Rotuma Island Accommodation

Rotuma Island hotels

Are you looking for a particular Rotuma Island accommodation? Just type this feature into the field above. In Rotuma Island, top valued low cost properties included, and on the basis of users ratings. SkiScanner is a quick, free and easy way to organize your holiday. Just fill in your desired trip data in the above field and let us find affordable accommodation for you.

Or, as an alternative, choose from the above mentioned hotels.

Changing the case to Rotuma

Homes - their erection, upkeep, use and even their position - have been of key importance for the socially reproductive relationships (Kainaga) on the island of Rotuma for hundreds of years. The calculation of ganglia is based on a shared history that was living or was entitled to live on a designated property. Involvement in a kinship group is reflected in the provision of material and labour for the build, maintain and furnish of a home and participation in the activity taking place in and around the home.

Rotumans continue to declare their solidarity by participating in meetings, providing materials, assisting in the preparation of meals, and sharing meals with those who live in a particular family. Rotary homes symbolize the responsibility and relationship of all those involved in their building, repairs and use. Rotuma, like other Pacific islands, has experienced significant societal, economical and population changes, especially in the last years.

Much of the impact of demographic change, the shift in the economy and improved accessibility to currency and imports can be felt in the homes of the Pacific Islands. Modifications in domestic material, design and use can form a focus for the investigation of broader transformations. There have been many changes in architectural style, material and building process since the early description of Rotuman homes in the 19th ct.

In a way, changes in structure and process around their development, care and use influence our societal relations. The purpose of this section is to detect changes in Rotuma residential building, identify significant drivers of these changes, and investigate their impact on Rotuman's interrelations. Rotuma Island is relatively isolated, 465 kilometres northern of the most northerly island in the Fiji group and only a little nearer to Futuna, the closest neighbour (see chart; Fig. 2.1).

For more than a hundred years Rotuma has been a political ally of Fiji, initially as a UK settlement and since 1970 as part of the sovereign state. Rotuma's population, however, is different in culture and language and has close links to Tonga, Samoa and other Polynesia isles in the south. There are seven counties on the island, each with its own top boss and a number of chiefs.

Chieftains are chosen from and by a specific group of relatives known as a mosaic ( "bed"), who take their ancestry from a particular property with which the main property is associated. While Rotarians work on community service programs under the leadership of their leaders and chieftains, and often share information about how much money and labour there is between homes, budgets are largely self-sufficient.

The Rotuma is a 43 sq. km fruitful volcano island encircled by a fringe wall of corals of different width and productivit. The most Rotuman homes keep hens and swine, and some also keep a few of them. Besides producing their own food, the Reds have been involved in foreign commerce for at least two hundred years.

Rotuman was also a keen sailor and diver, and earning his living as a sailor and bead diver. Kopra was founded in the 1870', and despite fluctuating output and falling earnings in recent years, Kopra has been Rotuma's main exporter. Founded as a UK settlement in 1881, Rotuma was shut down as a haven of immigration, so most possibilities for commerce, jobs and training in and through Fiji were followed.

Though the Rotuman community has been relatively steady on Rotuma, the percentage of Rotumans outside their home island has increased continuously, so that in 1986 70 per cent of Rotumans lived in Fiji and not in Rotuma (see Chart 2.1). Rotuma's job prospects more than doubled between 1960 and 1989.

A 1960 island-wide Alan Howard poll found that 71 Rotumans were in payroll roles; a similar 1989 poll found 174 Rotumans receiving a pay. Principal employer were the Fijian state ( (e.g. schoolteachers, health workers, workers) and two Rotuman co-operatives, which sold coppers and brought in groceries and other provisions.

2 ] Of the 414 Rotuma homes interviewed in 1989 (85 per cent of all the island's homes), 167 homes (40 per cent of respondents) were employees, pensioners or self-employed. Domestic members also make a living from a wide range of resources, among them occasional work, occasional export of plants and wildlife and the island's commerce - for example through the sale of horticultural products to the state.

