Description
Ratu Sukuna’s life spanned most of the period of British rule in Fiji. Born in 1888,
fourteen years after annexation, he died in 1958, twelve years before independence.
In that time he became the primus inter pares of the Fijian cadre in the British administration; a shining light of the indirect rule system. The son of a prominent chief
of one of the three traditional ruling houses, Sukuna was educated at Wanganui Collegiate in New Zealand, at Wadham College, Oxford, and the Middle Temple, London. He rose from a fifth-class clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s Office in 1907 to
become Secretary and later Chairman of the Native Lands Commission; District and
later Provincial Commissioner at Lau; Native Member and later Speaker of the
Legislative Council. He was a trusted adviser and confidant of a succession of British
governors, and was frequently Fijian spokesman at important ceremonials abroad. (New Zealand Journal of History)
