Intergroup Relations, Group Maintenance, and Ethnic Commitment

Indo-Fijian adults have followed the same pattern as most recent immigrant groups in initially being highly involved with others sharing the same sociocultural background. This is not, however, even initially the case for their children, who in most cases have rapidly developed friendships outside the Indo-Fijian community. Indo-Fijian men are following the lead of their children, developing good workplace relations with other Canadians, and often extending these into personal friendships. Interethnic dating and marriage are now quite common. Older people and some women, however, remain largely within a circle of other Indo-Fijians.

One continuing, though episodic, intergroup issue has been racial discrimination, both actual and perceived. When the incidence of verbal abuse and other expressions of prejudice against South Asians was at its height in the late 1970s, Indo-Fijians were not distinguished from Sikhs, Pakistanis, and others, and many faced name-calling, social rejection, and probably job discrimination. Few Indo-Fijians have responded by rejecting contact with mainstream Canadians or by increasing their very limited connections with South Asians of other backgrounds.

Indo-Fijians are proud of their heritage, which they view as a unique cultural mix of Indian, native Fijian, and panethnic Fijian traditions. Immigrant adults identify strongly with this heritage, and with other Indo-Fijians. They do not particularly identify with other South Asian groups, except in the area of religion, or by acknowledging in the most general way, the high culture of the Indian subcontinent. Indo-Fijian identity plays an important role in shaping informal community boundaries, determining patterns of symbolic cultural maintenance, and, historically, determining marriage patterns, although those are beginning to break down. Subethnic consciousness tied to religious and cultural differences exist, and affect the pattern of interpersonal relations.

Indo-Fijians have not committed themselves to transmitting their culture, languages, and identities to their children, and little formal education in language, religion, and the high arts is provided. Indo-Fijians in the Vancouver area have formed cultural associations since the early 1970s, but these associations largely serve to maintain an informal community by bringing people together for periodic events. Thus, many Canadian-born understand but cannot speak or read the first languages of their parents and many know little about Fiji. Their connections to the informal Indo-Fijian community is guaranteed only because many other Indo-Fijians are their relatives. Should Fijian immigration terminate, even the large community in the Vancouver area probably does not have the means or the intergenerational commitment to maintain itself over more than two generations.