Furthermore, almost half (48 percent) of the interviewed budgets stated that they received money transfers from family members in Fiji or abroad. A number of homes also profit from other types of continued Rotuman immigrant engagement, such as help with the procurement of materials from Fiji and support for small business ventures, as well as craft trades and tourism trips (see Rensel 1993 on the importance of immigrant engagement for Rotuma's physical well-being).

The Rotuman chefs' notes, which supervise horticultural practices in their district, suggest an increasing dependence on imports rather than locally produced cereals. It is not only the island's inhabitants that have been relatively stable from 1956-1986; the number of Rotuman men between the age of fifteen and fifty, who do most of the work in the gardens, has also stayed at about 500-600 (about 20 per cent of the Rotuma population).

The Rotuma Cooperative Association (RCA), which from the 1950' until recently conducted most of the island's commerce, illustrates the possible causes of the decline in this area. Even though homes spend much of their incomes on the sale of preserved or packed groceries, a clearer outcome of the growing excess of money can be found in the changes in the island's residential construction sector.

The Reds have a long tradition of improving living conditions and making building and repair work less labour-intensive. The following section begins with some of the early available Rotuman house histories, before turning to the changes that have been documented over the following years. Some of the first Europeans to visit Rotuma in the early 1800s (Bennett 1831; Eagleston 1832; Osborn 1834-1835; Cheever 1834-1835; Lesson 1838-1839; Lucatt 1851; Haley[1851] 1948) give an impression of living on Rotuma.

The buildings were built of sticks and trunks, with straw-covered slago-tree rooftops and braided sides of sagos or coconuts. The chieftains' homes were described as bigger, for example 40 x 16 ft (Haley 1948, 259) and 25 ft high (lesson 1838-1839, 433). According to Elisapeti Inia, a pensioned Rotuman school teacher and recognised authoritative body on Rotuman customs, [4] the roundness was due to Samoan or Tongan influences; the ends of the Rotuman homes were initially shallow (tarut fari).

2. Rotuman reed-covered assembly building with many features shared by the old-fashioned apartments, although the braided sides of the latter would be fuller rather than half-high. From the Rotuman perspective, the round ends of the reed canopy, which had been observed by early 19th c. watchers, were ascribed to the Samoan and Tongan influences. Practically, these rooms were more easily accessed by members of other homes than the interior of apartments.

The Rotuman tradition of helping others cook and share food in Koua'Erdöfen' was aided. They were not seen to be able to sleep indoors, in the immediate vicinity of their family. Young men's groups sometimes erected their own reed-covered dormitories, sometimes on high stakes (ri sipakit).

Keeping together and taking part in other common activites such as preparation for kouah and horticulture, the young people not only reinforced their relations with each other, but also the relations between their homes. The Reds usually constructed their homes on a base, or forag rai, of elevated soil, encircled by stonewalls (Osborn 1834-1835; Cheever 1834-1835; Lucatt 1851:167).

A number of authors proposed that these skyscrapers should keep the ground clean in case of strong rain (Osborn 1834-1835; Lucatt 1851, 167; Boddam-Whetham 1876, 266). However, for the Reds, relatives were and are important for them. It' is the home endowment to which Rotumans generally relate, for example when they describe how they are related to someone:

Rotuma's early guests gave little information about the furnishing of the house: The coconut husks suspended on the Sinnet to transport drinking waters could be suspended in the building (Eagleston 1832), and "a small co-op network is usually suspended in the middle of the building, on which their supplies etc. are stored.

Rotuman-styled home washing involves brushing the ground, tanning the matting and collecting foliage and other waste in the facility. Even though some 19th c. Rotuman homes in Europe found them "small, black and dirty" (Forbes 1875, 227), others were amazed at how tidy and "embarrassingly clean" they were (see e.g. Lesson 1838-1839, 434; Bennett 1831, 201; Haley 1948, 258).

