Land, Law and Custom: Diverging Realities in Fiji

Abstract

During the last century and a half, Fijians have made great changes to the ways they allocate and control land. Some changes now have the sanction of ‘custom’ or government law. Some current practices are sanctioned by either custom or law, or both; others by neither. Government land and labour policies of the 1870s and 1880s were designed to protect Fijians from loss of their land and from the social disruption which, it was thought, would follow such loss. These policies, which codified a quasi-traditional order, ran the risk of creating a strait jacket preventing adjustment to new social, political and economic situations. The longer-term consequences have not been as serious a constraint on socio-economic change as they might, largely because people have simply ignored the regulations and their intent. Older flexible practices of land allocation and use continued, or new practices emerged which, though unsanctioned by ‘custom’ and sometimes illegal, have met new needs. What is often assumed to be a ‘traditional’ land tenure system now differs from the practices followed prior to codification of Fijian land tenure by the colonial government. Major discrepancies now exist between those registered as owners of land held under ‘customary’ tenure, legally called ‘native land’, and those who use it; and between legally sanctioned means of allocating use of native land to non-Fijians and the way much native land is made available to such people. These discrepancies are rarely acknowledged publicly in policy-making circles.