Rapa Nui-- Fight for Independence and the Myth of Ecocide
Perpetrated by Jared Diamond
By Coral
Wynter
I have
always been fascinated by the story of Easter Island, the European name fro
Rapa Nui, due to a complete accident in my childhood education, when at the age
of 10 years old, I did a school project on the strange, mysterious statues on
the island, known as Moai. My partner has always laughed at my obsession,
referring to the Moai as those weird statues of Malcolm Fraser, adding why
would you want to see that? (Fraser being the archetypal right-wing leader of
Australian politics in the 70s, who had dismissed a well-liked Labour leader,
Whitlam under shonky circumstances). This is completely wrong as the 887 statues
represent ancient and revered leaders of island society and the sculpture on
top of their head represents their hairstyle of a red coloured topknot and not
a hat. They bear little resemblance to Malcolm Fraser, wearing a hat. Despite
this lack of support, I had always wanted to visit Easter Island or Rapa Nui as the indigenous people call their island. I
had criss-crossed the Pacific Ocean many times on my way to Latin America and Venezuela but
had never been able to break my journey. In 2010, I was determined to do so and
made a special journey from Santiago de Chile to Rapa Nui in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean, 2000 kms from the closest habitation, Pitcairn
Island with only 100 people. Rapa Nui
is the most isolated inhabited island in the world, lying 3800 km directly west
from Santiago de Chile. There are only two places from which there are flights to
Rapa Nui, either Santiago or the French colony of
Papeete, Tahiti.
When I arrived, I was absolutely stunned by the natural beauty of Rapa Nui.
Several
years before I had read, like many others concerned with the environmental
destruction staring us in the face, Jared Diamond’s book ‘’Guns, Germs and
Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.’’ Diamond had toured Australia, given interviews on
national radio and his book had won the US Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in
1998. The image that has stuck in everyone’s mind, after reading that book, is
of a few remaining miserable, starving natives, standing on the shores of Rapa
Nui, staring glumly out to sea, the sad remnants of a people who had cut down
all the forests and trees on the island to carry the huge statues of Moai to
the shoreline in a competition between twelve clans. This had meant in turn
there was no wood to build boats and consequently they could not go fishing to
feed themselves and their bizarre society had degenerated into chaos and
cannibalism. How could they be so stupid and what were they thinking?
Diamond states
‘’That leaves us with just two main sets of factors behind Easter’s collapse:
human environmental impacts, especially deforestation and destruction of bird populations;
and the political, social and religious factors behind the impacts, such as the
impossibility of emigration as an escape valve because of Easter’s isolation, a
focus on statue construction for reasons already discussed and competition
between clans and chiefs driving the erection of bigger statues, requiring more
wood, rope and food.’’ (1)
It is
important to examine this question of societal and environmental collapse as it
has implications for our present predicament of dealing with massive climate
change. In the case of Rapa Nui, Diamond’s
assertions are a million miles from the truth. Rapanui people have been
seriously misrepresented and maligned, another case of blame the victim.
Diamond’s research is seriously flawed and slipshod. Diamond did not train as
an anthropologist, nor a historian, nor as an archaeologist but as a
biophysicist. He is currently professor of geography at UCLA. He has deliberately
underplayed one of the worst atrocities that was ever committed by white
colonists in the South Pacific. It was this horrendous catastrophe in the 19th
century that wiped out Rapa Nui’s civilisation
and resulted in the physical extermination of its peoples. Diamond adjusted the
story of Rapa Nui and selected certain facts to
support his theory of ‘’ecocide.’’ One cannot remove environmental and cultural
changes from the historical and social context of the epoch: the most important
of these is imperialism. There was no ecocide, just colonial barbarism and Western
diseases. The ‘germ’ title in his book is correct in this instance. Rather than
ridicule their alleged stupidity, we should honour the Rapanui people for their
tenacity, resilience and ingenuity. The tragedy of Rapa
Nui is genocide caused by European ferocity and utter greed.
Let’s go
back to the beginning. Rapa Nui is the high
point of a volcanic island in the Pacific, consisting
of three extinct volcanos, which came together with some 70 lesser volcanic cones.