Rotuman's practice, for example, is that when men go offshore to fish, they are not allowed to wash the shelter. Likewise, five after a funeral, the homes of the grieving family are left unturned. Usually Rotuman housing is a group project, even if it can be managed by a particularly experienced specialist (majau'expert, carpenter').

Both men and men help with material and work with reed-covered trees and help to gather and cook the sticks and coconuts. In 1913, as mentioned by A. M. Habart, the inn prepared a celebration for the Mayau before and after the construction of the building and supplied the workmen every single working days (Hocart 1913, Feldnotez 4846).

If necessary, they should be prepared to return the favor with their work. Rotuman Methodist Pastor Fuata Taito described the trial in his 1940 autobiography: The use of a home on a Mount Rí, or on Mount Cainaga, is governed by the usage laws of the members of the Mount Cainaga, and these requirements can be reinforced by helping to build it.

Reed-covered properties must be maintained regularly, which provides further possibilities for showing family obligations. Rotuman estimated the Sagopalm as more tenable than the Kokospalme for Dachstroh (Bennett 1831, 201; Evans 1951, No. 25). In the 1880s, a methodistic minster who spent several years on the island reported that a beautifully laid out sago-palm canopy should last "twelve or sixteen years without being turned around" (Allen 1895).

In order to provide protection for reed canopies in high wind, couples of palms of coconut were ( and are) placed on top of the rooftop and bound together at the top. Nevertheless, reed canopies and braided partitioning have to be regularly renewed. Like the construction of a new thatch roofed facility, re-thatching is an activities where a group of family and neighbours usually contribute material and work on a mutual base and thank each other with meals.

Located on the so-called Fürag Ri'foundations' and in the process of their building and upkeep, the Rotuman-styled straw-roofed homes were a permanent reminder to their residents of the kinship networks that helped them. However, in the course of the last hundred years several factors have led to far-reaching changes in the company's material, stylistic, constructional, and reparative work.

The next section looks at how a number of societal, ecological, demographic and economical factors have influenced Rotuman living conditions and thus the place of homes in society. Rotuma's home was deliberately influenced by the arrival of religious missions in the mid-19th centuries, both deliberately as an explicitly stated purpose and through the introduction of new construction-technologies.

British Methodists in particular combined a physical life style with religious spirit and deliberately tried to create a model of clothing, cleanness and living space for the Reds. Osborne, who wrote from Sydney after he left Rotuma in 1873, commended the work of his predecessor, Rev. and Mrs. William Fletcher and other methodistic instructors, and attributed changes in living to them on Rotuma:

Father Fletcher recognised and used the powers of the model and cross-group competitions to bring about changes in building practice when he came back to the island after Brother Osborne's depart. After a heavy catastrophic event that ravaged harvests and damaged structures in 1874, he of Rotuma wrote: "Brother Osborne was corrosive in his estimation of the impact of the work of the two Franciscan Catholics on the island, not least because the Catholics did not place the same importance on the change in the living standards of the Rotumans:

Instead, the Roman Catholics concentrated on the erection of two gigantic church and schools on the island. Practically all the material for the church - among them timber, glazed window, alter, statues, bell and even waterspouts for the watch-house - were brought in from France. Presbyterians included the locals in the design and decorations of these structures and taught them new techniques.

Cornish noted the finishing of the electric cabling, paintings and cabinet construction at the college in the following year's review and commented with pride: "Anyone would be surprised to find such a facility on an island as remote as this" (Rotuma District Office, Outward Letters: Annual Report of 1939, 7).

Their work - both in communicating their worth about decent living and building capacity - certainly affected Rotuma's quest for living in Europe. However, the Rotumans' predilection for new forms of living may be less based on ideologies than on the practice of responding to opportunities. There were a number of things that came together in the early 1800' to make a change to new home lifestyles possible and desired.

