Wagina Island

The dancers move in tight formation on a sandy clearing, their movements unmistakably Kiribati — sharp, rhythmic, hips low. But the trees behind them are Melanesian hardwoods, the surrounding water is a deep Solomons green, and the nearest point of Kiribati is 3,000 kilometres away. Wagina Island holds a community displaced across the Pacific that has held on to who they are for over sixty years.

Wagina's residents are descendants of I-Kiribati families resettled from the Gilbert Islands in the 1960s under a British colonial programme. Their original island, Banaba, had been rendered uninhabitable by decades of phosphate mining. On Wagina in the Solomon Islands, they continue to prepare te bua — fermented breadfruit paste — tap toddy from coconut palms at dawn, and perform traditional dance using knowledge maintained continuously since resettlement. Linguists have documented that the Kiribati language spoken on Wagina has diverged slightly from modern Kiribati in the Republic of Kiribati, preserving vocabulary that has shifted in the homeland. Reaching Wagina requires a boat from Choiseul Bay town, through one of the least-visited provinces in the Solomons — a place where most rivers have no bridges.