Abstract
To engage with the intellectual genealogy of a people through community and institutional archives is to remember, connect, acknowledge, listen to, and lean into the work of ancestors. In this creative PhD thesis, I engage four Rotuman multilingual archival texts and their contexts through a series of innovative reading approaches. In chronological order, these textual Rotuman temamfua (ancestors) are the multi-authored newsletter Rogorogo (1913, 1914); Titifanua’s Tales of a Lonely Island (Churchward, 1937; 1938a; n.d, 1939; Titifanua & Churchward, 1995); and Fuata Taito’s The Aborigines of the North (Taito, ca. 1949a) and My Own Story (Taito, ca. 1949b). Together, these early to mid-twentieth century texts comprise a monolingual periodical written in Fäeag Rotuạm ta (the Rotuman language), an anthology of hanuju (Rotuman stories) written in Fäeag Rotuạm ta, and two autobiographical texts written in English but with many references to Rotuman language and culture. None of these texts has previously enjoyed sustained critical treatment; for each text, I devise an original method of archival textual engagement. My engagements with these four texts highlight the complex and evocative stories that they tell of early to mid-twentieth-century life and cultural practices on the island of Rotuma, located in the central Pacific and part of the Republic of Fiji. Like many Indigenous languages, the language of Rotuma, Fäeag Rotuạm ta, is described as vulnerable yet is maintained on the home island and, as my engagements with these texts reveal, in rich archival repositories. My readings of these four archival texts make visible the vitality of Fäeag Rotuạm ta, thereby challenging existing deficit narratives that question the strength of language in the diaspora.
My readings also demonstrate that these texts are significant and foundational literary texts and in turn inform my creative response through my own collection of multilingual archival digital visual poetry. Entitled Kaveia Tạn Kạl Ta: Mark the Round Water, this digital collection is not an adaptation of the four archival texts but rather a regenerative poetic creation of each text’s immaterial elements such as reader emotions and memories; and material elements such as the sound and orthography of Fäeag Rotuạm ta. My digital collection realises the concept of what I term archi digi vispo. Archi digi vispo fuses the archival and digital with visual poetry. I argue that the creative and critical poetic weaving that I present through my archi digi vispo collection is not only well positioned to support Fäeag Rotuạm ta but also offers an alternative to existing conversations concerning Fäeag Rotuạm ta vitality in the diaspora. It refocuses our attention on what we can do with our language rather than on the popular language-death narrative currently associated with Fäeag Rotuạm ta. By placing a language like Fäeag Rotuạm ta in a dynamic and interactive digital space with global reach, I highlight the importance of Rotuman heritage texts not only for today’s Rotuman writers but also for Fäeag Rotuạm ta regeneration in the diaspora. Merging the reading of Rotuman multilingual archival texts with poetry and digital authoring offers a complex yet joyous way to remember, connect, acknowledge, listen to, and lean into Rotuman historical literary texts. Such engagements can reclaim narratives, offer solutions to pressing social issues, and nourish connections and a sense of belonging across local and diasporic communities. It is also, I hope, a way to open existing community and institutional archives to a wider Rotuman audience at home and in the diaspora and to affirm and enrich the values of these archival texts and repositories as sites of memory and joy for all Rotuman people.