The Rotuma region is regularly hit by storms that often require the rebuilding of structures all over the island. In 1874 a catastrophic storm nearly all the homes on the island were devastated (Boddam-Whetham 1876, 262), and spare straw was in short supply (Rotuma District Office, Outward Letters: November 24, 1884). As a result, the real estate crises may have been exacerbated at about the same period by the behaviour of the winners in one of the worship missions.

Methodists are said to have cremated the homes of Catholic and "pagan" Rotumans (Forbes 1875, 242), although such behaviour is expressly negated in the reports to Gardiner (1898, 470) about twenty years later. Rotumans welcomed this innovative product with enthusiasm in the 1870' when Europeans launched the use of limestone (Soroi) from fired corals as a construction work.

First, they put it over their reed-covered wall, then they began to construct new stony buildings (ri hafu), inside and outside rendered with limestone (Gardiner 1898, 435). Until 1884, Resident Commissioner W. M. Gordon stated that "well-built and dimensionally precise brick and limestone buildings quickly replace today's reed-roofed houses" (Rotuma District Office, Outward Letters: November 24, 1884).

Ri-haafu's share of the island grew over the next few years. Sykes in a 1948 commission from the British Empire said that "most homes are constructed of rock cementated with a mix of limestone and sandy corals and roofed with a Sagopal leaf" (Sykes 1948).

Noticing that there were also many homes in Europe with timber and steel rooftops, although they were not well preserved. It is evident from his account that there are few, if any, thatched-roofed homes on the island. However, just a few years later, the district director H. S. Evans (1951, annotation 25) provided a numeric evaluation of the forms of living, indicating that the reed roof structure had been preserved to some degree.

More than one-third of the homes are beautiful chalky chalk-ceramic, bright igneous whitewashed cabins; less than one-third are rotuman homes with saga leaves; twenty-four percents are wooden homes and the other nine percents are made of wavy metal. "Most of the rooftops were still straw-roofed, not more than twelve per cents of the buildings had steel rooftops.

According to a Rotuma Council survey of county leaders and deputies (see Chart 2.2), by 1966 more than half of the buildings had brick or concrete masonry ("ri hafu"). Roofed reed buildings (ri ota) had dropped to less than a fifth, buildings with steel partitions ('ri pota) to 18 per cent, and only 13 per cent were wooden buildings ('ri ai).

15 years later, in 1981, the Rotuma Council informed us that 83 per cent of homes had brick or masonry. Timber and steel buildings accounted for 10 per cent and 8 per cent of the island buildings respectively. This change and above all the fact that there were practically no thatched roofs in Rotuman design was largely due to the 1972 Winter Storm Bebe and the subsequent aid programme.

Building crews were competing to see how quickly they could set up the fundamental structure. Meanwhile, the work of the New Zealand army and its Rotuman assistance has achieved a fabulous state: the New Zealand Army: Over a twenty-one day span, I was informed, they were building 302 new homes. You can see from the numbers in Chart 2.

2, that was a significant part of the apartments on the island. A number of couples decided not to build their home on the foundation of their relatives' group housing. According to the 1989 poll, only 58 per cent of island homes were on the island of Fürag Rei. Though most Rotuman buildings are still being constructed on the lands of Cainaga, [8] those outside Cainaga may be less susceptible to claim by other Mankind.

Anyone who invests in a more sustainable organization may have hoped to pass it on to their own descendants. The hurricane Bebe and the following state assistance gave important impulses for residential construction on Rotuma. The general tendency towards more expensive, individual living, however, is largely supported by the migration of Rotumans to remunerated jobs abroad and the money and material that these immigrants return to the island.

Over the past few dozen years, the number of Rotarians in Fiji has increased dramatically. Altough the populace that remains on the island stayed fairly stable from 1956-1986, reduced statistic house sizes from 7. 4 to 5. 8 people. A large part of this is due to a significant rise in the number of homes with one to three people.

