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Fiji has been here before. The country remembers the cost, though some now pretend it was never paid.
The renewed campaign against the Commercial Use of Marine Areas (CUMA) Bill, spearheaded by Niko Nawaikula and amplified by familiar ethno-nationalist voices, is not a neutral debate about law. It is a revival of a political script that has already pushed Fiji into catastrophe.
Wrapped in the language of indigenous rights, it repeats the same absolutism, selective history, and mobilisation cues that helped tear the country apart in 2006, and nearly did so from within in 1987.
This is not an argument against scrutiny of CUMA. Laws must be examined, criticised, and improved. But there is a profound difference between reform and recklessness. Fiji cannot afford to forget that difference.
The Lesson of 2006, and Why It Still Matters
The 2006 Qoliqoli Bill did not exist in isolation. It was introduced into a volatile environment where race, land, tribalism, provincialism, and state power were already dangerously entangled. The insistence that anything short of total, unconditional vesting of qoliqoli amounted to betrayal polarised the nation and fed a crisis of legitimacy.
The result was not the empowerment of iTaukei communities. It was a coup, the collapse of democratic governance, years of repression, and deep economic harm, borne most heavily by iTaukei themselves.
To revive that framing today - “absolute ownership or injustice” - is to ignore history. Or worse, to exploit it.
Imported Frameworks That Do Not Fit Fiji
At the centre of the current campaign is a heavy reliance on international indigenous instruments such as UNDRIP and ILO Convention 169. These frameworks were developed for peoples who are politically marginalised minorities in their own states, dispossessed by settler colonialism and excluded from power. The Incas and Aztecs under colonial annihilation, Aboriginal Australians denied land and sovereignty, Adivasis in India marginalised by dominant majorities: these are the paradigmatic cases.
The iTaukei people are not in that position.
In Fiji, iTaukei are the majority population. They own more than 90 per cent of land. Indigenous institutions are constitutionally entrenched. Political power, the public service, and the security forces are overwhelmingly iTaukei-led. To claim that iTaukei require the same restorative framework as colonised minorities elsewhere is not only a poor fit; it is politically incendiary. It transforms a constitutionally powerful majority into a fictional victim class and recasts fellow citizens as intruders.
UNDRIP was never intended to override the authority of a functioning, multi-ethnic state or to justify legal exceptionalism over national resources. When stretched that far, it becomes a weapon, not a rights instrument.
Marine Areas Are Not Land, and No State Governs Them Absolutely
Another sleight of hand is the treatment of qoliqoli as if they were identical to land. They are not. Marine areas implicate navigation rights, environmental protection, international maritime law, national food security, and shared access. No modern state - indigenous-led or otherwise - vests total, unregulated control of its marine spaces without oversight.
The State exists to regulate, enforce, and balance competing interests in the public interest. CUMA, whatever its flaws, reflects an attempt to retain national oversight over commercial marine activity while allowing customary participation. To portray this as an existential assault on indigenous identity is agitation, not analysis.
Power Without Capacity Is Not Justice
There is also a reality the “total control” narrative refuses to confront. Many iTaukei communities are under severe social strain. Drugs, particularly methamphetamine, are devastating families, villages, and youth. Chiefs, churches, police, and health workers all acknowledge it. The victims are overwhelmingly iTaukei.
Against this backdrop, handing over absolute control of vast marine and commercial resources without strong governance is not empowerment; it is exposure. Ownership brings responsibility - regulation, enforcement, transparency, resistance to criminal capture. Drug networks thrive where oversight is weak and authority fragmented. Romanticising custom while ignoring social breakdown does not protect communities; it places them at risk.
Ownership without capacity is not justice. It is negligence.
The Messenger Matters
Context also includes who is delivering the message. Niko Nawaikula is not a detached commentator. He is a former politician who was convicted and jailed for abusing taxpayer-funded travel allowances. That history does not permanently bar him from public debate. But it does matter when he presents himself as a moral authority urging communities to distrust government and “stand up” against the State.
Fiji has seen this pattern before: personal political rehabilitation through ethnic mobilisation. It has never ended well.
The Silence That Enables Extremism
Ethno-nationalism thrives not only because it is shouted loudly, but because it is rarely challenged. For decades, Indo-Fijians, descendants of girmitiya, born in Fiji with no other homeland, have learned to survive by keeping their heads down. Each coup taught the same lesson: protest invites punishment; silence buys survival. That instinct is understandable. It has also been costly.
