ABSTRACT
My story is about a two and a half square mile island in the central Pacific that became the focus, along with nearby Nauru, of British, Australian and New Zealand agricultural desires for nearly a century. Banaba, also known as Ocean Island, translates as ‘the rock’ in the Kiribati (Gilbertese) language. Indigenous identities here and across most of the Pacific are deeply rooted in place. In the Kiribati language this is reflected in the term te aba which incorporates both the land and the people, and kainga, ‘the place that feeds’, that also refers to the local family unit.