Whereas Howard found in 1960 that such small budgets accounted for only 11% of Rotuman budgets, in 1989 nearly 30% of them. Simultaneously, the proportion of homes on the island with ten or more persons decreased from 17 per cent in 1960 to only 8 per cent in 1989 (Figure 2.3).

Part of the growth in small budgets can be traced back to the repatriation of private persons who decide to create segregated budgets instead of joining the population. Furthermore, some formerly large homes are now staffed by a sole person who has been appointed janitor for the single-family home. It runs the home with the help of financially supported members of his relatives abroad.

Both small and large budgets profit from the funds and material transferred for the building, renovation and extension of houses. Transforming the case material implies a corresponding displacement of the relations they provide. Reed, rock and limestone can be extracted on site on the lands of Cainaga, and with the help of nearby family.

Using exported material necessitates having direct contact with cash or persons with a financial background, usually migrants. Relations with the island of Cainaga, which offer such assistance, are therefore of higher value. In addition to maintaining these connections with regular presents of products or other specialities of the island, the inhabitants of Rotuma try to offer their families lodging when they come to town.

Convenience is more and more determined by the city environment from which the visitor comes, i.e. by a building and a European-style interior. Contemporary Rotuman apartment made of concrete, timber and sheet metal with rastered glazing, with new additional concrete blocks in the back. On a raised rock base, a crocodile plant edging adorns the façade.

Notice also the straw-roofed cuisine in the background and the ironwashhouse. Since the end of the 1970', Rotuma has had access to fresh and subterranean aquatic waters. The island-wide system of tanks and pipes took several years to set up and work is still ongoing.

During the last years some buildings with living rooms, washing room and WC were build under one attic. In spite of material and style changes, the mutual working agreements for development contracts have continued. Almost all homes interviewed in 1989 stated that their homes were build by members of their families, neighbours and boyfriends; only nine homes across the island said they had employed workers to build them.

However, the different demands on power and skills in timber and concrete structures restrict the involvement of especially females, although there are a number of skilled builders on the island. There is also evidence of an increasing trend to hire workers to build and renovate houses. I carried out a thirteen-week poll on the activity of seventeen homes in a town.

Out of the ten budgets involved in building project during the poll, eight gave funds to non-budget members who helped. I' ve been told by others on the island that the Rotumans are less and less willing to help with the building of homes, especially those made of concrete and wood, without getting it. Part of the pay for employees can be attributed to the need for professionals to fit the window, ceramics and other characteristics that have been introduced.

Resourcefulness is of particular concern to immigrants who build houses on the island or to Rotarians who are abroad but on vacation seeking their own place. For example, in the latter eighties, a London immigrant sent funds to a relatives in her home county to oversee workers build a house where her wife and daughter could be living if she visited the island.

There were two physicians (one a Rotuman, one an Aussie man and one a Rotuman man) who paid to work on the island to create complex, architectonically decorated sheds. Conversely, some of those returning from Fiji are building reed roofs; recently two men who came back to Rotuma from Fiji to mainly accept the title decided to built Riotas, supported without monetary reparation from their population.

The ways in which apartments are refurbished and the procedures for carrying them out have evolved with the nature of the same. At the end of the 19th century, when limestone was launched as a construction element, red was a longer lingering option. However, limestone and limestone buildings demand a periodical whitewashing with extra limestone (Evans 1951, footnote 25). Even timber buildings need colour and are exposed to termite attack, and steel roofing finally rusts and must be fixed or exchanged (Sykes 1948).

A benefit of concrete buildings is that they need little servicing, especially if they remain intact. However, more and more homeowners on Rotuma are opting to remove their concrete structure and include functions such as interior tinsmithery, electric cables and bath tiles. By 1989, 145 homes across the island were reporting that they had renovated their homes last year.

