Rapa Nui

Abstract

Rapa Nui Forrest Wade Young (bio) During the review period, Rapa Nui national leaders affirmed movement toward self-determination in the context of local, state, and global biopolitical forces that threaten the sustainable future of the Rapa Nui people, territory, and resources. Engaging the spirit of Angata, the first Rapa Nui woman to valiantly challenge such forces as they articulated in 1914 (McCall 1997, 117), many political voices and actions for social justice by leading contemporary Rapa Nui women are highlighted in this review, including Lolita Tuki, Erity Teave, Elisa Riroroko, Anakena Manutomatoma, Mama Piru (Piru Hucke Atan), and Marisol Hito. Conflict over the March 2015 reclamation of “ancestral lands” (kāiŋa tupuna) and “ancestral valuables” (hauha‘a tupuna)—which the state had developed into a national park (El Parque Nacional Rapa Nui) in the 1930s without consulting the Rapa Nui people—had temporarily been resolved in April 2015 through an agreement between Rapa Nui national leaders and Chilean state government representatives (Young 2016a), but the conflict resumed by June 2015. Erity Teave, vice president of Parlamento Rapa Nui and president of Honui (two grassroots political organizations engaging movements for Rapa Nui self-determination entangled in the conflict), explained that the dispute centers around incommensurable understandings and experiences of the island: for Rapa Nui people, the sites that the state and global actors recognize as part of a “park for recreation” are actually “sacred places” (vahi tapu) that must be protected by “customary law” (derecho consuetudinario) as a taina henua—that is, an “island” (henua) of “siblings/relatives” (taina) (Teave, pers comm, 12 Aug 2016). The world-famous moai statues at the center of vahi tapu are considered by Rapa Nui people to be “spiritual tombstones” that “protect the land and the blood matrix to which each clan belongs” (M Hitorangi 2013); as Mama Piru, a Parlamento Rapa Nui member, has stressed during the conflict, the moai “talk” with the Rapa Nui people who are the “children of their children” (ec, 25 Sept 2015). Thus, what is at stake is not only the “moral economy” for governing cultural heritage but also the epistemological and ontological foundations of Rapa Nui being and becoming as a nation and people (Young 2016c). What the state and global forces desire to administer as a Chilean “lawscape” (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos 2015, 38–106), that is, a place that spatializes people, resources, and territories in terms of Chilean law, Rapa Nui national leaders want to protect as a genealogical “relationscape” (Manning 2009) that connects Rapa Nui present and future “extended families” (hua‘ai) to their ancestral spiritual ecology and living cultural heritage. A 4 June 2015 letter to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed by Erity Teave and Leviante Araki, president of Parlamento Rapa Nui, reports that conflict resumed as state police began to “intimidate” Rapa Nui at the vahi tapu they were protecting while managing everyday tourism access. By 10 August 2015, the Chilean National Institute of Human Rights noted that [End Page 173] dialogue between the state and Rapa Nui leaders had finally broken down (indh 2016). Following public radio announcements requesting that tourists provide “voluntary contributions” to gain access to Rapa Nui ancestral territories beginning 15 August (ec, 16 Aug 2015), President Araki and Mario Tuki (a Parlamento Rapa Nui member and former representative of the Chilean government-organized Commission for the Development of Easter Island [codeipa]), were arrested at the entrance to the Orongo ceremonial village on 15 August as they began collecting entrance fees from tourists. The National Forest Corporation of Chile (conaf), funded by the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture that manages the park, not noting the fees were voluntary, declared the acts “illegal,” and state officials called for the closure of the office of Parlamento Rapa Nui to restore “public order” (Parque Nacional Rapa Nui, 15 Aug 2015). In response to the arrests, President Araki publically emphasized that they were simply “protecting” the Rapa Nui “sacred sites” and “ancestral property” (ec, 17 Aug 2015). Contextualizing Chilean administration of vahi tapu as failing the Rapa Nui people while accumulating profits for the state and associated corporations, President Araki refused to recognize the authority of Chilean government organizations like conaf and codeipa in...