ARTICULATING RAPA NUI:

POLYNESIAN CULTURAL POLITICS IN A LATIN AMERICAN NATION-STATE

Riet Delsing
independent researcher

Prepared for delivery at the 2010 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association
Toronto, Canada, October 6-9, 2010

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Rapa Nui, the small island in the South Pacific also known as Easter Island, has become
world famous due to its large stone statues which have allowed for a thriving tourist
industry. 1 Annexed by Chile in 1888, it is the only Pacific island colonized by a Latin
American country that forged its own independence from Spain only 70 years before
that date. It is a little known fact that the Republic of Chile registered the entire island
as Chilean public land (tierra fiscal) in 1933 by declaring it to be terra nullius. This
decision was based on the argument that the island “lacked an owner”. Almost half a
century after the “annexation” Chile thus failed to recognize that the island was and is
populated by a Polynesian people, whose ancestors created stone statues that are now
venerated in the entire world.
During the first half of the 20th century Chile exercised a low-profile colonialism
over a small indigenous population of only a little over one hundred individuals at the
time of annexation. Until the mid 1950s the Chilean state let virtually the entire island
to Williamson, Balfour and Co., a British multinational, which used it as a sheep farm
for the production and exportation of wool. During this period Chile maintained
sovereignty through its Navy, whose ships paid the island a yearly visit. The respective
ship captains served as intermediaries in conflicts between the Rapanui people and
Company officials.
Not until 1966 did Chile take full possession by incorporating the island in its
administrative system and providing the Rapanui (finally) with a Chilean identity card.
Some three hundred newcomers (mostly Chilean functionaries and their families) went
to Rapa Nui to implement Chilean rules and regulations in various areas of local life. If
we consider that the island had a total population of less than 1000 in 1965, this was an
enormous influx of foreigners, who made a profound social, cultural and economic
impact on island life (Cristino 1984). Curiously this happened in the same year that the
General Assembly of the United Nations called for the right to self determination of the
world’s indigenous populations (Gómez 2010) and several Pacific islands followed
course during the 1970s. While international institutions thus propagated the course of
global political decolonization, initiated after the Second World War -- when large parts
of Africa and Asia became decolonized--, Chile took the opposite direction by
tightening its relation with its small colony.
Between the 1960s and 1980s Rapa Nui was further integrated into the Chilean
nation-state. After almost a century of neglect and often abuse, the Rapanui started to
demand equality as Chilean citizens after the revolt of a Rapanui school teacher by the
name of Alfonso Rapu in 1964. Besides the creation of the Municipalidad de Isla de
Pascua, some 25 Chilean institutions and organizations were installed on the island.
This amount of regulating mechanisms in such a small physical and social/cultural
space seems by all means excessive, since all decisions had and have to be approved in
the province of Valparaiso (now the 5th region) and/or the central government in
Santiago. Such over-exposure to governmental control as well as internal disagreements
and overlapping and/or contradictory responsibilities between the various Chilean
institutions, have caused continuous problems of governance, a lack of concretion of
project proposals and stagnation of other (development) processes.
With the increase of population, caused by the natural growth of the Rapanui
community, but also by an uncontrolled influx of mainland Chileans and a rapidly
growing tourist industry, several services are near to collapse. Many problems have
been diagnosed but not resolved. These problems occur in the areas of health, education,

1
This paper is based on my PhD dissertation: Maria Riet Delsing (2009) Articulating Rapa Nui:
Polynesian Cultural Politics in a Latin American Nation-State, University of California at Santa Cruz.
Pro Quest, UMI dissertation services.

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natural environment, deterioration of the archeological patrimony, garbage disposal,
drinking water, etc. while, on the other hand, the Rapanui are not allowed to take their
fate in their own hands. The situation is complicated because over the years, and
pressured by political forces on the mainland, the Rapanui leadership has been
fractured, resulting in tribal in-fights which paralyze and often exhaust Rapanui
potential. As elsewhere, civil society has to face de facto powers of the nation-state and
the market.
Nevertheless, in the last couple of decades many Rapanui have started to shift their
emphasis from rights to equality as Chilean citizens, to rights as a Polynesian people,
culturally different from Chilean mainlanders. They thus changed their plea for
integration into the nation-state into a desire for self-determination. Despite a stubborn
insistence on sovereignty, during the 2000s several initiatives from the Chilean state
allowed for a shifting relationship between Rapa Nui and the Chilean state. These
initiatives coincided with the return to democracy in 1990, after 17 long years of
dictatorship.
Starting with the Ley Indígena of 1993 which created a special Development
Commission for Easter Island (CODEIPA), and initiated the process of the return and
distribution of land to the Rapanui, the theme of decentralization was taken up in the
central government through CIDEZE (Comité Interministerial para el Desarrollo de las
Zonas Extremas). This was followed by a Truth Commission (La Comisión Verdad
Histórica y Nuevo Trato para los Pueblos Indígenas) and culminated with the creation
of a Special Territory for Easter Island in 2007. The Estatuto Especial which has to
govern this territory is still under discussion in the Chilean Parliament in 2010.
During these decade-long conversations between the Chilean state and the
Rapanui, the latter became better versed in the arguments and reasons that the State
employs for its presence in this far away island. The claim of sovereignty is at the basis
of this argument, specifically territorial sovereignty. This concept clashes with the
Polynesian concept of kaiŋa, the intimate relationship the people feel with their land and
the inalienability of this land.
Rapanui have started to insist on this and other cultural differences during the last
decades. We are thus witnessing processes that are far from being resolved.
Representatives of the Chilean state, at the highest levels, are now willing to give
“autonomy” to Rapa Nui, by which they clearly mean administrative- not political
autonomy. Most Rapanui agree to Chile’s sovereignty over the island, thus denying
their political autonomy in a Western sense, but claim at the same time the territory to
be theirs. Some Rapanui want independence from Chile. Meanwhile, foreign capital has
started to enter the Rapanui tourist industry.
What is lacking is a strong Rapanui leadership, a statement to which most Rapanui
agree, in order to resolve this situation. Such leadership would be able to argue that--
since Chile is exercising territorial sovereignty over the island by prescription (and not
by cession, as is currently claimed) -- the Rapanui can bring their case for
decolonization in the appropriate international venues, according to international law
(Delsing 2009, Gómez 2010). Unified Rapanui leadership would also be able to unravel
the present conceptual impasses, to clarify concepts of individual private land
ownership versus communal private land ownership or propose different concepts
altogether (Gómez 2010). Rapanui can also decide to stay being part of Chile, but on
their own terms. They could thus unify around a common goal and put boundaries to
Chile’s presence on the island. On the other hand, representative or even participative
democracy may be a cultural impossibility, since traditional Rapanui society was guided

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by an ariki mau, a hereditary figure who ruled his people through a system of mana and
tapu.

Taking a step aside from the current impasse in the relationship between the Chilean
state and the Rapanui people, I suggest that there are several areas in which the Rapanui
are exercising a form of cultural self-determination, which empowers them and allows
them to follow a path that only they can take. By doing so, they can loosen or even alter
their economic and political relationship with the Chilean state. While during the last
decades Rapanui have fully participated in the conversations around the proposals of the
post dictatorship Chilean state, they are simultaneously revitalizing their culture in the
areas of living culture (hacer cultura), their unique language (vanaŋa Rapanui),
traditional ideas about land tenure (kaiŋa) and their bond with other Polynesians. In
what follows I will take a closer look at these cultural politics.

