Fiji History MuseumTravel to the past.

LESSON PLAN · 5 CHAPTERS

Voyagers

Print this page for the worksheet: the plan prints first, then one sheet per pupil pair.

A forty-minute lesson

5 min — Arrive. Open The drua, Fiji’s great double canoe on the projector and look around its 360° scene together.

15 min — Work from sources. Give each pair one chapter from the list below. They read its facts, open one source and fill in the worksheet.

10 min — Compare. Pairs with different chapters explain to each other what their chapter says and which source supports it.

10 min — Check. Each pair names one thing their source does not tell them, and who might know it — a family elder, a village, an archive.

Chapters in this era

  1. The drua, Fiji’s great double canoe · Voyagers and canoes · 2 sources
  2. Camakau and outrigger canoes · Voyagers and canoes · 2 sources
  3. Voyaging between Fiji, Tonga and Samoa · Voyagers and canoes · 3 sources
  4. The Lapita people · First settlement · 2 sources
  5. Fijian pottery through time · First settlement · 2 sources

Worksheet: The drua, Fiji’s great double canoe

Name(s):

The museum says

  • The drua is a Fijian double-hulled sailing canoe: two hulls of unequal length joined by a raised deck.
  • Drua were sailed by shunting — the sail was carried from one end to the other, so either end could become the bow.
  • The largest drua were among the biggest canoes built anywhere in the Pacific and could carry well over a hundred people.

1. Which source supports one of these sentences? Write its name.

2. Who wrote or made that source, and when? Were they Fijian, or a visitor?

3. What does the source not tell us? Who could we ask?

Sources for this chapter: Wikipedia: Drua · Wikipedia: Fiji Museum

Worksheet: Camakau and outrigger canoes

Name(s):

The museum says

  • The camakau is a single-hulled canoe with an outrigger float, used for fishing and travel between nearby islands.
  • Like the drua, it was sailed by shunting rather than by turning through the wind.
  • Smaller paddled canoes were used on rivers and inside the reef.

1. Which source supports one of these sentences? Write its name.

2. Who wrote or made that source, and when? Were they Fijian, or a visitor?

3. What does the source not tell us? Who could we ask?

Sources for this chapter: Wikipedia: Drua · Wikipedia: Outrigger boat

Worksheet: Voyaging between Fiji, Tonga and Samoa

Name(s):

The museum says

  • Fiji, Tonga and Samoa were linked for centuries by canoe voyages carrying people, goods and marriages.
  • The Lau Islands, with their hardwood vesi timber, were famous canoe-building centres, where Tongan and Samoan carpenters also worked.
  • The Tongan double canoe (kalia) was developed from Fijian drua designs.

1. Which source supports one of these sentences? Write its name.

2. Who wrote or made that source, and when? Were they Fijian, or a visitor?

3. What does the source not tell us? Who could we ask?

Sources for this chapter: Wikipedia: Lau Islands · Wikipedia: Drua · Wikipedia: Polynesian navigation

Worksheet: The Lapita people

Name(s):

The museum says

  • The first people to settle Fiji, about 3,000 years ago, belonged to the Lapita cultural complex.
  • Lapita pottery is recognised by fine decoration pressed into the wet clay with toothed (dentate) stamps.
  • Lapita pottery is found across a wide arc of the Pacific, from the Bismarck Archipelago to Tonga and Samoa.

1. Which source supports one of these sentences? Write its name.

2. Who wrote or made that source, and when? Were they Fijian, or a visitor?

3. What does the source not tell us? Who could we ask?

Sources for this chapter: Wikipedia: Lapita culture · Wikipedia: Sigatoka Sand Dunes

Worksheet: Fijian pottery through time

Name(s):

The museum says

  • Pottery continued to be made in Fiji long after the Lapita period, in changing styles.
  • Pots were traditionally made by women, shaped by hand and with a paddle and anvil rather than on a wheel.
  • Villages near Sigatoka, such as Nakabuta and Lawai, still make and sell pottery today.

1. Which source supports one of these sentences? Write its name.

2. Who wrote or made that source, and when? Were they Fijian, or a visitor?

3. What does the source not tell us? Who could we ask?

Sources for this chapter: Wikipedia: Fijian art · Wikipedia: Sigatoka