They formed in the last 3 million to 750,000 years with the most recent
eruption occurring 100,000 years ago. The island is the highpoint of an
enormous underwater mountain range caused by a hotspot under the Nazca tectonic
plate. This causes the island to move 15cm closer to the South American
continent each year. The triangular-shaped island is dominated by volcanic
basalt flows, rich in iron, from which the Moai statues were carved. Rapa Nui is now thought to have been settled much later
than previous studies. Most archaeologists had once believed that Rapa Nui had been settled early, perhaps 400 CE or at
late as 800 CE. This tentative date has changed due to 12 radiocarbon dating
readings from bones and charcoal obtained from sand dunes at Anakena Beach.
Archaeologists Hunt and Lipo put the time of first arrival of Polynesians
at1200 CE (2). The Polynesians may have navigated in canoes from the Marquesas
Islands, 3200 km away or Mangareva, 2600 km away in the Austral group of French Polynesia. The Polynesians speak of the arrival of
the founder of the population as Hotu Matu’a in their legends. The earlier
dates of island settlement have been shown to be unreliable and better
techniques have brought forward the dates not only for Rapa Nui but also for Hawai’i, the Marquesas and Cook Islands as well as New Zealand.
The
extraordinary architecture and statuary and carving of the Moai began soon
after the initial settlement. So these intrepid Polynesians travelled over 3000
kms in a hand made boat, bringing everything with them to start a new society-
enough people, plants and animals. There is absolutely no evidence for Thor
Heyerdahl’s well publicised theories that links Rapa Nui to South
America. The linguistic, archaeological and genetic data of Rapa
Nui give ample evidence that the culture is derived from another island in Polynesia. They certainly have nothing to do with Chilean
culture, present or past. The political necessity for Chile to link Rap Nui with South America may
have been the reason for Heyerdahl’s extraordinary successful publicity stunt,
taking a balsa raft from Peru
to French Polynesia in 1947.
The
environmental record for Rapa Nui reveals
ancient vegetation, once dominated by millions of Jubaea palm trees. The palm tree forests had been established on
the island for tens of thousands of years, going back to at least 37,000 years
ago. However because of the isolated island geography, evolution could only produce
a very simple community of plants and animals. The Jubaea adapted to environmental climate changes, including drought,
but more importantly the palms had no predators on the island. However together
with the cargo of animals such as chickens, plants, food supplies and seeds for
the small group of pioneers, in the canoes came another hidden species, the
rats. They were almost certainly introduced accidently to Rapa
Nui. Consequently rats reached an island with no native predators
and an unlimited food supply in the form of the nuts of the Jubaea palms. It is estimated there were
millions of palm trees, with each tree producing 100 kg of nuts every year, an
unbelievable bonanza for a hungry little rat (3).
Under these
ideal conditions, the rats reproduced at a truly staggering rate, capable of doubling
their numbers every 50 days. Laboratory figures indicate that a single mating
pair of rats, with unlimited food, could become 17 million in just three years.
Kure atoll, in the northwest Hawaiian
islands have an average density of 45 rats per acre. At this
density, Rapa Nui would have had a rat
population of over 2 million and could have reached more than 3 million rats
within a very short time of the arrival of the canoes in 1200 CE. The Pacific
rat Rattus exulans is an agile climber,
virtually living in the trees, running on palm fronds and passing from tree to
tree. Ecologists have reported on thousands of rats living in the tops of coconut
trees in Pacific atolls. Unlike birds, rats can eat through the hard seed cases
and destroy all of the seed with no possibility of it reproducing into a palm
tree. As the rats devoured the seeds, forest regeneration was stopped in its
tracks. In fact hundreds of seed cases of the Jubaea palm found in cave sites around Rapa
Nui show signs of rat gnawing and seed destruction. There is
absolutely no evidence of massive felling of trees to transport the Moai to the
shores.
Evidence
for this scenario of millions of rats taking over an island, has been found in Hawai’i itself where before the arrival of Polynesians,
the O’ahu island
of Hawai’i had been
covered in native palm trees of the Pritchardia
species. Then around 1000 CE, with the arrival of Polynesians, the palm forest
began to disappear but without any evidence of local fires. So it could not
have been due to new settlers burning the forests to clear land for
agriculture. Within 100-200 years the forests had totally collapsed (4). At the
same time, native birds suffered a massive decline, with many becoming extinct.
