“The journey is long, the arc of righteousness with curve.”
This simple yet profound saying captures a truth deeply understood by the itaukei. The path of a people is never a straight line; it bends, it weaves, it sometimes retreats before advancing. From the vantage of the Bose Levu Vakaturaga (BLV); whose modern incarnation carries a very different burden than its predecessor, this curved arc of righteousness offers a powerful lens through which to understand indigenous aspirations, especially when those aspirations may not be fulfilled in our own lifetime.
Two Councils, Two Eras: From Open Politics to Intergenerational Custody
To speak of the BLV today is to acknowledge a profound transformation. The old BLV, openly supported political parties, endorsed candidates, and was deeply entangled in Fiji’s volatile politics. It was not merely a customary body; it was a political actor, wielding considerable influence. That era brought some victories for itaukei interests, but it also brought division, controversy, and a gradual erosion of the BLV’s moral authority in the eyes of many.
The BLV of today, reinstated in 2023 after years of abolition, has learned from that curved arc. Its mandate is no longer to back prime ministers or sway elections. Instead, its work is quieter, deeper, and far longer in its horizon: to ensure intergenerational prosperity for the itaukei—prosperity that may not be seen or measured within the lifetime of any chief sitting in Council today.
This shift from open politics to intergenerational stewardship is not a retreat from power; it is a redefinition of it. The old BLV sought victories in election cycles. The new BLV plants trees under whose shade it knows it will never sit.
The Long Journey: Memory, Loss, and a Patience Beyond Politics
For the itaukei, the journey began long before colonial maps or constitutional crises. It began with the first canoes, the settlement of our islands and the establishment of the mataqali bound by love and mutual care. That journey has included moments of great mana—the Deed of Cession, the protection of itaukei land. But it has also included painful curves: the erosion of chiefly protocols, the temporary abolition of the BLV itself and the quiet struggle to maintain identity in a globalising world.
The old BLV responded to these curves by entering the political arena directly—backing parties, making endorsements, seeking immediate influence. But that approach, however well-intentioned, proved curved in its own way: it brought short-term gains but long-term instability, including the Council’s own abolition in 2012.
The new BLV, drawing from that hard lesson, now understands a deeper truth: intergenerational prosperity cannot be secured by election cycles. A land-use policy that benefits a single generation may impoverish the next. A constitutional clause that favours one political alliance may be repealed by another. True prosperity for the Vanua (land, people, custom) requires decisions whose fruits will be harvested by grandchildren and great-grandchildren—people not yet born, whose faces the chiefs will never see.
The Arc of Righteousness with Curve: Why We May Not See Its Bending
The quote speaks of “righteousness”—not justice alone, but something deeper. In the itaukei worldview, righteousness is correctness woven into veilomani (compassion), veidokai (respect), and veiyaloni (reconciliation). A righteous society is one where the Vanua is in balance: where qoliqoli are shared, where kerekere (customary requesting) functions without exploitation, where the yavusa cares for its vulnerable.
But why “with curve”? Because the path to righteousness is rarely direct. And crucially, from the perspective of the new BLV, the most important curves may bend so slowly that no living person will see them straighten.
Consider three examples of work the current Council is undertaking—work whose results belong to another era:
1. Climate resilience for coastal villages: The BLV today advocates for the managed relocation of itaukei communities threatened by rising seas. The policies, funding agreements, and customary protocols being negotiated now may take thirty years to fully implement. The chiefs who sign those agreements will likely be dead before the last family moves safely to higher ground. That is intergenerational work.
2. Protection of iTaukei intellectual property: The Council is quietly supporting legal frameworks to protect masi (tapa) designs, traditional navigation knowledge, and medicinal plant lore from commercial exploitation. These protections may not bear fruit—may not stop a single overseas counterfeit—for a decade or more. The chiefs sitting today may never read a court ruling in their favour. Yet they work.
3. Revitalisation of endangered dialects: Nearly a dozen iTaukei dialects are losing fluent speakers. The BLV’s current efforts to document them, integrate them into school curricula, and support elder-to-youth transmission will not restore those dialects in five years—or even in twenty. The arc bends so slowly that only the grandchildren of today’s youth may once again speak their village’s original tongue freely. But the bending begins now.
Aspirations That Transcend a Single Lifetime
What do itaukei people aspire to? From the new BLV’s perspective, the answer cannot be “power in the next election.” It must be:
· Sovereignty of custom: That vakaturaga be respected as a living legal and ethical system, not as a political pawn.
· Land as identity: That meaningful decision-making over iTaukei lands, forests, and waters returns to the mataqali and yavusa—even if that return takes half a century of legal and constitutional advocacy.
· Cultural continuity: That every itaukei child, a hundred years from now, knows their yavusa, their mataqali, and their vasu (maternal ties)—even if no living chief today will see that fully realised classroom.
· Unity without political division: That the itaukei people find common cause across provinces and clans, not through a political party endorsed by chiefs, but through shared commitment to a seven-generation horizon.
Why We Will Not See It—And Why That Is the Point
The old BLV sought results it could see: an election won, a minister appointed, a budget allocated. Those results were real, but they were also fleeting. Governments fall. Alliances shift. What one Parliament grants, another can revoke.
The new BLV has accepted a harder truth: the most important work is the work we will never witness. A replanted mangrove forest that protects a village from cyclones in 2070—planted by chiefs who will be bones in the ground by then. A land trust structure that prevents alienation for centuries—designed by men and women who will never collect its dividends. A generation of itaukei lawyers and elders who can recite customary law as fluently as statute—educated under programmes initiated by a Council that will not be there to see them graduate.
This is the “curve” in its deepest sense. The arc of righteousness bends away from immediate gratification, away from political headlines, away from the ego of “I did this.” It bends instead toward a future that the present generation will only glimpse. And that is precisely what makes it righteous.
Conclusion
For the itaukei, the Bose Levu Vakaturaga is no longer a political machine. It is a covenant across time—a body that has learned from its own history of open politics and chosen instead the harder, quieter path of intergenerational prosperity. The journey is long. The arc curves. And we, the living, will not see its completion.
But that does not mean it does not bend.
From the chiefly house before the yaqona (kava), the elders nod not for themselves, but for the ones who will come after. Our possessions will pass away—as long as the people of the land thrive.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 