Fiji

Fiji's four military coups (1987, 1987, 2000, 2006) have created a unique masculine trauma in the Pacific. Each coup was led by men claiming to protect indigenous rights or national interests, and each one destabilized the lives of ordinary men who simply wanted to work, raise families, and live peacefully. The coups specifically targeted Indo-Fijian men — descendants of Indian indentured laborers — driving waves of emigration to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The men who stayed face a political system that explicitly preferences indigenous over Indian citizens, creating a masculine identity of endurance under institutional discrimination.

Climate change adds an existential dimension to Fijian masculinity. For men in coastal villages and low-lying islands, the rising sea is not a political abstraction but a daily reality: salt water intruding into taro patches, king tides flooding homes, and the knowledge that their grandchildren may not have a village to inherit. For men whose identity is tied to vanua — a concept that encompasses land, people, and spiritual connection — the loss of physical land is a loss of masculine identity itself. The kava circle, where men gather in the evening to drink and talk, provides genuine community but also a space where the drinking replaces the healing. Kava creates numbness, and Fijian men have developed a cultural infrastructure for numbing that they mistake for connection.