When Indo-Fijians are labelled vulagis - foreigners in the land of their birth - and Indo-Fijian leaders fail to challenge it decisively, humiliation becomes normalised. Silence is not neutral; it validates the worldview of extremists and teaches them that intimidation works.
The Unspoken Warning from 1987
Fiji came perilously close to tearing itself apart from within in 1987. While the coups were carried out in the name of indigenous supremacy, a fact rarely acknowledged is that a small number of Indo-Fijians, pushed to desperation, briefly decided they would no longer absorb violence passively. The bombs in Suva. The guns in Lautoka.
These were not acts of liberation. They were acts of despair, and they terrified the nation. They remain a warning that systematic humiliation and exclusion do not always remain peaceful. Fiji escaped catastrophe then by luck as much as wisdom. It should not assume restraint is infinite.
Bogus “Indigenous Rights” as Political Weaponry
What is being advanced by Nawaikula is not protection of culture or dignity. It is racial entitlement dressed up as international law. It imports grievance frameworks designed for Incas, Aztecs, Aboriginal Australians, and Adivasis, and applies them to a context where the supposed beneficiaries already hold constitutional dominance.
This is not rights advocacy. It is ethno-nationalism. And history shows what ethno-nationalism produces in Fiji: coups, repression, economic decline, and long-term harm to indigenous people themselves.
Reform Yes, Radicalisation No
None of this argues for complacency. CUMA should be scrutinised. Consultation must be genuine. Customary participation can and should be strengthened. But reform must occur within constitutional order, grounded in Fiji’s history and present realities, not nostalgia or imported absolutes.
Every coup in Fiji has weakened indigenous security, not strengthened it. Every period of instability has harmed iTaukei livelihoods first. The politics of permanent grievance have never delivered dignity or prosperity.
A Final Warning
Fiji cannot afford to relearn the lessons of 1987 and 2006. Total control sold as liberation risks becoming another trigger for division and instability. Indigenous dignity will not be advanced by selective history, borrowed frameworks, or moral posturing from compromised platforms.
Justice in Fiji will be built through strong institutions, honest governance, social healing, and reform rooted in reality. Not by playing with fire, again.
We have already seen where this road leads. And it was not justice.
The renewed campaign against the Commercial Use of Marine Areas (CUMA) Bill, spearheaded by Niko Nawaikula and amplified by familiar ethno-nationalist voices, is not a neutral debate about law. It is a revival of a political script that has already pushed Fiji into catastrophe.
Wrapped in the language of indigenous rights, it repeats the same absolutism, selective history, and mobilisation cues that helped tear the country apart in 2006, and nearly did so from within in 1987.
This is not an argument against scrutiny of CUMA. Laws must be examined, criticised, and improved. But there is a profound difference between reform and recklessness. Fiji cannot afford to forget that difference.
The Lesson of 2006, and Why It Still Matters
The 2006 Qoliqoli Bill did not exist in isolation. It was introduced into a volatile environment where race, land, tribalism, provincialism, and state power were already dangerously entangled. The insistence that anything short of total, unconditional vesting of qoliqoli amounted to betrayal polarised the nation and fed a crisis of legitimacy.
The result was not the empowerment of iTaukei communities. It was a coup, the collapse of democratic governance, years of repression, and deep economic harm, borne most heavily by iTaukei themselves.
To revive that framing today - “absolute ownership or injustice” - is to ignore history. Or worse, to exploit it.
Imported Frameworks That Do Not Fit Fiji
At the centre of the current campaign is a heavy reliance on international indigenous instruments such as UNDRIP and ILO Convention 169. These frameworks were developed for peoples who are politically marginalised minorities in their own states, dispossessed by settler colonialism and excluded from power. The Incas and Aztecs under colonial annihilation, Aboriginal Australians denied land and sovereignty, Adivasis in India marginalised by dominant majorities: these are the paradigmatic cases.
The iTaukei people are not in that position.
In Fiji, iTaukei are the majority population. They own more than 90 per cent of land. Indigenous institutions are constitutionally entrenched. Political power, the public service, and the security forces are overwhelmingly iTaukei-led. To claim that iTaukei require the same restorative framework as colonised minorities elsewhere is not only a poor fit; it is politically incendiary. It transforms a constitutionally powerful majority into a fictional victim class and recasts fellow citizens as intruders.
