Traditional Fijian Apology as a Political Strategy

This paper is a reflection upon tradition in Fiji, taking up the question of a controversial ceremony of apology during the 2000 Fijian crisis. A subject of dispute, as much for the social actors as for anthropologists, the notion of tradition that I piece together appears as just such an object of negotiation — between interlocutors but equally between they and the anthropologist. While stressing articulations between customary and constitutional rights, it also highlights the personal and collective strategies that are hidden behind a conflict said to be ethnic, and in the construction of Fijian nationalism.