Graduating senior Lamia Lopez, C’2025, is an environmental science major with a passion for sustainability and environmental conservation. Last May, she studied abroad in the vibrant port city of Suva, Fiji, where she lived in the Daku village and gained a deeper understanding of the Indigenous community, their relationship with the natural environment, and the ways climate change is impacting their daily lives.
“Our guide during our travels lamented to us about the relocation of 11 villages in Fiji. Given the Indigenous reliance on region-specific natural resources, the ancestral ties to villages, and the social organization that draws on location to understand identity, relocation is devastating,” said Lopez.
The people in the Daku village shared the many ways they worked together to combat the impacts of climate change, including building sea walls in response to rising sea levels, reusing plastic water bottles to create art, and using giant palm leaves for weaving.
Lopez felt that her own passion for knitting was very closely related to the weaving practices of the women in the village. Prior to her trip, Lopez would knit using the plastic grocery bag method to help combat climate change. She said her love for knitting was nurtured while in Fiji, where she got to watch the Daku women weave the palm leaves together using sacred, protected methods. Combining her own knitting methods with the conservation practices of the women, Lopez reused blue and green Fijan takeaway bags and weaved them together with the magenta yarn material located on the mats throughout the village.
“The magenta yarn symbolizes the chief, and the blue and green bags represent the people. It also represents a different type of sustainability: one that is the intricate dance between cultural retention and innovation,” said Lopez. “Our Fijan professor, Master Wame, necessitated that duality is imperative. There must be a marriage between traditionalism and modernization. My knitting of both the bags and the magenta yarn together is my attempt at capturing both of these ideas.”
After graduation, Lopez plans to earn her graduate degree in sustainability and become a sustainability consultant. She aims to help combat climate change around the world using sustainable practices like those found in Suva, Fiji.
“Although my earthly body may never greet the faces I once saw in Daku village again, or learn from Master Wame, or be in the presence of the people who have irrevocably shaped my unforgettable experience,” said Lopez. “In the words and wisdom of Master Wame: Daku village, Suva, Fiji: We will meet again, for my ancestors may run into your ancestors in the future -- and that is me meeting you.”