Calendars and Climate Change

Abstract

Toward the end of my travels in 2011, I was engaged to help some people in two of the smaller Cook Islands to put together proposals for research projects. In both cases, the first language of these people was still Māori, and many of them retained and used a good deal of their Indigenous knowledge in their everyday lives. Some were planning to use that knowledge in their research projects, so for me, it was an enlightening experience. I was accommodated in local homes: in Mangaia in a kind of B and B, where I was treated to a variety of local specialties, which were always served up with interesting conversation from my host; in Atiu, a self-catering situation, but I was brought an abundance of fresh (and coincidentally organic), locally grown food. Generally, I was introduced in a most exciting way to life in communities that were linguistically related to the people in New Zealand with whom I had been working but who had become less integrated into a Western way of life. Christianity has taken off in a big way in the Cook Islands, but its practice has definitely been given its own character, and that aspect of life there was interesting in itself.