The Fijian Association, an ethnic Fijian party established in 1956, formed the core of the Alliance Party, a coalition of conservative ethnically-based political organizations. The Federation Party grew out of conflict between Indo-Fijian cane farmers and foreign agricultural interests that culminated in a sugar-cane farmers’ strike in 1960.
Vijay Singh has been a world https://countrywaybridalboutique.com/oceania-women-features/fijian-women-features/ champion in golf, as has Tony Philps in surfing. Cricket, Sailing of varying forms, various adventure sports, athletics, martial arts and boxing are all popular. Soccer was a minor sport, but over the last decade with further international funding from FIFA and sound local management of the sport has grown in popularity amongst the Indian community initially but now also the Fijian community. Rugby league is a popular team sport played in Fiji. The Fiji national rugby league team is known as Fiji Bati, with the team competing in three Rugby League World Cup competitions. They made it to the semi-finals of the 2008 Rugby League World Cup. Rugby union is the most popular sport in Fiji.
Naturalized European and part-European communities tend to mingle more closely with ethnic Fijians than with Indo-Fijians. The republic includes approximately 320 islands, but only about one hundred are inhabited. The land area is 7,055 square miles ; Viti Levu and Vanua Levu account for 87 percent of the landmass. Viti Levu contains the major seaports, airports, roads, schools, and tourist centers, as well as the capital, Suva. The traditional attire was loin cloths for men and grass skirts for women. Skirts were short for single women, and long for married women, with girls wearing virgin locks before marriage.
In the next forty years, sixty thousand Indians were shipped to the islands, becoming a class of exploited plantation workers who lived in a world of violence, cut off from their cultural roots. Depressed economic conditions in India caused most of those laborers to remain after their contracts expired, finding work in agriculture, livestock raising, and small business enterprises. The Republic of the Fiji Islands is a multicultural island nation with cultural traditions of Oceanic, European, South Asian, and East Asian origins. Immigrants have accepted several aspects of the indigenous culture, but a national culture has not evolved. Commercial, settler, missionary, and British colonial interests imposed Western ideologies and infrastructures on the native peoples and Asian immigrants that facilitated the operation of a British crown colony.
A complex system of gift giving and receiving has existed for centuries. Sperm whale teeth are the most precious items of exchange and are given at marriages, funerals and other important ritual occasions.
