PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Jean Mason

RAROTONGA, Cook Islands (Cook Islands News, April 19) – "In Easter Island the past is the present, it is impossible to escape from it; the inhabitants of today are less real than the men who have gone; the shadows of the departed builders still possess the land. Voluntarily or involuntarily the sojourner must hold commune with those old workers; for the whole air vibrates with a vast purpose and energy which has been and is no more. What was it? Why was it?" - Katherine Scoresby Routledge, Historian, 1919.

Rapanui – Matakiterangi – Kairangi - Easter Island - Te Pito o te Henua - Isla de Pascua - Isle de Paque.

An island about four times bigger than Rarotonga [in the Cook Islands] with many names and an ever-changing face is easily reached from here, yet few of us go there and fewer still know how very like ours is the culture of the people who live there.

The locals prefer to call their island Rapanui while the Chilean authorities call it Isla de Pascua.

Rapanui is a Chilean territory, just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. It is a volcanic island with a population of about 3,500. The island’s highest point is Mt Terevaka at 506 meters above sea level. Despite being 3,700 kilometers from Chile, Rapanui is considered part of the region of Valparaiso. The native people are Polynesian, most being of mixed blood, including British, German, Chilean, French, Italian, Tahitian and Tuamotuan stock.

Little wonder that historian Katherine Routledge saw the Rapanui people as mere shadows of their ancestors when she penned the diary of her expedition by boat to Easter Island from Britain in 1919. This island, once green and lush, had long ago been stripped bare of its vegetation and all that remained was a people who had suffered the misfortunes of the biblical Job.

Folklore says the first settlers of this island came from the Marquesas.

Rapanui language has remarkable parallels to Cook Islands Maori. However, as we know, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I innocently asked a couple of local men if I could "nene’i" (photograph) them much to the amusement of our guide, Ramon Pakomio Edmunds, who later explained that in their language "nene’i" was slang for defecate. I quickly learned that while the old Maori words are still the same, modern terms are not.

Initially thought to have been settled around 400 AD, only last month an archaeology professor at the University of Hawaii published an article claiming Rapanui was not settled until the 13th century. This puts in doubt whether the first moai (giant statues for which Rapanui is famous) were built in 700 AD as formerly thought.

Geographically, Easter Island is one the most isolated human habitations on earth. The Rapanui must have had, over time, believed their small island in the midst of a vast ocean to be the whole known world, which is probably how it got one of its names, Te Pito o te Henua, the Navel of the World.

Pitcairn is the nearest populated landmass 1,900 kilometers to the west. It is believed by the end of the 1600s that Rapanui was overpopulated, denuded of vegetation and had lost most of its bird life.

Tomorrow (Easter Sunday) marks the 288th anniversary of the first Europeans to visit the island, a Dutch expedition led by Admiral Jacob Roggeveen, whose contribution to international race relations was to shoot 13 of its inhabitants for helping themselves to some hats.

In the 1800s slave traders and imported diseases had reduced the population, once thought to be as much as 20,000 to just 111 people by 1900.

From this point the population increased but life did not necessarily get better. In 1870, commercial exploitation began when the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Dutroux-Bournier introduced the wool trade to Rapanui. He tried to have the entire population of Rapanui deported to Tahiti so he could claim ultimate sovereignty over the island. With his armed supporters he destroyed crops, burned houses and left many people dead or injured. Most islanders reluctantly accepted transportation to Tahiti. Dutroux-Bournier ruled until remaining islanders killed him in 1877.

In 1888, the same year Britain annexed the Cook Islands, Chile acquired Rapanui and in 1897 the populace was herded into a single town, Hanga Roa, where they remain to this day. Most of the land outside the town today is under the control of the National Parks. The Chilean government leased the island to a Chilean businessman/sheep farmer, who then sold his holdings to CEDIP (Williamson, Balfour and Company). In 1953 the government revoked CEDIP’s lease. The buildings of Williamson, Balfour and Company, remain a ghost town on a lonely road that cuts through an expansive eucalyptus forest.

Ramon, my guide, a handsome and affable local, recollected the roasting of the last sheep in 1985, just as his ancestors might have recalled the felling of the last tree. Indeed the great French explorer La Perouse, in 1786, delivered to the island’s people pigs, goats and sheep, which he expected them to farm but they could not resist temptation and promptly ate the lot.

Ramon also recalled the days when the Chilean authorities would not allow the island’s inhabitants to leave. Attempts to escape by stowing away on boats are now part of the folklore of this island. One of which tells the story of five Rapanui, including Ramon’s uncle, who in 1955-56 ended up in Atiu but were returned to their island prison, by ship via Panama, by the then Cook Islands colonial authorities.

With such a tragic history, I expected to find, as archaeologist Katherine Routledge did, a Rapanui that was still depressed and broken. Instead I found it thriving and I sensed a lot of energy and pride in its present inhabitants.

The moai on Rapanui – close to 1000 in number – are as impressive as they are numerous. Most of them remain toppled from their ahu (plinths) as a result of clan warfare in the 1600s. Three are known to have been taken from the island for overseas museums. Some have toppled into the sea. We often see images of moai in travel books and TV documentaries (and more recently the poor imitation ferrocrete garden figures at plant nurseries in New Zealand), but nothing beats seeing the real thing. So what were they? The sites are funeral complexes. Moai are representative of dead male ancestors. The ahu beneath them were used to store the cleaned bones of the deceased relatives of Rapanui people. All of the standing moai were restored in the past 40 or 50 years.

The first site we came upon, called Tahai, was restored in the 1960s by American archaeologist, William Mulloy, whose remains are now buried near it. The Tahai complex, the site nearest the town therefore the most accessible, is frequently visited by obsessive tourists who stand for long periods gazing up at the moai, as if transfixed. Many times I tried to get a shot of the site without people in it but I was unable to.

There is much in contemporary Rapanui to offer a Cook Islander. For my mother and I, going to Rapanui was the fulfilment of a life-long dream. Rarely reality lives up to dreams but Rapanui was the exception. Far from the local people being dour, they showed no sign they are a dispossessed race with a difficult past.

We timed our trip for the Tapati Festival (2-16 February), the equivalent, you might say, of our Te Maeva Nui. The festival is set just outside the town of Hanga Roa, at Hanga Roa O Tai, outdoors, by the sea, surrounded by paddocks and horses. Entry to all the events is free. The action starts at 10pm and does not finish until 2am. The sweet smell of marijuana smoke adds to a harmonious atmosphere of short Chilean tourists and tall Rapanui performers.

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