Inimesed ja nende maa

In other words, such peoples do not just live in a group, as a collection of individuals, the community is part of their being, an extension of their self. In the same way, they do not feel that they just live on land, but that their land is a part of their very identity, as much as part of their being as their own body. This is one of the reasons why being forcibly ‘relocated’ by governments is such a tragedy for them. Their attachment to their land is so powerful that they experience this as a kind of death. The Fijian anthropologist A. Ravuva, for example, notes that the Fijian’s relationship to their vanua or land is ‘an extension of the concept of self. To most Fijians the idea of parting with one’s vanua or land is tantamount to parting with one’s life’ (1983, p.7).

Siit.