Naitasiri is one of the 14 provinces of Fiji and one of eight based in Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island.
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Naitasiri as a province covers 1,666 square kilometers (643.25 Square Miles), the Province occupies the area to the north and east of (but does not include) Suva, the capital. Its population at the last census in 2007 was 160,759, making Naitasiri the country's second most populous Province.Its natural resources includes the Medrausucu mountain ranges, vast indigenous forests,five river systems and fertile agricultural land.The Monasavu Hydro-electric dam sits astride its Wainimala headwaters and Nadrau plateau.
Recent public infrastructure works as at 2008 include a new hospital in Vunidawa,roadworks and sealing of the main Sawani to Naqali road and bridge constructions at Navuso (Waimanu River) and Naqali(Waidina River).
Prior to roads being built,the five rivers that flow through the province(Wainibuka,Wainimala,Waidina,Waimanu and the Rewa)were the main avenues of travel and communications.Hence many villages in the province were situated along rivers.
Up till the 1960s the province was the centre of the banana export industry. Today, dairy farming and market and export produce farming drive its economy. Of note in Indigenous business nationally is the successful Lutu village produce export enterprise and the Province's business arm, the Voko Fish Ltd. Its main urban area is the burgeoning town of Nasinu, with a population of 87,446 at the 2007 census, but it also includes many of the suburbs of Suva City, the city itself lying in the adjoining Rewa Province.
Naitasiri Province includes Naitasiri District, as well as Lomaivuna, Waimaro, Matailobau and Wainimala Districts. Naitasiri is governed by a Naitasiri Provincial Council, chaired by Ratu Ilaitia Tuisese.Its provincial center is at Vunidawa in Matailobau District.
The formation of the political party Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL)United Fiji Party after the May coup of 2000 was on the initiative of the chiefs and people of Naitasiri.The SDL party won both the 2001 and 2006 national political elections however in December of 2006 it was deposed by a military coup d'état.
In 1945 the hill province of Tholo East was joined to Naitasiri province in a colonial native administration restructure.The province's people are renowned for their fiercely independent and warrior(bati) character.The earliest recorded white contact with Tholo hill tribes is credited to Rev Williams in 1858. However it was after Reverend Frederick Langham, the Wesleyan minister journeyed to Christianize the Taukei ni Waluvu in 1862 that more coastal and white contact became regular.Otherwise Rev Thomas Baker in his fateful journey to Christianize hill tribes in Tholo West in 1867 also travelled through Naitasiri and Tholo East.
On January 22, 1875 at Navuso, Naitasiri, Administrators along with Ratu Cakobau and his two sons who had returned from Sydney , Australia briefed some eight-hundred Hill chiefs and their tribal retinues on the implications of Fiji’s new status as a Colony. Ratu Cakobau and his two sons had been sick with measles on the trip back to Levuka. With no quarantine laws in place, they inadvertently carried with them the disease from aboard the HMS Dido to Navuso. The measles epidemic that befell Fiji in 1875 from January to about June 1875 and wiped out 30 per cent or 50,000 of its indigenous population was a tragedy of the first order.
Cakobau's Christianization campaigns of heathen hill tribes in 1873 was followed by the colonial pacification campaigns launched by Governor Sir Arthur Gordon in the Tholo provinces of Viti Levu in 1875. This was brought to a close in 1876 with a pardoning of belligerent hill tribes. Colonial administrator AB Brewster in the 1880s in his book "The Hill Tribes of Fiji" provided the first ethnological study of the province's hill people.
The province's traditional political alligence is with the Kubuna Confederacy of Bau as cemented with the Vunivalu of Bau Ratu Seru Cakobau's eldest daughter's marriage to the Qaranivalu of Naitasiri.The other prominent chiefs of the province are the Taukei ni Waluvu of Matailobau and Tui Waimaro of Waimaro.
Well-known Naitasiri residents include Ratu Inoke Takiveikata, the Qaranivalu (Paramount Chief) of Naitasiri District and a former Senator.Ratu Ilaitia Tuisese( former Government Minister), Keni Dakuidreketi(Chairman, Fiji Rugby Union),Tukana Bovoro (former CEO Fiji Development Bank),Ratu Jone Baledrokadroka(former Military Officer),late Professor Asesela Ravuvu, Livai Nasilivata, MC (Former government Minister, Senator and Military Officer), Solomone Naivalu(President SDL Party),Antonio Rahiman (breakfastshow host on FM96) -(although it's his motherland (vasu) he always acknowledges his ties to Naitasiri, and very fluent with the dialect.
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