“Girmit Root and Pacific Shoot”: An Indo-Fijian Autobiographical Poetic Narrative for Constructing, Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Girmit Story

Abstract

This article draws from the narratives through oral story telling of my great grandmother’s experience during Girmit. It aims to preserve the past and present for future generations in a creative manner. Narrative and poetic inquiry has been used to bond the Girmit root and the Pacific shoot. Inspiration from Teresia Teaiwa’s (1968–2017) efforts which emphasized creative practice as a path to drawing out and deepening one’s knowledge guided this article. Data, presented as poems, express and communicate the stories pertaining to Girmit and its descendants. Present curriculum should seize opportunities to cultivate the usage of narratives and poetry to create a creative curriculum. This article, hopes that the poems could be used in the curriculum to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct the colonial mind-sets. It is written from my heart to the many hearts who, like me, are still in search for answers and insights of being and belonging to the diasporic/Hybrid identity.