Performing Culture

Rapanui have a rich and unique material culture, to use this traditional, but still useful
anthropological term. The continued production of various elements of this material
culture is a decisive factor in the reproduction and preservation of traditional culture and
the reaffirmation of a Rapanui identity. Throughout the year, many Rapanui reproduce
their cultural knowledge in various forms, such as sculpting in wood and stone, dancing,
body painting and others.
Besides the famed stone statues (moai) with their platforms (ahu) (Van Tilburg
1994), rock petroglyphs (Lee 1992) and wooden tablets (kohau roŋoroŋo) engraved
with Oceania’s only pre 20th century, as yet undeciphered script (Fischer 1997), the
most well known products of Rapanui art are images in wood and stone: various kinds
of moai (kavaka, paapaa, taŋata), dance paddles (ao and rapa), birdman figures,
lizardmen (moko), turtle figures, tahoŋa (heart shaped two headed forms) and wooden
crescent breast ornaments (reimiro) (Stephen-Chauvet 1946 for all these images). While
barkcloth (mahute), made from the paper mulberry tree was formerly used for clothing
(Métraux 1940) and to cover small, doll-like wooden figures, painted to represent
tattooing and body painting (takona) (Métraux 1940; Kjellgren 2002), nowadays small
sheets of mahute are used as canvas for paintings. Women make necklaces out of shells,
feathers, small pieces of mahute and flowers.
Body decorations in the form of body painting (tacona) and, in lesser form,
tattooing are practiced and were registered by the first European visitors. While all early
European travelers mention that several Rapanui they met had painted bodies, nowadays
Rapanui of all ages paint their bodies during the festival Tapati Rapanui, but also during
the year in smaller venues and when people want to demonstrate this art to outsiders.
Sometimes they first cover their entire bodies with red, white, yellow or black dyes
(ki’ea, marikuru, pua oua, ŋarahu) prepared in the traditional way and extracted from
specific places on the island. On top of this base, or directly on the body, traditional
designs are painted, sometimes combined with figures of plants and other vegetation, as
well as topographical references to specific places on the island.
I have seen this takona ritual several times and to me it is one of the most
striking expressions of Rapanui living culture (cultura viva), mainly because of its
beauty, but also because I know it to have cultural roots and therefore to mark identity.
Sometimes people paint their bodies as part of a dance or music presentation. The artist
will work in deep concentration, often in dead silence. Even if surrounding people are
loud and boisterous, the person who is applying the paint and the one receiving it don’t

4
say a word, or whisper softly, as if words might disturb the creative process and the
body’s capacity to receive and absorb the images. It is as if the brush and paint are
doing the talking. At other moments an individual will be standing in front of a public
and present his or her painted body, pointing at each figure explaining its meaning. This
is quite a feat, because the presentation is done with a lot of gesticulation and facial
expression. The other body art practiced in Rapa Nui is tattooing. It was also
reintroduced after it had been lost for more than a century, since it was abandoned after
the missionaries arrived in the 1860s. Nowadays a few young men apply tattoos to
islanders and tourists alike.
Other art forms are related to the performing arts: the execution of a large corpus
of string figures (kai kai) generally accompanied by chants (pata’u-ta’u), and a large
variety of mostly contemporary music and dance forms, in which bodies are
embellished with skirts, tops, hami (loin cloths) and elaborate headdresses made from
feathers, kakaka (strips of banana leaves), pieces of manute and shells, especially pipi
and tree kernels.
Rapanui have practiced kai kai without interruption at least since the Chilean
occupation. The string figure is made by one person using teeth and lips to complete the
figure. It is mainly performed by women in front of a public audience, but I have also
seen small children practicing in school and at home. The recent recuperation of the
Rapanui language is important in the practicing of this art form. While Métraux says
that most people in the 1930s did not understand the content of the chants even though
they were very popular, today more Rapanui understand their meaning. Métraux
remarks that of the corpus of some thirty different string figures with their
corresponding chants only a few were practiced, which is still the case today.
Nevertheless, I met a koro (older man) who could memorize several of them. Métraux
also suggests that the original purpose of kai kai was to memorize popular chants and
recall tales, and that children were obliged to memorize the chants before they were
introduced into other ancestral knowledge. This clearly educational function of kai kai
still continues today, since the pata’u-ta’u preserve stories and names of places and of
legendary figures. Another important contemporary function of the performance of kai
kai is it being a marker of Rapanui difference and identity.
Music and dance comprise another major Rapanui art form. Since the 1960s
small Rapanui performance groups emerged on the island, as well as on the mainland.
Today, several dance and music groups exist, of which I will describe two. Kari Kari, a
conjunto (ensemble) with more than twenty members, was formed in 1997. Most
musicians and dancers worked in former groups, but others are newcomers to the trade.
They use traditional instruments and costumes, and do research on traditional practices.
Kari Kari mainly performs on the island itself in hotels and community organized
venues. Sometimes the group travels abroad, as cultural ambassadors for Rapa Nui.
They went, for instance, to Lisbon, Portugal, for the opening of Expo 1998, where they
opened the Chilean exhibit, and to a festival in Korea in 2000. Another group is
Matato’a, formed in 1996 by Keva Atan. It consists of five musicians catering to a
youthfull off-island public. Their purpose is to transmit ancestral Rapanui culture, as
well as traditional Polynesian culture. They see their work in the category of “world
music”, and play a fusion of Polynesian and modern music (latino, rock, reggae, pop,
jazz), which they incorporate through modern rhythms and instruments. They have
strong ties to Tahiti and prefer to distance themselves from Chile. Instead, they wish to
reinforce their ties with Polynesia. In 2002 they participated in the Rainforest World
Music Festival in Borneo, Malaysia. In 2003 they gave concerts in New Zealand, Tahiti,

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Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Mexico, Chile and Taiwan. In 2004 they were in
Europe again, with 17 concerts in France and Germany.
In May 2006 a much announced concert took place in Rapa Nui by the well
known Chilean band Los Jaivas. This group explores a fusion of different music styles,
mainly rock and Latin-American themes and rhythms. Their heavy equipment was
transported to the island on the Chilean navy ship Achilles for the Navy’s yearly
celebration of the día del mar, the context in which the concert was to take place. Los
Jaivas spent a few weeks on the island, preparing for the concert, an old dream of the
group. It was a truly intercultural event, since Los Jaivas were accompanied by Kari
Kari, now led by Lyn Rapu, the children’s orchestra of the local school (mainly string
instruments) and the brass band of the Navy. The concert was held in the open air venue
at Hanga Vare Vare, under a starred sky, after it had been raining for weeks. Present
were Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and some 2000 spectators. This event can be
seen as an expression of togetherness of Rapanui and Chileans in the only area, where, I
argue, it is harmonious.
Although music and dance may be the fields where most new and foreign
elements have been introduced in comparison to the other art forms I mentioned, we
know that singing and dancing were already observed by European visitors to the island
in the mid 1800s, before the Chilean colonization. Bodily expression through singing
and dancing is thus an integral part of Rapanui cultural roots and widely practiced
throughout the year.

Tapati Rapa Nui

Like other large festivals in the Pacific (see e.g. Stevenson 1990), the yearly Tapati
Rapanui has several functions: it contributes to the island’s social integration, stimulates
its economy and is used politically to confront the Chilean state. It also has become a
vital element in Rapa Nui’s cultural life and a marker of identity. It is said that the idea
to create the festival was introduced from the mainland in the 1960s, when the island
became integrated into Chile’s political system -- a copy of Chilean spring festivals,
including the selection of a queen. However, a member of the Huke family told me that
her family started the festival in the 1960s.
Nevertheless, festivals already existed in Rapa Nui at least as early as the 1930s.
Métraux makes reference to one in 1935 in his famed ethnography:

On New Year’s afternoon I attended the great pageant organized each new year
by the natives in honor of the English manager of the Williamson-Balfour
Company. The feast is prepared long in advance, and every detail is carefully
studied. A month before the feast, regular dance lessons are given in the huts of
native instructors. The pageant itself is distinctively modernized. The feast is at
the same time a carnival, a pageant, a dance and a banquet (Métraux 1971
[1940]: 361).

