{"id":75718,"date":"2025-12-23T09:05:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T00:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/23\/fiji-surfing-cloudbreak-restore-indigenous-rights"},"modified":"2025-12-23T09:05:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T00:05:41","slug":"fiji-wrestles-with-plans-to-restore-indigenous-rights-over-world-famous-surf-breaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=75718","title":{"rendered":"Fiji wrestles with plans to restore Indigenous rights over world-famous surf breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Move to bring back customary marine rights is celebrated, but concerns remain about potential effect on tourism and lack of clarity about how it might work<\/p>\n<p>In Fiji, babies know a connection to the sea from birth; their umbilical cords, or vicovico, are sometimes implanted in the reefs that frame the coastal Pacific nation, embedded among the coral. It\u2019s an age-old practice among iTaukei, the Indigenous Fijian people \u2013 creating a lifeline to the ocean, a reminder of their roles as traditional custodians.<\/p>\n<p>Yet for decades, controversy over the rights to the Fijian seabed has cast a long cloud over the island nation, which sees a million tourists flock to its shores each year, many to surf the perfect, barrelling reef breaks. It has led to heartache and, at times, violence.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/23\/fiji-surfing-cloudbreak-restore-indigenous-rights\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Move to bring back customary marine rights is celebrated, but concerns remain about potential effect on tourism and lack of clarity about how it might workIn Fiji, babies know a connection to the sea from birth; their umbilical cords, or vicovico, are &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,436,874],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-fiji","category-pacific-islands"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75719,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75718\/revisions\/75719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}