Seema Singh is giving a lunchtime talk on ‘Katha – Stories of the Girmit Women of Fiji’, a powerful exhibition in Bottle Creek Gallery September/October.
‘Katha’ is a tribute to the lives of Indian women who were brought to Fiji from 1879 to 1916 to work on the cotton, sugarcane and other plantations under the British rule. This system of labour was called the indenture system where people were contracted to work for 5 years and then pay their passageway back home to India. The agreements binding people to labour for a set amount of time were known as Girmit. More than 60,000 Indians were brought to Fiji to work in atrocious, inhumane conditions.
Seema will talk about this period of colonisation and the impacts on the Girmit women and their descendants, a lot of whom also live in Aotearoa New Zealand. She will describe how art and artifacts are used in the exhibition to tell stories and connect young people to the journey of their ancestors.
History Series lunchtime talk
12 noon Friday 11 October
Hapori Room, Pātaka