UNDRIP was never intended to override the authority of a functioning, multi-ethnic state or to justify legal exceptionalism over national resources. When stretched that far, it becomes a weapon, not a rights instrument.
Marine Areas Are Not Land, and No State Governs Them Absolutely
Another sleight of hand is the treatment of qoliqoli as if they were identical to land. They are not. Marine areas implicate navigation rights, environmental protection, international maritime law, national food security, and shared access. No modern state - indigenous-led or otherwise - vests total, unregulated control of its marine spaces without oversight.
The State exists to regulate, enforce, and balance competing interests in the public interest. CUMA, whatever its flaws, reflects an attempt to retain national oversight over commercial marine activity while allowing customary participation. To portray this as an existential assault on indigenous identity is agitation, not analysis.
Power Without Capacity Is Not Justice
There is also a reality the “total control” narrative refuses to confront. Many iTaukei communities are under severe social strain. Drugs, particularly methamphetamine, are devastating families, villages, and youth. Chiefs, churches, police, and health workers all acknowledge it. The victims are overwhelmingly iTaukei.
Against this backdrop, handing over absolute control of vast marine and commercial resources without strong governance is not empowerment; it is exposure. Ownership brings responsibility - regulation, enforcement, transparency, resistance to criminal capture. Drug networks thrive where oversight is weak and authority fragmented. Romanticising custom while ignoring social breakdown does not protect communities; it places them at risk.
Ownership without capacity is not justice. It is negligence.
The Messenger Matters
Context also includes who is delivering the message. Niko Nawaikula is not a detached commentator. He is a former politician who was convicted and jailed for abusing taxpayer-funded travel allowances. That history does not permanently bar him from public debate. But it does matter when he presents himself as a moral authority urging communities to distrust government and “stand up” against the State.
Fiji has seen this pattern before: personal political rehabilitation through ethnic mobilisation. It has never ended well.
The Silence That Enables Extremism
Ethno-nationalism thrives not only because it is shouted loudly, but because it is rarely challenged. For decades, Indo-Fijians, descendants of girmitiya, born in Fiji with no other homeland, have learned to survive by keeping their heads down. Each coup taught the same lesson: protest invites punishment; silence buys survival. That instinct is understandable. It has also been costly.
When Indo-Fijians are labelled vulagis - foreigners in the land of their birth - and Indo-Fijian leaders fail to challenge it decisively, humiliation becomes normalised. Silence is not neutral; it validates the worldview of extremists and teaches them that intimidation works.
The Unspoken Warning from 1987
Fiji came perilously close to tearing itself apart from within in 1987. While the coups were carried out in the name of indigenous supremacy, a fact rarely acknowledged is that a small number of Indo-Fijians, pushed to desperation, briefly decided they would no longer absorb violence passively. The bombs in Suva. The guns in Lautoka.
These were not acts of liberation. They were acts of despair, and they terrified the nation. They remain a warning that systematic humiliation and exclusion do not always remain peaceful. Fiji escaped catastrophe then by luck as much as wisdom. It should not assume restraint is infinite.
Bogus “Indigenous Rights” as Political Weaponry
What is being advanced by Nawaikula is not protection of culture or dignity. It is racial entitlement dressed up as international law. It imports grievance frameworks designed for Incas, Aztecs, Aboriginal Australians, and Adivasis, and applies them to a context where the supposed beneficiaries already hold constitutional dominance.
This is not rights advocacy. It is ethno-nationalism. And history shows what ethno-nationalism produces in Fiji: coups, repression, economic decline, and long-term harm to indigenous people themselves.
Reform Yes, Radicalisation No
None of this argues for complacency. CUMA should be scrutinised. Consultation must be genuine. Customary participation can and should be strengthened. But reform must occur within constitutional order, grounded in Fiji’s history and present realities, not nostalgia or imported absolutes.
Every coup in Fiji has weakened indigenous security, not strengthened it. Every period of instability has harmed iTaukei livelihoods first. The politics of permanent grievance have never delivered dignity or prosperity.
A Final Warning
Fiji cannot afford to relearn the lessons of 1987 and 2006. Total control sold as liberation risks becoming another trigger for division and instability. Indigenous dignity will not be advanced by selective history, borrowed frameworks, or moral posturing from compromised platforms.
Justice in Fiji will be built through strong institutions, honest governance, social healing, and reform rooted in reality. Not by playing with fire, again.
We have already seen where this road leads. And it was not justice.