Many of these elements are still present in the current Tapati2: the long preparations, the
attention to detail, the dancing lessons, the large amounts of food and the theatrical

2
The activities during the Tapati can be divided into four categories: artistic (painting of mahute, kai kai,
takona, sculpting, singing and dancing); sports (swimming, canoeing, horse racing, haka pei- sliding
down a hill on banana trunks); productive (fishing, tingi tingi mahute – making of mahute, making of
outfits of feathers and kakaka, making of necklaces with pipi shells, gastronomy, agricultural products);
and a triathlon in the crater lake of Ranu Raraku, a procession of several floats, named farandula and a

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performances and parade at the end of the festival. It is important to point out these
parallels with earlier festivities, because again it shows continuity alongside
discontinuity, although the pageants of the 1930s, as chronicled by Métraux, don’t seem
to exist in living memory.
The Tapati started out as a one week event (tapati means “week” in Rapanui),
but in its current form it consists of two weeks of festivities which take place in the first
half of February, midsummer in the southern hemisphere. It consists of a series of
competitions between two groups of families, with as apparent ultimate goal the
selection of a queen. The vast majority of the population takes part in the preparations in
one way or the other, and thousands of tourists flock to the island for the occasion.
The preparations are done in two parts of town, Hanga Roa and Moeroa. A
contest is held to design the poster for next year’s Tapati, which will travel all over the
world. During the following weeks and months hundreds of costumes are produced. In
several houses in Hanga Roa one can see women preparing kakaka (bark of the banana
tree) and mahute, and gathering feathers and shells for the confection of the costumes.
Preparations also include the formation of large groups of dancers, who, during the last
months before the Tapati, have daily late afternoon practices for several hours. Walking
the streets in that time of the year, one can hear the sounds of drumming and singing in
the early summer evenings. Special sheds are set up on both sides of town for these
rehearsals, and they are always crowded with people dancing, playing musical
instruments, watching or just hanging around.
Although infighting between the families forms part of the preparations, these
squabbles are between Rapanui, and unlike most other areas of life on the island, the
festival is an almost exclusive Rapanui affair, in the sense that mostly Rapanui are
involved in its preparations and performance. As with the overall planning for the
festival, once the festivities of one year conclude, the two family groups start to think
about the election of two candidates to queen for the next year.
Rather than giving a detailed description of the Tapati festival, I stress its
historical continuity, and its political potential with regard to Chile. Besides clear
continuities in content and form, the highly competitive nature of the event is
reminiscent of pre-contact socio-political divisions. I propose that the two family
groups, clustered together in the two sides of the town, Hanga Roa and Moeroa, reflect
the original division of the island into two territorial confederacies, with their respective
mata (clans). One can also suggest an analogy with the taŋata manu cult of the second
period (16th to 18th century), which was the expression of a fierce competition between
the clans (mata) about the scarce resources of the island, after the cohesion and mutual
dependence between the two moieties under the reign of an ariki mau had fallen apart.
The Tapati also reflects the traditional Rapanui cultural paradigm of oppositional
relationships, e.g. between the categories of chiefs and commoners, women and men.
The principle of oppositional relationships is repeated nowadays in the residents of
Hangaroa versus the ones in Moeroa, Rapanui versus Chilean residents, Rapanui versus
Chilean tourists, Rapanui versus foreign tourists, Chilean tourists versus foreign
tourists. These oppositional categories are in competition, but also complement each other
(see Sahlins 1981 about the permanence of the structure). At the same time the circular
nature of the festival gives it a distinctive Polynesian character (see Hau’ofa 1993 and
Hereniko 1994).
While the Tapati on the one hand offers both a mirror to the past and an
appropriation of the past, on the other hand it has become a hybrid space. Not only have

big theatrical production of Rapa Nui’s origin story in Tahai, staged by the Hucke family on the last day
of the festival (see yearly programs of theTapati).

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certain Western/Chilean activities been introduced, such as swimming competitions and
off shore fishing, also tourists are permitted to receive takona and participate in the
farandula. For this situation one can apply Linnekin and Poyer’s suggestion of "an
Oceanic theory of cultural identity that privileges environment, behavior, and situational
flexibility over descent, innate characteristics, and unchanging boundaries" (Linnekin &
Poyer 1990. Here, social relationships prevail over biological inheritance.
Another hybrid quality of the Tapati is that it was organized for several years by
the municipality, a Chilean institution and sponsored by Chilean and multinational
businesses. The Tapati of 2008, for instance, had as sponsors: Lan Chile, telephone
company Entel Chile, Chilean bank Banco Estado, Chilean drugstore chain Cruz Verde,
hotels Explora and Hangaroa, Chilean vineyards Montes and Casillero del Diablo, Pisco
Capel, ING, Coca Cola, Philips and Peugeot. The Rapanui have strategically appropriated
these Chilean and international sponsors and used them to revitalize their cultural
patrimony, to strengthen their roots and identity and to increase their tourist industry,
bringing capital back into the local economy.
The yearly staging of the Tapati thus expresses and reinforces Rapanui cultural
difference. Through the Tapati and other ways of hacer cultura as described above,
Rapanui challenge Chile’s dominant presence on the island by emphasizing their
identity. Nowhere in Polynesia or de rest of Oceania and certainly not in Chile or
elsewhere in Latin America do these specific cultural expressions exist. They are
performed every single day of the year. Rapanui sculpt in stone, make wood carvings,
carve the roŋo roŋo script on wooden tablets, and assemble necklacess in the feria, the
mercado and at home. Children and adults dance and sing in cultural ensembles like
Kari Kari and in specific venues, such as the Topatangi and the disco’s Piriti and
Toroko. Children perform kai kai in school and at home and takona is practiced on
many occasions. The sheer amount of these cultural representations impregnates daily
life in Rapa Nui.
Rapa Nui’s material and performative culture thus stands out as an important
marker of difference and serves as a reminder that Rapa Nui is an “occupied place”,
literally and figuratively (see Kathleen Stewart 1996). I suggest that a further expansion
of this performative culture will overshadow the overwhelming presence of Chilean
institutions in Rapanui daily life. The political process can thus be influenced by non-
political phenomena, and it is possible that political goals can be achieved through non-
political means. In the next section I will analyze a feature of Rapanui culture that marks
its cultural difference with Chile even more so.

Vanaŋa Rapanui

The Rapanui language belongs to the Austronesian language family, and within this to
the subgroup of Oceanic or Eastern Austronesian languages, which includes all the
Austronesian languages of island Melanesia, many of those of coastal New Guinea, …
all the languages of Micronesia, apart from Palauan and Chamorro (Marianas) and all
the languages of Polynesia (Bellwood 1975). In a further subdivision, Rapanui is
considered to be one of the two subgroups of Eastern Polynesian (Weber 2003). This
places Rapa Nui, as far as linguistic characteristics are concerned, firmly and
unequivocally in Polynesia.
In this section I discuss how the Rapanui have developed deliberate strategies
for the preservation and revalidation of their language, particularly since the 1990s.
Although many Rapanui are bilingual, speaking both Rapanui and Spanish, it used to be
and arguably still is a form of bilingualism characterized by diglossia, a situation in

8
which one of the languages has high and the other one low prestige. Nevertheless, the
unequal status of Rapanui and Spanish has changed over the years, and the Rapanui
language has become an important marker of contemporary Rapanui identity. As in the
case of Rapanui performative culture, the “battle of the languages” is taking place
outside and alongside the often frustrating participation Rapanui have in Chilean
politics. And, although formal language teaching is deeply influenced by Chile’s
educational system, I propose that language retention is empowering the Rapanui far
more than their attempt to participate in the Chilean political system.
For many years Rapanui were discouraged from speaking their language,
especially since the island opened up to the outside world in the 1960s. At the same
time Rapanui started to travel and stay for prolonged periods of time on the mainland,
where they were discriminated against for not speaking proper Spanish. The result was
that speaking Rapanui on the island was discouraged, even forbidden, and Spanish was
emphasized. An increase in the amount of mainland Chileans on the island, as well as
an increase in mixed marriages, resulted in a deminished use of Rapanui in the private
sphere.
Resident linguists Nancy and Robert Weber have documented that the amount of
children whose maternal or principal language is Rapanui at age four has diminished
from 77% in 1977 to 25% in 1989 (Weber and Thiesen de Weber 1990). They estimated
that this number had gone down to less than 6% in 1996 (personal communication).
From personal observation I have noticed that nowadays, walking in the streets of
Hanga Roa, la feria and the handicrafts market, most Rapanui older than 45 years or
thereabouts speak Rapanui with each other, while most young people communicate in
Spanish.
However, since the 1990s, many Rapanui have become concerned about the
increasing disuse of their language amongst youngsters. Young couples now take pride
in teaching their children Rapanui. A Rapanui father, in his early 40s, married to a
Chilean, said to me:

We shouldn’t even say that it is important to speak the language. If one says that
it is important, one is creating a doubt about if one should or should not speak it.
A child has to speak after it is born. It is just as important as that. Many books
are now written about language loss, and that is a tremendous contribution. The
problem is that today the language is in disuse, especially among the children.
And I am also guilty of that, because I don’t speak Rapanui with my girls. I
don’t understand why I don’t speak Rapanui with them. I can’t find any
explanation why I don’t speak Rapanui with them. Now, I am speaking Rapanui
to my newborn little girl, but I didn’t speak it with the others. They understand,
but they don’t speak. That is a tremendous punishment for me (interview Ernesto
Tepano, 2002).

