa who was previously unfamiliar with the song and unable to understand the words without translation, its melancholy repetitions and sparse instrumentation added so much emotional resonance to an already-distressing performance of misery, exploitation and grief.
The producer of Butakoci, Talei Draunibaka, spoke at the 160th Commemoration both about how acknowledging past pain could assist healing in the present, and about the process of creating the work and the thinking behind the artistic decisions she made. (She has spoken about this elsewhere, also.) In the short video we have produced about the 160th Commemoration, Draunibaka is speaking at the inflection point, parts of the adapted version of Butakoci are depicted, and some of the show’s version of Lai tei dalo ko tamaqu can be heard as part of the video’s own soundtrack. As masterful a choice as this song was for its Fijian audience, some background knowledge of its context for those watching who are not Fijian may or may not add depth to our understanding—as my own experience suggests, though, not understanding the words doesn’t mean that watching the show can’t be deeply moving. I also write this post to foreground the significance and value of song as a primary document, as living history, as a way of keeping experiences alive in spirit, even when more official versions of the past might be repressed or ignored. As the video of the 160th Commemoration shows, soundtracked only by music and words spoken at the event, the days involved grieving, dancing, singing, speaking and advocating for a better tomorrow.
