Sailasa Naucukidi
Sailasa Naucukidi (died 1878) was a Fijian Methodist missionary who volunteered to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to New Britain in 1875. He was martyred and eaten by cannibals in 1876.
The mission to New Britain launched in 1875. George Brown, the organizer, found his plans going wrong, as a result of the tragic epidemic which killed 40,000 in Fiji, and finally appealed to the students of Navuloa, the Methodist Theological School at the time, describing the dangers and pointing out that they might well be going to their death. 83 students were present and heard the appeal, and went to talk it over with their wives. 83 offered to go.
The colonial government threw many obstacles in their way but they went. By 1876 the new mission field at New Britain had been divided into two areas, one under Aminio Baledrokadroka and the other under Sailasa, and there were 14 teachers’ stations.
Thus began Fiji’s own missionary enterprise. In the year 1878, Sailasa the Fijian minister was journeying inland with a small party south of Kabakada on the Gazelle peninsula, and preaching the Gospel as he went; when they were suddenly attacked, killed and their bodies cut up and eaten.
As Thomas Baker had died in Fiji; so Sailasa Naucukidi died in New Britain under almost identical circumstances, in Fiji’s first missionary experiment.
Lelean Memorial School, at Davuilevu, Nausori, Fiji, honours his memory by naming one of its four houses after him.
Fijian missionaries have since been used in New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, North Australia and other places.
References
- GARRETT, John, 1982, To Live Among the Stars: Christian origins in Oceania,World Council of Churches in association with the
Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific, Geneva/Suva.
- THORNLEY, Andrew, 1982, ‘Custom, Change and Conflict: Fiji Wesleyan missionaries, 1835–1945’, in Melanesia: beyond diversity,
vol.1, eds R.J. May and Hank Nelson, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.