Creating an Archive for Rotuma: A Personal Account

Abstract

This essay is an account of the author’s experiences in collecting and assembling cultural and historical materials related to the island of Rotuma and to Rotuman communities in diaspora. The resultant archives are to be housed at the University of Hawai‘i’s Pacific Collection in both physical and digital forms. They include field notes dating back to research begun in 1959 that has been ongoing to the present as well as an array of published and unpublished documents collected from libraries, museums, and archives from around the world. A major goal of establishing the archive, particularly in its digital form, is to provide optimal access to persons of Rotuman ancestry as a form of repatriation that will encourage them to explore their cultural and historical heritage in the interest of adding substance to their cultural identity, and to provide enhanced opportunities for Rotuman scholars to assess the materials so that they can generate their own accounts of the Rotuman experience.