Norfolk Online News Article: Interview with Rhonda Griffiths

Rhonda Griffiths was born in New Zealand, and grew up there until age 9 with her younger sister, Mum and Dad. Rhonda has fond memories of her childhood growing up in New Zealand, and is proud of her New-Zealand heritage. After moving back to Norfolk Island, Rhonda begun her schooling at Norfolk Island Central School in year 5, and completed high school in year 10, the highest level of schooling Norfolk Island Central School went to at the time.

After completing year 10, Rhonda remained on Norfolk Island, allegedly “waiting for a brilliant idea to strike me”. Rhonda then decided to join the Royal New Zealand Airforce (RNZA), where she would embark on a 3-year journey that taught extremely valuable life lessons. Despite enjoying her time spent in the air force, she missed her island home and came back home after the air force.

From there on, she worked many jobs before adventuring to Australia and meeting her now husband of over 30 years. She eventually moved back home with her husband to have their 3 children, all of which were born on the island. Raising her boys on the beautiful island sparked her interest in her cultural and heritage. She began her journey learning to weave with Joy Cockrane, is still her dear friend whom she has had many adventures and experiences with including spending 3 weeks on a Marae exhibiting her work with other Indigenous weavers from the specific including Native Americans.

Now Rhonda spends her time teaching Norfolk language and culture at the school. She will also be teaching sixe fluent Norfolk language speakers to become Norfolk Island Language teachers in 2025. Rhonda is also a chairman of the Norfolk Island Museum trust, a role she is very proud of. An exciting intuitive the museum has taken is the permeant loan of the original John Buffet Pitcairn Island Journal from Gerenich Museum in England. This has been initiated by Merv Buffett and Claire McPherson. The team are working closely with the trust and elders in order to bring it to Norfolk. In order to bring it to Norfolk permanently would require an Act of UK parliament.

She is additionally an Elder Representative for the Buffett family, and chairmen on committee of language. Based on workshops and community surveys, Rhonda leads the development of the Elders language revitalisation strategy. This ought about the appointment of the Norfolk Island language commission, who have been working on a concise spelling system. They will be presenting this to the community in the next couple of months.

For pleasure, Rhonda with her friend, Joy Nobbs have been busy working to produce Norfolk Island cowhides. They started the business in 2017. They have been working to created an environmentally friendly cow-hide business, so she has hides in Stock out her store located in Rocky Point where tours from Bounty Tours are welcomed. The next step is starting to producing merchandise made from cow-hide.