Howard carried out an island-wide home economics interview in 1960, which assessed homes as "European" or "Rotuman". Howard's rotuan research assistant ranked the buildings according to their own standards. It was characterised by the reduman look as a house with matting on the ground and very small pieces of upholstery. Euro-standard refers to buildings with enough furnishings (tables, stools, couches, beds, cupboards, etc.) to accomodate a Euro-pean visitor in comfort.

According to these criterions 33 per cent of the buildings were evaluated in Europe according to the Howard Feld Note 1960. Howard said that in 1960, the only difference in state that Rotumans made based on exterior building was between the homes of common Rotumans and those of officials and commercial company executives whose homes were much more intricate.

Scientists' choice to differentiate Rotuman homes by interior design rather than walls indicates that their exterior design makes little distinction, while furnishing and equipment represent a different lifestyle (Howard, face-to-face communication). As more and more Rotuman homes are fitted with west facing pieces of wood, the production of mats takes on a smaller part of the responsibility of mothers.

As I asked what girls were doing instead, they proposed that they would spend more hours looking after their homes. A great deal of care has been taken in the design of the buildings, with colourful outdoor bordered bougainvilleas and crotons and containers decorated with green or synthetic plants, paintings and other decorations.

Home maintenance seems to have become more important in the perception of Rotuman than in 1960 (Howard, personally communicating). The changes in residential construction on Rotuma obviously go far beyond the corpora. Investing in a new home has a significant impact on the relationship of a Rotuman townhouse. When deciding to construct or expand with material that has been brought in, connections with immigrants are often emphasized over those with native Cainaga.

Whereas a home that has been erected by a large co-operating group of locals serves as a permanent memento of their welfare and help, one of a few remunerated laborers represents less importance. Mutual help is being played down with the growing trend towards giving funds for aid and material. Changes in the shape and furnishings of apartments reduce the possibilities for joint activity between neighbouring homes.

As a result, greater emphasis can be placed on helping relations with relations outside the island by shipping products and accommodating people. Because Rotumans sees the right to property, not certain buildings, a home can be reserved for its kids on a plot of property that is not traditionally founded.

Building durable homes on Fürag Rei will require re-negotiation of the site requirements. Seems that investing in a home is recognised as adequate reason for a linear group of families to stay on a fag i. Shifting to permanents has an impact on Rotuman litigation managment.

Such a case occurred in 1989, when a house demolished its reed-covered apartment and moved it to another place because there was no agreement on the rights to the first plot. It is a practical solution for those with steel or wooden homes, but not for those with cements.

Humans may be able to get away for a while by going to visit family elsewhere on the island, in Fiji or abroad, but at some point they will have to come back or give up a substantial amount of money, work and material. Poor emotions are intensified by the spectre of not only the country, but also a lasting home and the work and relations it is to lose.

The Rotuman concept for a good home is characterized by evangelistic teachings and role model, experience with other outside parties and an effort for expediency and comfort. Regardless of the history of its origins, the dominance of Europe's residential construction testifies to the appreciation of imports over domestic examples. Migrating to post-Hurricane Bebe reinforced the transition to reinforced steel constructions not only by concern and the need for more robust material, but also by the quest for Europe's goods for the purpose of state.

Using Westerner goods as indicators of progress, they may have accidentally brought about changes in relations. In the last few years a Rotuman building has become, according to some commentators, "a yardstick for the measurement of people's riches and status" (1991, 205). Before the assignment in 1881, there were only minor differences in the Rotuman houses' styles and outfits.

The chieftains' homes were characterised above all by their greater dimensions, which above all mirrored the responsibilities for accommodating them. The chieftains used to have access to church work to construct their homes, but today, when they want something other than a reed-covered apartment, they are in the same place as everyone else: supplies and to some degree work costs work.

An associated amendment is an ostensible deterioration of morals associated with a rank when a man is named chieftain. In 1988, when a man who had been named a certain subtiefly named returned from Fiji to Rotuma, the householder declined to allow the repatriate to move there in a concrete building on the site associated with that name.

