Tracking Globalization. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. xx, 246 pp. (B&W photos., illus., maps, tables.) US$28.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-253-01452-8.
Since the end of 1945, the indigenous people of Ocean Island, the Banabans, have lived on Rabi Island in Fiji. They were resettled there at the end of World War Two in order that phosphate miners could have a free hand to mine, and largely destroy, their home island. In December 1945, 1005 people arrived at Rabi to settle; 703 Banabans, 300 Gilbertese (I-Kiribati) from other islands in the Gilbert Group and two Ellice Islanders (Tuvaluans). Today their descendents are the result of intermarriage of Banabans with not only Gilbertese and Tuvaluans but also Fijians, Indo-Fijians, and others. The people of Rabi are now commonly known in Fiji as “Rabi Islanders” or “Rabians.” Those who can trace their ancestry back to Ocean Island prefer to be known as Banabans. The author of Consuming Ocean Island, Katerina Teaiwa, is one of these people.
The standard works about phosphate mining on Ocean Island are Williams and Macdonald’s The Phosphateers (Melbourne University Press, 1985) which is an institutional history of the British Phosphate Commission (BPC) and Macdonald’s Cinderellas of the Empire (Australian National University Press, 1982), an administrative history of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. These works rely on official sources, the BPC company records and government records of the colony.
Katerina Teaiwa has also researched these and other official records along with many other sources, including oral and unpublished personal accounts from Banabans, Gilbertese and Europeans who were not employed by either the BPC or the colonial government. The book is one in a series called “Tracking Globalization,” published by Indiana University Press, addressing how globalization can be understood and questioned ethnographically, historically, and theoretically. Her book therefore covers a wide range of subjects such as the chemistry and geology of the phosphate, the use of superphosphate in Australia and New Zealand, and the ethnography and plight of the Banaban people. Her work complements previously published material with new information and new dimensions to the story.
Parts of the book explore the author’s personal, ethnic, and family history, written in a travel writer’s style, as she journeys back to her ancestral home islands of Ocean Island: Tabiteuea in Kiribati, and Rabi Island in Fiji. She presents oral history storytelling, collected from her Banaban relatives who suffered from the loss of their land and home island. There are also stories from her Tabiteuean relatives, who were phosphate miners and thus contributed to the destruction of Ocean Island. They benefitted from the good pay and working conditions provided by the BPC.
Other chapters of the book are the result of thorough research into historical records. These deal with the history of phosphate mining and the political and ethnographical history of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, of which Ocean Island was a part.
Using a transdisciplinary approach the author links together a wide variety of topics and stories, all concerned in some way with the matter of phosphate mining on Ocean Island and its far-reaching effects on people and the environment. A theme running through it all is the injustice suffered by the Banaban people who lost their land, were cheated out of receiving a fair royalty for their phosphate and lost their case for full independence from the Republic of Kiribati.
A good portion of Banaba was scattered across Australia and New Zealand in the form of super-phosphate fertilizer and the author questions the spiritual affects of this: do Banabans have a specific relationship with Aboriginal Australians and Maori people because of the agricultural integration of their island into those landscapes? By asking this question she forces us to consider aspects of globalization which may be of importance to indigenous peoples but which are foreign to Europeans accustomed to thinking in terms of capitalist or colonial globalization.
The Banabans’ failed bid for independence from Kiribati was based on their claim to be ethnically and linguistically different from Gilbertese people. The I-Kiribati, however, believed, and the British courts agreed, that people of the same ethnicity settled all the Gilbert Islands and Banaba about the same time. Even the name Banaba is a Gilbertese word meaning “rock island.” Also traditional villages on Banaba all have Gilbertese names. Author Teaiwa states in the book that Banabans originally spoke their own language but she does not present any evidence or references to support this (xix, 15).
The book begins with a Banaban creation myth on the formation of Banaba and its people. The spirit characters who appear in this story are the same as those in other Gilbertese creation myths: Tabakea, the giant turtle on whose back islands can be supported; Nareau, the creator, who is also the trickster who can take human form; and Auriaria, the giant with an ancestral connection to Samoa.
The first chapter serves as an introduction, a summary of the book and explanation of it structure. Chapter 2, with the title “Stories of P,” makes a rather abrupt change of direction into the chemistry of phosphate, complete with chemical formulae on the production of super-phosphate. But even to readers who are not chemists, this chapter makes interesting reading on the importance of phosphorus in all living matter and especially its use in agriculture. The geology of the phosphate island is also discussed. The third chapter focuses on the early years of mining on Ocean Island, over the period from 1900 to World War II, based on research into BPC records.
The story thus moves around from phosphate to personal pilgrimage to the trials and tribulations of the Banabans and Rabi Islanders and their relationships with the governments of Kiribati and Fiji.
Peter McQuarrie
Independent Researcher, Auckland, New Zealand
pp. 733-735