Rapanui school teacher Viki Haoa says that she became interested in teaching Rapanui
to school children when her oldest daughter come home after her first day at school and
said: “Mommy, we speak a foreign language here.”
How have the Rapanui navigated this situation? Several strategies have been
developed to secure the Rapanui language by Rapanui teachers in the local school,
Rapanui koros (elders) and foreign linguists.

Language education in the local school

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Besides the home, school is the main site for learning Rapanui. The local public school
curriculum is determined by the Chilean Ministry of Education, and one of the main
problems has been that for many decades little attention had been paid to Rapanui
cultural specificities. Instead, Chilean history and culture were predominately taught.
In 1975, the Ministry of Education issued a decree, which approved for the first
time the official teaching of the Rapanui language at elementary school level for 4 hours
weekly. In order to teach Rapanui, materials and curriculum had to be developed. An
agreement between the Catholic University of Valparaíso and the American Summer
Institute of Linguistics, through their linguists Robert and Nancy Weber, allowed for
this to happen. Together with the local school they created the Programa de Lengua
Rapa Nui, in which a set of six textbooks for reading and writing Rapanui were
produced. The books were self teaching and the idea was that the parents would support
the kids. Developing the materials was not an easy task. The percentage of Rapanui
speakers at Kindergarten level diminished considerably between 1977 and 1989 (from
77% to 25%), exactly in the same period that the new materials were tested in school.
The Chilean national television chain TVN introduced television on the island in 1976,
which meant a major reinforcement of the Spanish language. The likely impact of the
introduction of daily television on such an isolated community was neither prepared for,
nor researched afterwards. Teaching Rapanui thus became an upward battle, since the
number of Rapanui speaking kids diminished so rapidly that Rapanui culture was
mainly taught in Spanish in the obligatory Rapanui language classes.
It soon became clear that a different methodology for language education was
necessary. This was not readily understood by the Ministry of Education and the
members of the school administration. The difference in methodology had to do with
the teaching of Rapanui as a first (native) or a second (foreign) language. Some kids
were native speakers, but most were not any longer, or never were. Teachers started to
feel a desperate need to separate the students and teach Rapanui according to their level
of understanding and speaking the language. It is difficult to understand that the
principle of teaching a language as a first language through immersion was not
considered by the Ministry of Education, because it is a well known principle in Chilean
private education. In Chile, children of well-to-do, often immigrant parents are taught in
French, German, English, etc., according to their countries of origin, in private schools
with names such as “La Alliance Française”, “Die Deutsche Schule”, and a number of
English teaching schools, amongst them “The Eagles’ Nest.” The results of language
teaching in these schools are excellent. However, the connection with far-away, ethnic
Rapa Nui, where a “low” language is in danger of extinction, was apparently not made.
The Programa de Lengua Rapa Nui, consisting of a handful of people, had to
put up a fight with a school administration that did not understand the difference
between teaching Rapanui as a first or a second language. School functionaries were
also tied to strict teaching schedules, imposed from the mainland, and had, according to
one of the participants in the Programa “an underlying desire to see the language
disappear, because it would simplify things, keep in line with Chileans coming here,
intermarrying and making the local culture blend in”. A Chilean school teacher once
said to me, when we were watching a performance on the beach of Anakena: “When
will they stop speaking that language?”
Besides the misunderstandings around the issue of teaching Rapanui as first or
second language, there were other problems as well. One was the lack of professionally
trained Rapanui school teachers with enough knowledge of Rapanui to teach it as a first
language; another, disagreements amongst the teachers themselves, which still exist

10
until today. Add to this the problems caused by the Chilean political transition, and one
can appreciate how difficult the situation must have been.
Nevertheless, things were on the move. In 1990, Viki Haoa participated in an
education conference for indigenous peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand. She was
accompanied by Petero Edmunds, who was about to be elected mayor. In New Zealand
they learned about Maori strategies for language preservation through the official
educational system. This was the first time they were exposed to the impact immersion
education can have on the preservation of a Polynesian language. A year later the first
Congress of Polynesian Languages was held in Aotearoa as well.
In the same year some Rapanui teachers created the Department of Rapanui
Culture and Language. Their goal was “to socialize the drastic decline of the language”
with the parents of the students, local and mainland authorities and with Rapanui
speakers in general. They also created a Día de la lengua (language day) which still
exists. Every year in early summer, the language teachers of the school organize an
event with activities related to the vanaŋga Rapanui in which schoolchildren and
teachers take part and only Rapanui is spoken. Children and teachers dance and sing and
perform Rapanui legends in Rapanui. The Día de la lengua is well attended by the
Rapanui community and tourists alike.
Meanwhile the struggle about how the language should be taught continued. In
1993 the Ley Indígena was issued, in which “intercultural bilingual education” was
introduced. Elaborate projects have been developed by this program and vast amounts
of government funds spent (US$10,000,000 by 2004) on indigenous scholarships,
improvement of infrastructure, teacher training, etc., in mainland indigenous
communities all over Chile, which are mainly aimed at integrating indigenous peoples
into Chilean society (Intercultural Bilingual Education Program 2002). A well
conceived case study by students of the University of Temuco, analyzing two classroom
situations in Mapuche communities, concludes that

the teachers in charge of developing intercultural bilingual education don’t have

the necessary competence in the knowledge and command of Mapuzungun, so it
would be difficult for them to teach the Mapuche language to girls and boys
who, for different reasons, don’t have a command of the language either…..The
main demand of the community has to do with the language, since Mapuche
knowledge and identity is located in the language. The expectations of the
community are not met in the school work, since language [teaching] is not
offered in the classroom” (Leyton et al. 2005).

This is not an isolated case as the Rapanui example similarly indicates. The
reality is that the deterioration of native languages amongst indigenous peoples in Chile
has reached the level that it is difficult to teach them in a formal school context. The two
principal reasons are that there are no qualified teachers who speak the language and, on
the receiving end, indigenous children don’t have sufficient knowledge of their native
language. Intercultural bilingual education works in places where there is a strong
mother tongue speaking population, which is no longer the case in Chile. The
educational project of the Ley Indígena thus seems flawed a priori. Nevertheless, the
concept of bilingual intercultural education is proudly used and marketed by the
government.
As we saw above, it is very important to analyze particular local situations to see
if a specific language should be taught as a first or a second language. While some
Rapanui teachers, supported by the Webers, were convinced of the benefits of

11
immersion education, others were not. Immersion education finally got off the ground
in 2000. It happened even though “there is no real conviction on part of the Chileans
and no real conviction on part of the Rapanui, or rather, there is ignorance. It also has to
do with race and class. Chileans and Rapanui talk down to each other.” One out of the
four courses at first grade level became an immersion class. The first year children were
selected through a linguistic evaluation. Nancy Weber comments that

You need a critical mass to make the Rapanui happen. Even if the parents want
it, but the kid does not have enough Rapanui, you should not take the kid. That’s
why it is important to have preschool immersion….It doesn’t matter if a kid
starts reading Spanish in third grade, but parents may not understand that. It
depends on the importance you want to give to the revitalization of Rapanui.
You have to allow for some discrepancies and assume that these things will
disappear over time (interview 2002).

Nevertheless, it was not an easy decision for parents to send their kids to immersion
education without knowing what the results would be, and there was some fluctuation in
the first years, because parents put kids in and out of the immersion groups.
Immersion education is now well off the ground in 2009, while the rest of the
school population continues to receive Rapanui classes as ordained by the Ministry of
Education in 1975. Immersion classes exist now from preschool up to the 4th grade.3 A
boost to the program has been that the results of the SIMCE, a Chilean national test
about learning results applied by the Ministry of Education in the 4th grade of
elementary school, has, during the last couple of years, given as high or even higher
results for the immersion classes as those of the Spanish taught classes (personal
communication Viki Haoa).
The process is in full swing and the results will have to be evaluated at a later
stage, but Rapa Nui is the only place in the Chilean educational system where
immersion education is being put into practice. The main problems are still a lack of
qualified Rapanui speaking teachers, adequate materials, and, importantly so, training in
language teaching. In Aotearoa/New Zealand and Hawaii teacher training colleges
receive government financing. Nancy Weber thinks that the success of language
movements in New Zealand and Hawaii during the last several decades is partly due to
the more sophisticated school systems in those places. “We are just limping along here”,
she says.
Undoubtedly, the enthusiasm and determination of Rapanui teachers, the support
of competent and dedicated foreign language experts, as well as contact with other
Polynesians, has improved formal language teaching in the Rapanui school system. It is
also clear to me that informed Chilean government policies about language education
and the financing of such programs would have made a considerable difference in
language maintenance in Rapa Nui and among other indigenous people in Chile.

