SOME of our traditions were removed on purpose so that we stop practising them.
This was a comment from Solomon Islands filmmaker, actress and cultural preservation activist Regina Lepping during the first screening of the film Blackbird at the Fiji National University Nasinu campus yesterday.
“There’s a huge gap I see in our communities where some of our traditions were removed on purpose so that we don’t practise it anymore,” Lepping said.
“Along with some of the hidden ways, but also the good way on what keeps a community together, society together, and so when foreigners come in and tell our stories, they started to use it in their perspective — how they see it.
“When we see these stories on screen, you realise that that’s not how it is because we know what the real story is.”
She said the gap included knowledge on the kind of people the indigenous were at that time, what kept indigenous people together, and what made them who they were.
“Now we’re struggling in a society of very mixed culture and new ideologies and sometimes there’s new agendas coming in to influence us, and we’re losing our foundations.
“People are forced to be different, be their own dynamics, way of learning and reading, and at the same time they’re forced to work together.
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Lepping said this was why storytelling is important for the indigenous people as it is a means to tell the world their story.
