Apology casts out a cannibal curse

[DuctapeFatwa]

TEN Australians were treated like royalty yesterday in a remote Fijian village where one of their ancestors was slaughtered with an axe, roasted in an oven and eaten by cannibals 136 years ago. Villages clad in grass lap-laps presented the esteemed visitors..with a slaughtered cow, ceremonial mats and whale teeth in a ceremony held to atone for the killing of English missionary Thomas Baker in 1867.

The reconciliation ceremony, watched by more than 300 villagers, members of the Council of Chiefs and Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, was organised by the Assembly of Christian Churches in Fiji to "spiritually heal" the district of Navatusila in the rugged interior of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu...Church leaders say the ceremony was needed because the district is still suffering from a curse visited on the local people by the killing of Baker in the village of Numbutautau.

Baker, a Wesleyan missionary, and eight Fijians in his party were ambushed and killed by Numbutautau villagers during an expedition into the interior on July 21, 1867. Legend has it that the villagers were angered when Baker removed a comb from the village chief's hair. Touching the head of a chief is considered a gross insult in Fiji. The chief's great-great-great grandson and namesake, Ratu Filemoni Nawawabalavu, 70, the paramount chief of the seven villages of Navatusila, formally apologised to Baker's descendants in a long speech spoken in sombre tones in Fijian.

He broke into tears when Les Lester, 57, a cane harvester company manager from Bundaberg and a fourth-generation descendent of Thomas Baker, accepted the apology on behalf of the slain missionary's family. "The past is the past," Mr Lester said. We need to move to (the future). "I would like to say that I believe that the spirit of Thomas Baker is at rest, because this act of apology is an indication that his work with the Fiji people is complete."

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7862475%255E401,00.html