The politics of language

Besides the developments in the local school, other phenomena influenced the
revitalization of the Rapanui language in important ways. One of them is the
development and ready acceptance of what Makihara defines as syncretic Rapanui, -the
mixing of Spanish and Rapanui elements within and across speakers’ utterances
3
Emersion education was temporarily discontinued for the 2010 school year. I don’t have enough
information to evaluate this situation.

12
(Makihara 2004).4 The school teachers and the SIL linguists teach such a dynamic
Rapanui, which allows for introductions from the Spanish, although they try to avoid
mixtures. This is in accordance with their teaching philosophy that emphasizes the
importance of communication:

when people are concerned about how they say things, then the language
becomes an artifact of the culture and it is no longer a vehicle of
communication…. Pure speech becomes more important than communication,
so I rather don’t speak, because every time I open my mouth, somebody says I
do it wrong…. Keep communication first… I think that Rapanui is used more
and more to establish their identity (interview Robert and Nancy Weber 2006).

Makihara says that these relatively new ways of speaking Rapanui evolved in
the 1970s and 1980s. She attributes this “important change of language consciousness
and practice” to two main factors. One is economic growth due to tourism since the end
of the 1960s. Tourism is based on the commodification of cultural difference, and a
main marker of this cultural difference is language. A second factor is the desire for
increased local political and economic control since the early 1990s, enhanced by the
democratization process in Chile. Makihara argues that

instead of maintaining Spanish as a medium of communication with outsiders

and as the exclusive language within institutional domains characterized by
unequal power relations, Rapa Nui men and women challenged the colonial
diglossic hierarchy by demanding the right of participation in local politics, and
by bringing syncretic Rapa Nui into these spaces (Makihara 2004).

I have participated in several public meetings in which Rapanui switched from

Spanish to Rapanui during the last decade. Meetings among Rapanui are now almost
always held in Rapanui, such as the debates about the Truth Commission, the Special
Statute and the Rapanui Parliament. This is the case in small as well as larger
gatherings, in which the whole community is invited to participate, e.g. in the local
school, where sometimes more than two hundred people would be present. Rapanui is
also spoken in meetings with Chilean government officials (e.g. meetings of the
Development Commission (CODEIPA), and even during official visits of high
government officials to the island. These meetings are conducted in Spanish, but the
Rapanui participants will switch from Spanish to Rapanui in the heat of a discussion,
which also shows their defiance towards mainland Chileans.
The Webers, on the other hand, argue that economic growth and the increased
desire for self-determination were not the only factors, since a concern for language
maintenance already existed for several decades. When TV was introduced in 1975, it
contained clips of local events and people became sensitized about the kind of Rapanui
that was spoken on television. Some Rapanui who had lived on the continent used a lot
of Spanish, while others made a conscious effort to speak proper Rapanui in public
addresses (interview Webers 2006). Consciousness about language use was also noted
by Nancy and Robert Weber in their literary workshops, when participants started to
realize that they wrote the way they spoke, using borrowings from Spanish.
Concern with the purity of Rapanui was also expressed in other venues and
increased during the 1990s. Stimulated by the Ley Indígena, Rapanui elders started to
4
I have borrowed the distinction between syncretic and purist Rapanui from Miki Makihara (Makihara
2004, 2007).

13
work on language issues by creating a comisión para la estructuración de la lengua
Rapa Nui (commission for the structuring of the Rapanui language). Over the next years
this group published a grammar (1996) and a dictionary (2000). Hotus explains:

We have to work on language structuring in order to be able to teach, to know

where words come from, and what they mean. That is the reason why we are
offering a grammar and a dictionary, so that they can learn and learn
immediately. The Rapanui language is not going to be lost, but we have to work
to recuperate it, because nobody knows Rapanui (interview 2002).

The latter comment shows the philosophy of this group, namely that proper Rapanui
was spoken in the past, but not any longer. In the same interview Hotus told me that he
considers that the Rapanui school teachers don’t speak proper Rapanui or proper
Spanish, and that it would be best to teach Rapanui to Chilean teachers who at least
speak Spanish, so that they can use the grammar and dictionary to teach Rapanui in
school.
Simultaneously a group of elders also worked on the etymologies of words,
including the ones used in stories and chants that don’t appear in other dictionaries and
identifying persons and places referred to in songs. This group generally gathered in the
school and also worked on the creation of neologisms, which was considered an
important activity, because new words and concepts are necessary for teaching in
Rapanui.
Besides syncretic Rapanui, Makihara also distinguishes a purist speech style.
Syncretic and pusrist speech styles are both an expression of language revitalization.
While syncretic Rapanui developed almost spontaneously and naturally through the
mixture of Rapanui and Spanish features since the 1970s, purist Rapanui is a more
recent conscious effort to bring back the old language, “imagining the historical
continuity of language from a time prior to contact with outsiders” (Makihara 2007).
Both Makihara and the American linguists point out linguistic insecurities in some
Rapanui speakers since the concerns about pure Rapanui became voiced, worried as
they were about speaking Rapanui correctly. This is not a widespread phenomenon
though and most Rapanui feel comfortable in speaking syncretic Rapanui in everyday
life.
Makihara suggests that Rapanui use these linguistic styles for political ends “to
voice different but complimentary sets of values – those of democratic participation and
those of primordialism and ethnic boundary construction” (Makihara 2007). She adds
that “purist linguistic choice has so far mainly had the effect of strengthening Rapa Nui
unity vis-à-vis Chilean Continentals, rather than heightening difference amongst the
Rapa Nui themselves” (Makihara 2007). Elsewhere she says that “a key factor in the
transformation of colonial diglossia and Rapa Nui language maintenance lies in the
development of positive attitudes toward syncretism and ethnic solidarity” (Makihara
2004). These are interesting reflections, because they stress the idea that the
revitalization of the Rapanui language has become an important factor in cultural self-
determination and a marker of identity.
As already mentioned, another important phenomenon over the last couple of
decades has been the shift from the use of Rapanui from the inner to the outer sphere.
Although Rapanui may be spoken less at home, it is taught and encouraged in school
and spoken in public meetings, even in those meetings organized by Chileans in which
Chileans are supposed to lead the conversation, as I have witnessed personally.

14
Makihara proposes that this expansion to the public sphere has also contributed to break
down “colonial diglossia” (Makihara 2004).
A growing concern about language loss has thus made language into a tool for
cultural revitalization, but it has also become a political tool in Rapanui resistance
against Chilean governance. It is a cultural process running parallel to Chilean persistent
and excessive presence in Rapa Nui and reaffirming Rapanui difference. In the next
chapter I will discuss another Rapanui cultural feature that emphasizes their singularity
and stresses their difference and identity.

Kaiŋa Rapanui

Land in Rapa Nui, as elsewhere, carries political, economic and cultural meanings. I will
first discuss the political and economic significance of land. This is to say, how does land
represent power and wealth, how does it allow for control over others, and how does it
provide the material condition for survival? (see Shipton, Coheen, 1992)
In traditional Rapanui culture the production of food, consisting of fish and
agricultural products, was of prime importance. The first settlers, Hotu Motu’a and his
direct descendents that constituted the Miru clan are said to have established themselves
along the northwest coast of the island, because these lands gave access to the best fishing
grounds. This made the Miru into the principal mata (clan) of Rapa Nui, headed by the
ariki mau. Other mata were agriculturalists and lived mainly in the southeastern part of the
island. Rapanui pre-contact history is generally divided in two periods: the phase of the
ahu-moai (1000-1500 AD) and the decadent phase in which the taŋata manu (birdman)
cult developed (1500-1722) (Kirch 1984). Towards the end of the second period, a gradual
depopulation of the island produced a shift in the significance of these land divisions. Food
production became less important, and the hierarchical divisions between the mata became
less pronounced.
Both the economic and political meaning of land in Rapa Nui underwent a radical
shift after the Chilean annexation, when the island was converted into a sheep farm. Some
parts, particularly the Vaitea area in the center of the island and the Poike peninsula, were
used for sheep farming and thus acquired economic value for the Williamson Balfour
Company, while the Rapanui were forced to live in the settlement of Hanga Roa, where
small plots of land were given to them.
While the Compañía was mainly interested in the profits of the wool business,
the Navy represented the Chilean nation-state. Acting as the legal owners of the land,
the Navy started to distribute plots of 5 hectares for agricultural use from 1917 onwards.
By the 1960s, 525 provisional land titles (títulos provisorios) had been handed out.
From the Chilean government’s perspective, these provisional titles only allowed the
beneficiaries to use the land, while the Chilean state was its legal proprietor. However,
over the years the provisional titles came to be considered as definitive titles by the
Rapanui. These individual titles were transformed into common land titles for the
family groups in the mind of the Rapanui, and the right to usufruct came to be
interpreted as a full property right (see Andueza 2004). This situation continued after
the 1933 inscription of the island as Chilean public land. The Chilean state allowed for
these cultural interpretations of its legal dispositions to take place without giving it
further importance.
Individual private land ownership as such was only officially introduced by the
Ley Pascua of 1966 and continued in the Ley Pinochet of 1979. In the name of equality
this right was not only extended to Rapanui, but also to non-Rapanui Chilean citizens.
However, these dispositions did not have a major effect. The titles to individual