As proof of this, islands where rats had never been introduced, still have
their native forests such as the Nihoa in northwest of Hawai’i. Dense forests of the native palm, Pritchardia remota are present despite
intensive occupation by Hawaiian people, some use of fire in clearing land and
the growing of sweet potatoes.
Thus it was
the rats that destroyed the native forests on Rapa Nui
not the people. Archaeological evidence indicates that the forests took 400
years to disappear from about 1250 to 1650 CE. By the late 18th
Century when the number of visits by Europeans had increased, certainly the
forests of 16 million palm trees and 20 other woody plants had disappeared. In
addition six species of land birds and an unknown number of sea birds had
become extinct. A native woody shrub, Sophora
toromiro, survived to this day on the island, but that is because rats can
damage the seed casings of this tree but not enough to stop seed germination.
Another
example of colonial stupidity, are the groves of the alien Australian species
of Eucalyptus, across the centre of the island, introduced at the beginning of
the 20th century. The eucalypts were to provide the wood for a
furnace to provide electricity for the island but it was never built. The
eucalypts are absolutely thriving in the sub-tropical climate (5). Eucalypts
are a pest in foreign soils as they soak up all the water, and the resins and
oils in the roots prevent the growth of native trees. Although a fast growing
tree, eucalyptus trees shed bark, creating an acidic dry litter beneath the
trees, and the roots draw the moisture of the soil away from less hardy native
plants. Nothing will grow under them. By making so-called improvements on the
land, the colonial sheep managers caused the final demise of the native
woodland. Various birds were introduced, such as a Chilean partridge and hawks.
The latter were brought in to kill off rats and sparrows, another introduced pest.
However, the variety of hawk that was imported lacked an interest in sparrows,
and seldom met up with the nocturnal rats. Without natural enemies, pests and
predators all flourished. Jared Diamond never mentions the eucalypts, the hawks
nor the sparrows and only has a brief mention of the sheep.
On a more
positive note, there has been a successful re-introduction of the toromiro tree
as in 1956 Heyerdahl took seeds of the last tree growing on Rapa Nui, back to
the botanical gardens of Berlin, London and Stockholm.
The toromiro, highly prized for carving wood, is now growing in the small
botanical garden near the airport (6). Thus the last man on Rapa
Nui did not cut down the last tree for reasons of clan warfare,
cultural domination and senseless competition to build the biggest Moai.
Instead the last tree may have simply died as rats ate the last seeds. As Hunt
and Lipo so aptly put it ‘’what were the rats thinking?’’ (3).
The dread
of rats even occurs in the Rapanui rituals surrounding childbirth, as described
by the Swiss ethnologist, Alfred Metraux. (7) During the third or fifth month
of pregnancy, the father-in-law would offer his daughter-in-law an elaborate
meal. It was the contents of an underground oven in which tasty titbits were
given especially to the pregnant daughter. However it was believed that if a
rat came and gnawed the food scraps left behind, the future baby’s life was
endangered. This seems to imply that rats were regarded with some fear and
trepidation and seen as an evil portent.
It is
calculated that the maximum population of Rapa Nui
was about 3000 -5000 people by about 1370 CE growing from an initial number of
50 who arrived in canoes. It is thought the population remained in balance,
depending on the food resources and despite occasional droughts and salt-laden
winds. There are no permanent streams on Rapa Nui,
only three craters with fresh water. The soil was not particularly fertile and devastation
of the forests would have increased soil erosion. This may account for the
thousands of basalt rock walls around the fields and mulching for the
cultivation of crops but another explanation could be due to the sheep. During
this time up to 1600 CE, the population grew, even though the forest was
declining at the same time. There is no evidence that the island ever supported
a population of 15,000-30,000 as declared by Diamond. (8) This figure of 15,000
is baseless, often quoted to dramatise the supposed ‘’ecocide.’’ Even today in
a travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald of October 22, 2011, an article
on holidaying in Rapa Nui, mentions the
destruction of the forests and environmental degradation. So it would appear
the islanders used their natural resources and supplies of chicken, vegetables
and fish in plenty, to allow their people to survive and live happily, as would
any group of people living within a small territory.
The appearance of stone
statues on Rapa Nui is neither mysterious nor
unexpected. Stone statues are found in the Marquesas, Austral
Islands and Tahiti.
