Burying the past - Healing the land: Ritualising reconciliation in Fiji

Abstract

This article discusses a high-profile traditional reconciliation ceremony staged in Fiji in November 2003. It describes how human agency is reflected in the state of the land and in people's social relations, past and present; how human agency is seen to spiritually disturb or reconcile the land, its innate ancestral powers and their influence on people's relations and the land; and how the efficacy of ancestral spirituality of the land may affect change, punishing or rewarding people's actions. And it discusses how the power of the Holy Spirit can bring about change through exorcising the land of ancestral spiritual power and un-blocking what Pentecostal Christians describe as demonic spiritual strongholds.