15
ownership only referred to the urban area of Hanga Roa, where virtually all Rapanui
lived and the vast majority did not bother to get land titles for places where they had
been living with their families for several decades. No titles were given to Chileans
living on the island based on the Ley Pascua. So the remarkable thing is that, for several
years to come, islanders kept living their lives in their Hanga Roa homesteads without
significant changes as far as legal land titles is concerned.

Cultural value of land: hua’ai and kaiŋa

While most of the land outside Hanga Roa had lost political and economic value for the
Rapanui after Chilean colonization, Rapanui families (hua’ai) now attached their cultural
identities, this is to say, their intimate relationship with the kaiŋa to the Hanga Roa
homesteads, which came to replace the original clan lands. At the same time the symbolic
value of specific ceremonial sites of the island kept lingering in the collective mind of the
different hua’ai. The Hanga Roa plots were hardly ever their original mata (clan) lands
and when the Navy started to hand out plots on request outside the urban area, it played a
major role, perhaps unwittingly so, in the further severing of the ties between the Rapanui
and their original clan lands.
The cultural value of land is also expressed by the Rapanui in writing. When the
Elders’ Council published the genealogies of their kinsmen--connecting them to specific
territories--in their 1988 book Te Mau Hatu’O Rapa Nui, the Council’s head, Alberto
Hotus, writes in the preface to this publication:

For the Rapanui the land has a different meaning and value then for other people
and cultures, but similar to that of other Polynesian cultures. For the Rapanui, a
profound emotional tie exists with this land that saw them being born. This is
reflected in the fact that land is called kaiŋa in our language, which means womb,
uterus… (El Consejo … 1988).

An adequate understanding of Rapanui concepts is difficult to reach, because they

are culturally untranslatable. In Spanish and English we don’t have equivalents for the
concepts of hua’ai and kaiŋa, so any analysis is by definition flawed, or at the least
confusing, even if it is made by Rapanui writing in Spanish. The more than twenty existing
Rapanui “surnames” are much more than surnames, because they also point to kin groups
that consider themselves to be related to specific territories, ure, mata and, ultimately to
Hoto Matu’a himself.
In recent years another important shift in the political and economic value of
land took place. After Chile’s return to democracy in 1990, the new government issued
in 1993 the Ley Indígena, which established norms of protection, promotion and
development of Chile’s indigenous populations. This law recognizes that land is the
lifeblood of indigenous cultures. Nevertheless, like previous laws, it preserved the
concept of individual private property, although it states explicitly, for the first time and
after a long debate in the Chilean Parliament, that, for the case of Rapa Nui, only people
of Rapanui descent can own land in Rapa Nui and that it cannot be transferred to non-
Rapanui.
In the context of the Ley Indígena the Chilean state returned 1,500 hectares
(3,700 acres) of government-owned land to Rapanui in 1998. This was the first time
ever that a Chilean government returned land to the Rapanui people. The Chilean state
thus implicitly recognized that the 1933 inscription of the island as tierra fiscal was
mistaken, but the gesture also corresponded to Chilean national politics. The celebration

16
of the centenary of the annexation had taken place towards the end of the dictatorship in
1988, and the newly elected democratic governments wished to set their own
benchmarks in their relationship with Rapa Nui, especially in the context of the Ley
Indígena. However, lands were returned to Rapanui individuals, not to “families”.
Some Chilean professionals with longstanding contact with the island
understood this problem and favored collective return. For instance, Chilean lawyer
Fernando Dougnac is of the opinion

that the island is too small for private property. We should go back to the
traditional system in which the use of the land was assigned to a specific family
but not in ownership, because, ultimately, the ethnic group was the owner…. For
the Chilean government the only way to return the land was as private property,
an anthropological mistake I have never been able to understand (interview
2001).

Had government functionaries paid more attention to the importance of Rapanui family
structure, based on ancestral tribal affiliations, they might have come to realize that it is
not the same to return land to one of the 36 recognized Rapanui families, or to an
individual member of one of these families. The Ministry of Bienes Nacionales assigned
individual land titles of five hectares each in a rather haphazard way, not respecting
tribal affiliations of the applicants, which created problems amongst several Rapanui.
In November 2001 then minister of housing and urbanism, Jaime Ravinet, visited
the island to award more than 400 land titles to Rapanui individuals. He emphasized that it
was the first time in Chilean history that the government transferred plots of land to
Rapanui, in anticipation of the return of the rest of the fiscal land. The government thus
recognized the fact that in 1888 only sovereignty was transferred to the Chileans and not
the land, he said.

An interesting and rather questionable effect of the land delivery is that some
Rapanui have traded their plots of land for motorcycles, used cars, or anything else they
had set their eyes on. The fact that they had no particular plans for the use of the land
indicates that these individuals requested land titles just for the sake of the land being
returned to them. In other words, one could suggest that the political argument overruled
the economic one, even though the acquired items were not exempt of economic value.
Nevertheless, it soon became clear that these arbitrary transfers allowed other Rapanui to
accumulate land, which has stimulated the development of a real-estate market during the
last couple of years unheard of before. This implies a further erosion of the concept of
kaiŋa, since it separates the Rapanui from their traditional clan lands, furthers the
disintegration of their traditional social organization and creates economic differences
between Rapanui that never existed before. The root of the problem seems to be that the
Ley Indígena allows for individual private property in detriment of collective private
property, or the idea of kaiŋa.

Loopholes in the law have also permitted the investment of outsiders on the
island, a phenomenon that requires close supervision on part of the Rapanui. An
emblematic case, the first of its kind, is the recent construction of a five star hotel of the
exclusive Chilean hotel-chain Explora, opened in January 2008. The Explora hotels
belong to Chilean Pedro Ibañez, a wealthy food tycoon and travel entrepreneur. After
consulting for several years with various Rapanui families, the Explora operators
contacted a Rapanui business man by the name of Mike Rapu. According to the Ley
Indígena, the land lease with Rapu has to be renewed every five years. Any outsider