Thereupon the new chief of the lower classes erected a reed-roofed building on another country of Kenaga. Simultaneously, some buildings of a westerly character are becoming more and more important when it comes to asserting rights to main title. During a 1988 debate on skills to look for in a chieftain nominee, a Rotuman proposed to me the following criterions, in that order91: "Emphasis added:

A person who is a member of the fellowship - not a lone wolf; 3. a Christian who is involved in ecclesial matters; 4. someone who looks like a chieftain and has a good home and can therefore be consulted; 5. someone who talks well; 6. someone who is literate and good in English; 7. someone who knows the language and knows the language.

In 1960, earlier studies of the island's anthropology did not reveal the incorporation of living space in such formulae (see Howard 1970). The case of a county leader who was criticized in 1990 for having a modest attic rather than a "real house" to keep the public entertained is a bad example.

Currently, the homes of most county leaders are concrete buildings, but neither the biggest nor the most impressive in their wards. Rather, those with higher income or outside the island have the means to build expensive homes. In addition to marginal observations, the assessment of societal merits seems to have been influenced by greater accessibility to residential space in the West.

Usually the Rotuman's capacity to supply an array of foods, especially horticultural products, is crucial to the evaluation of people' s outcomes. However, lately there have been some speculations that this has been overshadowed by the capacity to offer a west styled home. In a 1974 address in Fiji National Provident Fund's austerity and loan programmes, Wilson Inia, Rotuma's first Fijian legislative minister, said:

In 1988 I was informed that there is a Rotuman proverb: "You know, if the place is good, the people are good. Red, who have lived on the island for a long time and are conscious of the history of building, tend to differentiate between a beautiful home and working on the procurement and construction of it.

Those who know whose work is present can assess homes when evaluating feed output and inputs. Societal pressures do not scare the Reds away from doing their best to construct and decorate their favourite home, however it is open to them. Not all Rotumans make the same decisions.

In the last ten years, the emergence of two-storey buildings on the island has been an extrem. While the man who made the first such building was criticized by others for his showy portrayal, others have since started to do so: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry: A 1989 poll revealed six two-storey buildings.

They have been constructed with immigrant or repatriate allowances and are an assessment of the level of comfort as well as the social security system (defined as municipal employees). Indeed, for those with less urbane experiences, such lavish homes have a dissociating and daunting effect. On the other end of the scale are the above two migrants who, when they return to the island, mainly took names by building straw-roofed homes.

Your choice to do so may mirror other reflections, such as the wish to restrict financial investments in imports until you could see how the new items would develop. However, by choosing to construct Rotuman homes with the help of the men who run (and serve) them, these new leaders also gave precedence to reunification with the fellowship through the intimate and time-honored practices of mutual work.

Included in this document is an overview of historic documentation, as well as research I did with Alan Howard on Rotuma during six excursions from a few week to six month between 1987 and 1994. The present section is a reorganised and extended edition of the Rotuma: Hanua Pumue (Precious Land) published in the Fatiaki et al. 1991 series.

Allan, William (1895) Rotuma. Bennett, George (1831) A recent trip to several of Polynesia's islands. Churchward, C. Maxwell (1940) Rotuman grammar and dictionary. Evans, H.S. (1951) Notes on Rotuma. Fatiaki, Anselmo et al (1991) Rotuma: Hanua Pumue (Precious Land). Gardiner, J. Stanley (1898) Native of Rotuma. Huntsman (1973) A demographic story of the Tokelau Islands.

Howard, Alan (1970) Learn to be a Rotuman. Australasian Methodist Church, Department of Overseas Mission (1855-1879) Letter preserved, Fiji-Rewa, Rotuma, Ovalau, Construction & Other. At Rotuma: Hanua Pumue (Precious Land) Fatiaki, Anselmo et al. pp. 204-226. Participation of migrants in the Rotuma business community. District Office (n. d.) Outward Letter.

Sykes, J.W. (1948) Confidential report on Rotuma.