Prakash and her brother began investigating their heritages as descendants of Girmitiya workers in 2020, eventually finding shared connections with the local Indo-Fijian community. Their work has culminated in the interdisciplinary, reflective event Echoes of Home: Tracing Girmitiya History (June 13, Surrey City Hall).
“I would really like people to understand their roots and what colonization and practices of migration do to people’s identities,” adds Milan Singh, curator of the event. “I want people to know that these documents are available for you to understand and learn even a little bit more about who you are and who your family is.”
A community organized event presented by The Nameless Collective and No Ties 1879, Echoes of Home will showcase a community connections display with immigration passes and family portraits. Clips from the BBC documentary, Coolies: How Britian Reinvented Slavery will be screened.
The event will also feature renowned Indian classical musician Cassius Khan, accompanied by Kathak dancer and harmonium artist Amika Kushwaha. The night concludes with a panel discussion, allowing participants to reflect on their identity and family history.
Tracing historical roots
“We all know that this [girmit] wasn’t a legal agreement in the sense that the understanding of what the experience would be like in Fiji was not clear,” Singh explains. “Many people who went from India to Fiji were promised a better life; they were promised prosperity; they were promised an opportunity to come back home.”
Singh adds that those who did return to India found a country still under British colonial rule. Both organizers emphasize this history as a direct effect of the slave trade.
“Once legally, slavery was abolished, there needed to be another mechanism or scheme for labour across the colonies to continue,” Singh explains. “This was the next scheme or sort of way for cultivation and colonization to continue across the globe.”
“So many [Indo-Fijians] and their families became families on that boat,” she says. “They tried as hard as they possibly could to maintain that relationship in Fiji, and in fact, many of those relationships carried on through generations and still hold true today.”
Many members of the Indo-Fijian community fled Fiji following the 1987 coup, resettling in various parts of the world, including New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Prakash’s parents were part of this group – building a life in Ladner, B.C. This migration out of Fiji added another layer to understanding their identities.
“We’re not from India, and we’re not necessarily widely accepted in India; in some cases, we look different and act different because of the Indigenous Fijian culture that has been embedded into us,” Prakash emphasises. “At the same time, we also see the Fiji Island as this very important place to us, but it’s also a place that told us that we shouldn’t be there.”
A unique diaspora
Singh notes that the United Nations – as part of the UNESCO’s Memory of the World project – has called on colonial governments to make migration records available. This call expanded beyond indentured labourers in Fiji to those in Trinidad, Mauritius and other countries.
“The Fijian National Archive had worked with Australia and the Australian libraries and archives to digitize immigration passes, so any Fijian or any Indo-Fijian that had a family member … would have had an opportunity to find their record digitally,” she says, although these records are incomplete.
According to Singh, the National Archives of Fiji provides further support including birth, marriage, and death certificates. There is also a B.C. connection: the City of Vancouver Archives contain images of Fijians and Indo-Fijians working in sugarcane fields; local sugar refineries employed them.
The Echoes of Home team is also curating a display of family portraits from the local diaspora. The event recognizes the effects of intergenerational trauma while highlighting the community’s resilience and strength. For Singh, the focus is on “power, empowerment, agency and uplifting [their] community.”
“We’re such a unique diaspora,” Prakash adds. “We’ve been very intentional to bring awareness to this [history] and encourage our elders to recognize how it’s impacted us and encouraging our younger brothers and sisters to understand [the system] better.”
In addition to Singh (curator) and Prakash (event producer), Echoes of Home is organized by Sheetal Naicker (community and sponsorship lead), Sandhya Prasad (community organizer) and Arif Ali (community organizer).
The Australian archives and library Singh referenced is the National Library of Australia.
For more information, see https://tickets.surrey.ca/TheatreManager/1/tmEvent/tmEvent2771.html