17
doing business on the island is subject to this risk, and trust in Rapanui partners
becomes a major issue. Besides providing the land, Mike also invested US$ 3,000,000,
out of the total cost of $10,000,000. However, this investment consists of a bank loan
backed by Explora. Rapu expects to be able and pay off the loan within the first five
years of operation (interview 2006).
The Explora hotel sets a precedent and opens the door for future foreign
investments. Its eventual success has already inspired other Rapanui to think of their
lands in terms of real-estate, a far cry from customary concepts of land as being suitable
for agriculture and fishery to the benefit of clan members. The economic and political
value of land in Rapa Nui has thus experienced a major shift since the 1990s. Politically
it is no longer specific mata that occupy the better lands, but rather Rapanui individuals
capable of negotiating land deals with foreign investors, or convincing other Rapanui to
transfer their lands to them.
Although the Chilean state took over Rapanui land and territory and stripped the
Rapanui of their economic and political rights to these lands, they have not been able to
do so (as yet) as far as their cultural meaning is concerned. With some exceptions, most
Chilean government functionaries simply were not aware of this meaning of the land.
Had they paid more attention to the importance of Rapanui family structure, based on
ancestral tribal affiliations connected to territories, they might have come to realize that
it is not the same to return land to one of the 36 recognized Rapanui families, or to an
individual member of one of these families.
Now, in 2010, almost ten years after the first entrega and after a long and
confusing process, more than 1000 Rapanui are still waiting for the second
redistribution, which now consists of 1,000 hectares. Although many Rapanui say to
disagree with the Chilean system, they have submitted to it in practice, and while they
resisted land titles before, they have now registered for them. At the basis of the conflict
are the concepts of land as individual private property versus the concept of kaiŋa and
the idea that the hua’ai are inseparably connected to their ancestral lands. The huge
delay in the process has also caused mistrust and discontent in the community. One of
the principal reasons is that the Rapanui Development Commission – CODEIPA up till
now only has an advisory function to the Chilean government through its Ministerio de
Bienes Nacionales in Santiago and cannot make decisions on its own.
These issues surface in various forms. Over the last decades individual Rapanui
have settled in parts of the national park, claiming that the land belongs to their
ancestors, their mata. Some grow crops, others have built small houses. Generally the
government has allowed this to happen except in some exceptional cases in which a
couple of houses were destroyed and removed by CODEIPA. However, lately the
situation has gotten out of control since several Rapanui have “illegally” occupied park
land. By October 2009 the Huke Atan family had taken more than 200 hectares. In July
and August 2010 some hundred Rapanui occupied plots of land where Chilean
government offices are located, such as the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of
Public works, the Ministerio de Bienes Nacionales, the Municipality and the hotel
Hangaroa, the only hotel that is not owned by Rapanui. The argument is that these are
located in ancestral lands, belonging to various hua’ai/mata. In the context of this
conflict, it was the first time the Chilean press employed the term “clanes familiares” or
simply “clanes” to refer to the participants in the occupations. Chilean government
officials, on the other hand, are said to base their arguments on the Chilean estado de
derecho. Even though by no means the majority of the Rapanui agree with these land
occupations, they do represent many Rapanui and are an indication of the continuing
clashes between the Chilean state and the Rapanui people.

18
 We can thus conclude that the cultural meaning of land in contemporary Rapa
Nui is a potent marker of difference. Rapanui specific social organization as expressed
in the hua’ai and their relationship with the kaiŋa, although profoundly changed since
the Chilean annexation, still exists in modern Rapa Nui. A unified emphasis on this
cultural asset may lead to further emphasis on (cultural) self-determination. In the next
section I will move away from local cultural politics and discuss Rapanui incursions
into Polynesia, their participation in Polynesian gatherings and their reencounter with
one of the forgotten ancestral knowledges: seafaring.

The Polynesian homeland: a sea of islands

Tongan scholar and writer Epeli Hau’ofa writes in his essay Our Sea of Islands that
"Our ancestors, who lived in the Pacific for over 2000 years, viewed their world as a
'sea of islands', rather than 'islands in the sea'" (Hau’ofa 1993). This powerful concept is
a relational rather than a geographic one, since it emphasizes relations between the
islanders and their (is)lands, rather than insurmountable distances between the islands.
In accordance, independent lines of evidence in various disciplines such as
linguistics, biological anthropology and comparative ethnography show that Polynesian
cultures display several characteristics in common. They have a common proto-
language, a common parental population expressed in a core set of systemic cultural
patterns indicating descent from a common ancestor, similar social groups and land
tenure patterns (kaiŋa), the concepts of mana and tapu, cosmogonic origin myths and
the presence of hereditary chiefs (Kirch 2000). The performative is also a characteristic
feature of Polynesian cultures in general and already commented upon by the first
Western voyagers in the 18th century.
Rapanui cultural revival since the 1990s takes place in the context of regional
(Polynesian) cultural revival. Rapanui consider themselves to be an integral part of
Polynesia and have been participating in cultural events with other Polynesian islands
by participating in Polynesian language conferences, Pacific Arts Festivals and other
music festivals. They have also taken part in the revival of Polynesian voyaging through
the visit of Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hokule’a to Rapa Nui in 1999.

Polynesian gatherings

The idea for a Polynesian Language Forum was born in Aotearoa/New Zealand amongst
Polynesian residents that were witnessing the struggle and results of the Maori people to
preserve their language. The first conference was organized in Hamilton, New Zealand in
1991. The purpose was to share and exchange experiences about various issues, such as
teaching methods and materials, expanding vocabularies, the creation of new words and
the contact with respective states. The Forum has fourteen members, Rapa Nui being one
of them.
Although no Rapanui participated in this first language conference, they had been
present in the conference about education in Aotearoa the year before and they would be
active members in the years to come. The next conferences took place in Tahiti (1992),
Hawaii (1993), Aotearoa (1994), Tahiti (1998), Rapa Nui (2000) and Aotearoa (2003).
The Rapanui cultural group Kahu Kahu o Hera took on the organization of the
th
6 conference, together with the office of the secretary general of the Polynesian
Languages Forum from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. The meeting was held at the
senior citizens center in Rapa Nui from March 24-30, 2000, with the participation of
Aotearoa, Hawaii, Henua Enana (Marquesas), Cook Islands, Mangareva, Rurutu,

19
American Samoa, Tahiti, Tuamotu and Rapa Nui. The Fijians excused themselves for
not being able to attend. A total of forty six official delegates and observers participated,
as well as several Rapanui guest speakers and some one hundred and fifty Rapanui
attendants. Translation was available for English, French and Spanish, reflecting the
colonial legacies of the islands.
The conference consisted of three full days of workshops. Other days were filled
with cultural activities, especially food, music and performance. There were also several
native and religious ceremonies, evoking the tapuna as well as the Christian God.
Besides reports from each island or island group, two roundtables were held, one on
immersion education and bilingual education and the other one on sociolinguistic reality
and language viability. A good part of another day was spent on the meaning of string
figures and their transfer to new generations. Several delegates spoke of language loss
in their respective places, but also of successes in language preservation, mainly
through the use of immersion education and visual media, especially television.
Immersion education was recommended over bilingual education and the
importance of teacher education was emphasized. Emphasis was also put on speaking
the language at home, as well as on an increasing need for new words. On a dissident
note, Alberto Hotus, as Rapanui guest speaker, insisted on the limitations of the
Rapanui language and the consequent need to use Spanish. Other Rapanui guest
speakers spoke about the meaning and significance of the Rapanui reimiro flag, the
need for the officialization of the Rapanui language, the meaning of the roŋo roŋo
script, the work on neologisms, and an interpretation of sculptures and petroglyphs as
visual language.
A statement was issued at the end of the conference in which the participants
affirmed that “our Polynesian languages are a treasure from our ancestors that binds
together the people of our individual islands and the whole of the Polynesian Triangle.”
It also referred to the fact that the languages and cultures are endangered, but have been
revitalized as well. It ends by saying that “the language that we use in the home and
with our fellow Polynesians will be the language of identity for our future generations.”
The realization of this conference in Rapa Nui is undoubtedly a testimony to
how connected the Rapanui are with other Polynesians, as well as to their capacity to
organize such an event. I was told that the organization was fluid and the members of
Kahu Kahu o Hera were proud of this accomplishment.
Another gathering in which the Rapanui have participated with great enthusiasm
is the Festival of Pacific Arts. Conceived by the South Pacific Commission “as a means
to stem erosion of traditional cultural practices by sharing and exchanging culture”, it is
hosted every four years by a different country since the first festival took place in Suva,
Fiji, in 1972. The major theme of the festival is traditional song and dance. Rapanui
dancers, musicians and artists have formed an integral part of these gatherings. The last
one, in 2008, took place in American Samoa, where some 2000 artists attended. A
group of Rapanui had a major role in this gathering, since they were in charge of the
opening ceremony. Besides this large venue, small Rapanui performance groups take
part in cultural happenings in various islands, such as the Marquesas islands in French
Polynesia, Cook Islands etc. during the year. They thus share their cultural heritage and
reestablishing contacts with fellow Polynesians.
Further, in 2009 Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, a foundation of the “sovereign states” of
the Pacific Triangle was formed in Aotearoa /New Zealand. The ariki nui of several
islands and island groups joined in this foundation, with their official headquarters in
Aotearoa. Their purpose is, amongst others, “to reinstate the king blood lines of old”, to
enhance the rights of the people of these nations, to protect them from industrial nations

20
and to protect the lands, which are sacred and can not be sold. Rapa Nui has its
representative, Ariki Nui Tuki Tepano and in February the meeting of the foundation
was held in Rapa Nui.
We can see then that Rapa Nui, despite its limited territory and small population,
sits on the front row of Pacific happenings. The strength and mana of Rapanui cultural
practices have given it a powerful presence on the world scene. This cultural capital is
shaping the Rapanui’s modern cultural and social identity as a people, more so than
their reeling and dealing with a nation-state that does not fully recognize their desire for
self-determination.

