RAPA NUI…Easter Island… copyright Geof Prigge
geofprigge@yahoo.com.au
www.geofprigge.com
What a depressing history this place has…for over a thousand years the inhabitants of Rapa Nui toiled laboriously to carve giant moias in reverence to their ancestors, only to be destroyed by the very clans who spent years in some instances carving them out of the volcanic basalt. Each clan in desperate attempts to attain the dwindling food and wood supplies of the island, destroyed each others statues as a demoralising method to drive their opponents to despair.
Then in 1722 the Dutch navigator van Roggeveen arrived on Easter Sunday and his men, on coming ashore, opened fire on what had by then become a peaceful race of people surviving happily in the south pacific sunshine. Many were injured and over a dozen killed in what appeared to be retaliation for the simple act of one native being inquisitive and wanting to touch the tunics of the visitors.
Over the next hundred and forty years things worsened. In an attempt to supply Peru with slave labour, opportunistic ship owners arrived in their poorly equipped vessels and forcibly took away the inhabitants to Peru to work in shocking conditions digging for guano, which had accumulated over the years as mineral rich droppings from seabirds on the Chincha Islands, and which had become Peru’s most lucrative export. Inhabitants of Easter Island were not the only race of people taken away. Inhabitants of many Pacific islands fell victim to these slave raids.
On one ship 439 of the 470 people were thrown overboard due either to death or being so close to death that they were not considered worth feeding. Most who made it to Peru died of disease in deplorable working conditions, and it wasn’t until the intervention of Monsieur Edmond de Lesseps who secured the release of the remaining living islanders and who assisted in their repatriation. However this was not the end of their unfortunate internment. Their return to Rapa Nui was yet another horrifying journey. Of the 1407 Easter Islanders who had been taken to Peru by force or deceit, all but 100 died there as a result of the conditions, and 85 of these died on the journey back. The fifteen who made it home were infected with smallpox leading to the deaths of a thousand more.
Surprisingly, the remainder of the population then in the mid 1800’s (1862 in fact), survived although many were decimated by the last of the Peruvian slave raids in the next two years reducing the population from 4000 to 1700. It was during this period that the last of those able to interpret the unique rongo rongo script perished. Amongst them were the island’s king, Kai Makoi, his son Mayrata and other members of the royal family, chiefs and priests. A most unique written script in which every alternate line was reversed, forcing the reader to turn the text upside down to continue reading. Known as the boustrophedon form, all attempts to decipher it over the ensuing years have failed.
This though was not the end of the problems for the Easter Islanders. Additional explorers, whalers, adventurers, missionaries, scientists and finally tourists have all done their best to take something form either the island itself or the islanders.
On December 19 1886, one of the worst events occurred, the arrival of the USS Mohican. Paymaster William J Thomson and the ship’s surgeon Dr G H Cooke carried out more desecration and vandalism, theft of sacred items and destruction of tombs than all who had preceded them. Two years after this visit, Chile annexed the island, and although it did little good and an exceptional amount of harm, at least it stopped such vandals from doing further harm. During the first seventy years of colonial ownership, Chile proved to the rest of the world, that it had no experience whatsoever in colonising. The government and its lessees were guilty of neglect and cruelty toward the islanders. No respect was shown toward their ceremonial ways and in fact the ceremonial buildings at Orongo were dismantled and the ancient stones used in the construction of ‘more useful’ buildings elsewhere.
In 1928 revolutions shook Chile and the government did what had previously been suggested. They used the island for convicts, sending dissident politicians there to be as far away from the mainland as possible.
By 1937, Chile was ready to get rid of ownership of Easter Island altogether, and offered it to England, Germany, The United States, and Japan. Fortunately, although Japan was the only one to show interest, negotiations eventually broke down. Had Japan acquired the island, WWII could well have had a different outcome.
The Chilean government was still trying to rid itself of the island and continued to carry out floggings and head shaving for minor infractions. The fence which contained the people of Easter Island within the confines of Hanga Roa, was heightened and barbed wire positioned all around the town. In 1956 however, a change started. The Chilean government allowed a few select children to move to the mainland so as to get a good education. One of them, Alfonso Rapu, returned to the island in 1963 as a teacher and mayor. He was charismatic and intelligent, and encouraged the people to take no more of the unjust ways of the Chilean government. Together with Tahitian born Francis Maziere, they forced change.
The Chilean authorities began to realise that world-wide attention was being drawn to the plight of the islanders, and if it didn’t want the people to apply to the US or France for protection or worse still to declare independence, it had better do something. In 1966 it passed a law making the island part of the city of Valparaiso, and in June of the same year the inhabitants of Rapa Nui became citizens of Chile.
In 1967 the first tourist expeditions started led by Hanns Ebensten whose vision was to allow people not just to come briefly and leave, but to stay longer and learn properly about what the island had to offer.
In 1988 a team of German scientists arrived, but their efforts of copying the statues by applying silicon rubber and epoxy resin damaged some moais considerably and then a few years later the Japanese came and filmed the resurrection of some of the fallen statues to promote their Tadano Crane company whose big yellow crane remained a part of the landscape for two years. Their contact with the locals was very strained at times, due mainly to their arrogant approach to everything they did.
1993 saw the invasion of Hollywood and although many islanders benefited from the increase in employment possibilities, the result of the film Rapa Nui being filmed there was not all positive. Damage was again done to archaeological remains, and the film crew were often unpleasant in their dealings with the locals. At least they cleaned up when they left, and many islanders have a better standard of living due to the film having been made there.
An idea recently suggested to the island’s mayor Pedro Edmuds Paoa was to finally turn the tide on the suffering of the many forms of misfortune experienced over the centuries. I put forward the following suggestion to council…
Upon arrival, every visitor would be given a sapling to plant at a designated area on the island. They’d dig a small hole, plant the tree, and the council garden staff would water it along with all the others that people were continually planting, to keep it alive. Ten years down the track, the People’s Park would be a strong reminder of a positive impact that visitors have had, rather than the negative impact so common on the island over the centuries. Obviously consultation with a forestry expert to ascertain most suitable species would be essential prior to embarking on this plan.
The 21st century could therefore be an ongoing tree planting period…ongoing ad infinitum in fact, encouraging migrating birds, giving shade to anyone stopping to rest and improving the aesthetic quality of the island, and perhaps sometime in the future returning it to its former tree-covered glory.
I put the suggestion forward sincerely hoping that if implemented, islanders would at last be true masters of their own destiny, without the intrusion of parasites coming for nothing else than their own gain.
It remains to be seen that if in the 21st century, islanders will at last be those masters
of their own destiny.
Geof Prigge.