Polynesian voyaging. The visit of Hokule’a to Rapa Nui

The recent revival of traditional Polynesian voyaging started in Hawaii. In the 1960s, when
Polynesian voyaging canoes had disappeared and ways of navigating without instruments
had been largely forgotten, Hawaiians began to reconstruct sailing canoes and to test
traditional ways of navigating without instruments over legendary voyaging routes. This
was partly in response to Thor Heyerdahl’s theory that the Pacific had been colonized from
South America. After a decade of planning and navigating, and the reconstruction of a
Hawaiian double canoe, in 1973 a group of people formed the Polynesian Voyaging
Society, one of them anthropologist Ben Finney, with the purpose of building a deep-sea
voyaging canoe to show that the ancient Polynesians could have settled Polynesia in
double-hulled voyaging canoes using non-instrument navigation. Hokule’a was launched
in 1975, and it was the first voyaging canoe to be built in Hawaii in more than 600 years.
Since then several trips have been undertaken on Hokule’a.
The topic of revitalization is once again of relevance, since canoe building and
knowledge of Ocean voyaging had been forgotten in Hawaii, as it has been in Rapa Nui.
Anthropologist Jocelyn Linnekin has suggested in her important essay about the politics of
culture in the Pacific that “in the context of the Hokule’a’s voyages Hawaiians have
recognized a broader, Polynesian ethnicity” (Linnekin 1990).
One of the important figures in this voyaging revival movement is Mau Pialug, a
master navigator from the atoll of Satawal in the Caroline Islands in Micronesia, who
passed away in July 2010. Mau navigated Hokule’a from Hawaii to Tahiti, on its first
voyage in 1976. Between 1985 and 1987 Hokule’a sailed more than 16,000 miles of
traditional migratory routes from Hawaii to Tahiti, Rarotonga, Aotearoa, Tonga and
Samoa. In 1995 six canoes --Hokule’a, Hawai’iloa, and Makali’i from Hawaii, one canoe
from Aotearoa, and two from Rarotonga-- left the Marquesas Islands for Hawaii. Five of
the six canoes only used traditional methods and all six arrived safely in Hawaii. In 1999
Makali’i traveled from Hawaii to Chuuk, in the Caroline Islands, with Mau aboard, on a
voyaging expedition called "Sailing the Master Home". After a successful trip Makali’i
arrived back in Hawaii on June 1.
The Polynesian Voyaging Society met its biggest challenge yet, when Hokule’a left
Hawaii in June 1999 to sail via the Marquesas and Mangareva to Rapa Nui. Before
traveling, the Hokule’a navigators studied native legends, as though they were travel logs.
They had also done this when they first set course to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1985. On
that trip they tested the historical accuracy of Maori canoe legends and found their
instructions to be correct, not only as to the direction to be taken by the voyagers, but also
as to the most appropriate time of the year to undertake the voyage (Finney 1991).
Information on both these issues is present in Rapa Nui’s foundational story about its first
colonizer Hotu Matu’a. These indications were taken into account by Nainoa Thompson,

21
main navigator of Hokule’a, when planning the trip, thus honoring the historicity of native
myths, as the Hawaiian navigators had done when they set sail to Aotearoa.
Although sailing against the prevailing easterly trade winds had for a long time
been considered an impossibility for anthropologists and other scientists alike, the
existence of occasional westerly winds proved to be a fact. After Hokule’a left Mangareva
in French Polynesia on September 21, winds were blowing from all directions, except for
from the southeast. They lasted nine days, which allowed the canoe to advance at a high
speed in the right direction. On October 1 the winds died, and for the next eight days the
crew had to deal with relatively unfavorable winds and poor star sightings, due to overcast
skies. Nevertheless, near dawn on October 8, the Micronesian crew member Max
Yarawamai saw, through a hole in the clouds, a flat black surface that did not change
shape. It turned out to be Rano Kau, one of Rapa Nui’s three volcanoes. It is interesting
that Hokule’a approached the island from the same direction Hotu Matu’a and his
explorers had done, some fifteen centuries earlier, and that she did so at dawn, thus literally
sailing into the rising sun, as the legend suggests. Main navigator Nainoa Thompson was at
the stern looking out for the island, since he thought that they might have sailed by it
during the night. When Yarawamay pointed at the flat black line, Nainoa was of the
opinion that it had the wrong shape, because he was expecting to see the highest point of
the island, Maunga Tere Vaka. As a matter of fact he had been a hundred miles off in his
calculations and he wanted to sail north, but the wind did not allow him to do so and led
him straight to the island. This was the start of a most remarkable visit, where Rapanui and
hundreds of Hawaiians connected I song, dance and other cultural activities (see Delsing
2000)
Sam Kaai of Maui said to me in an interview on October 8, the very day Hokule’a
sighted Rapa Nui:

This visit completes all the cultural songs of the voyaging... For the scientific world
this is a matter of proving how the discovery was done, but for us it is a matter of
obeying the call to go home. Andrew Sharp of New Zealand said that we were all
an accident, which is a way of saying that one is less than one’s traditional stories
say one is. He stole our mana. All our stories are about traveling from the West to
the East... We have gone down obeying the ancient chants. We will complete the
European idea of the Polynesian triangle, although Polynesia is not even our word.
We call it te moana nui, te moana akea. The triangle celebrates the present time.
For us there are only songs of where we went, leis of islands, strung up by vaka and
people and ceremony. These are the flowers of the lei.

These words represent the spirit and the knowledge of the island people, of Rapanui and
Hawaiians alike. The visit of Hokule’a to Rapa Nui demonstrated this knowledge and
strengthened this spirit. It reaffirmed the deep connection that has always existed between
the Ocean, the islands and the people who make them their home.

Rapanui have thus traveled all over Polynesia to participate in cultural festivals,
language conferences and other meetings, and a group of Hawaiians sailed to the island on
a spectacular voyage to connect with the Rapanui in their condition as fellow Polynesians.
These Polynesian connections are important markers to differentiate Rapa Nui from the
Chilean mainland. The Hokule’a voyage proofed what Polynesians were capable of doing:
to travel the vast ocean until they got to the last island with the help of winds, waves and
stars. And that is where a small group of Polynesian voyagers settled, when the wind found

22
his last resting place, like famed poet Pablo Neruda suggests when he wrote: hasta que
estableció gérmenes puros, hasta que comenzaron las raíces (Neruda 1997).

Some final thoughts

The purpose of this paper has been to show how, during the last decades, Rapanui have
empowered themselves by emphasizing their cultural difference. In the area of
performance culture they have been able to do so freely, spreading their cultural
message on local, regional and global levels. Although their vanaŋa has been greatly
influenced by the introduction of Spanish and Chilean educational policies, this unique
language unquestionably marks Rapanui difference. I have shown how Rapanui are
struggling to keep their mother tongue alive. Another important marker of Rapanui
difference is their Polynesian social organization expressed in the concepts of kaiŋa,
mata and hua’ai, a unique unity between land and people.
It is in the latter area that the conflicts with the Chilean nation-state are
persistent. There are profound discrepancies between the Western concept of
sovereignty, signifying jurisdiction in a specific territory, and the Polynesian idea of
sovereign rulers, the unity between land and people and the inalienability of this land.
Centuries of construction of different political philosophical frameworks in East and
West have created and sustained these discrepancies. In the case of Rapa Nui, where
both systems have been coexisting and colliding for more than a century, the time may
have come to sit together and really listen. This is an urgent business, because the
increasing and disturbing noises of the market forces may take away the possibility of
hearing each other altogether.
Meanwhile, cultural politics, as discussed above, are keeping Rapanui difference
afloat and thriving and, simultaneously, produce cracks in discourses and practices of a
modern Latin American nation-state. At this very moment, August 2010, Rapanui
hua’ai or “clans”, as the Chilean press now terms them, are occupying various plots of
ancestral lands on the island, thus challenging, what they call, the Chilean estado de
derecho. Rapanui and the Chilean government know that the world is listening in on
this debate. We can only wait and see what the outcome will be.

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