And, although each island group displays some variation in form and style, they
are clearly related and spring from common belief systems and religious
practices. The production of the Moai was part of an elaborate, ancestor
worship. The Moai represented chiefs or leaders, some fat, some tall some with
long ears, whose spirit would protect them and for this reason they all faced
the village. No where else did the carving of statues reach to such an extent
as on Rapa Nui. Statues have a considerable
size range, from 2 meters to over 9 meters tall. One giant Moai still
attached to the matrix of rock in the quarry is over 20 meters long, and has an
estimated weight of 270 tons. Perhaps it remained unfinished when the carvers
realized that it would have been impossible to move. Once completed, the
statues were ready to be transported to the platforms or ahu, for which
they had been carved. Scholars are still debating how this major effort was
accomplished. Some researchers claim the Moai were laid on wood sledges and
moved along by means of log rollers. Others believe they were moved while
standing up on a sledge. It is probable that the means of transport varied from
time to time, depending upon size and form of the statue involved. The
islanders always say they walked to the shore, which may mean they had a system
of pulleys and rope, using a Y-shaped sledge with cross pieces, pulled by 200
men using ropes made from tough bark.
There is
evidence that the islanders suddenly walked off the job of carving the large
Moai, as many have been left in a state of being half finished. It is possible
to see how they were carved first with their backs still attached to the cliff,
then the head, nose and ears followed by arms and hands, and then the back was cut
away from the rock face. It is thought that as resources diminished due to the
rat infestation, warriors of the 12 clans gained more power and the
construction of Moai ended about 1540. (9) If this is verified, then the
Rapanui people stopped carving about 100 years before the forests totally
disappeared. The concept of ‘’mana’’ or power which previously had been
invested in hereditary leaders was modified to a Bird Man Cult. It was believed
the ancestors represented by the Moai still provided for the descendants but
the Bird Man cult slowly gained more prominence. The new cult maintained that
the medium through which the living could contact the dead was through human
beings, chosen through a competition. A wonderful film called simply ‘’Rapa Nui
‘’by Kevin Costner describes this Bird Man Cult where the winner was the first warrior
who retrieved an egg deposited by the sooty tern sea bird off a tiny rock
pinnacle, Motu Nui, in the shark infested ocean, swim back and climb up the cliff
face with the egg intact. The victor was bestowed with special privileges and
honours for the year. There are 480 Bird Man petroglyphs carved into the
ceremonial village at Orongo. The 1993 film was instrumental in bringing
thousands of tourists to the island in recent times. Petroglyphs representing
the Bird Men are exactly the same as some on Hawai’i
but the competition aspect was unique to Rapa Nui.
A fabulous festival called Tapati takes place in February with some of these
cultural aspects included, plus rolling down the hill on the trucks of two
banana trees tied together. The Bird Man cult ended a few years after the
arrival of the Catholic missionaries in 1864.
Diamond
also states that cannibalism was evidence of widespread hunger, he writes ‘’In
place of the former sources of wild meat, islanders turned to the largest
hitherto unused sources available to them: human, whose bones became common not
only in proper burials but also (cracked to extract the marrow) in late Easter
Island garbage heaps. Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with
cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was
‘’the flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.’’ (10) Cannibalism occurred
on all Polynesian islands in times of both plenty and famine. It was partly a
ritualistic activity where women and children were not allowed to be present or
partake. Its presence on Rapa Nui is not
definitive evidence for the collapse of civilisation.
The first
sign of population decline came after 1750 to 1800 with the advent of
Europeans. The arrival of the Dutch ship captained by Jacob Roggeveen took
place on Easter Sunday in 1722, hence the English name for the island. Roggeveen
fired on the natives because they surrounded the boats, killing more than a
dozen and wounding several others. James
Cook visited in 1774, the Frenchman La Perouse in 1786, Russian explorer Otto Kotzebue
in 1815 and English Captain Frederick Beechey in 1825. Beechey describes groves
of banana trees, well-cultivated fields of yams, potatoes and sugar cane as
well as fishing nets. All of these explorers estimated the population as
between 1500 to 3000, although they went ashore for only a few days, if that. Whalers
also came in the early1800s, looking for whales, water and women. Islanders
eventually became infected with various diseases, including tuberculosis, for
which they had no immunity.
An American ship, Nancy, arrived
in 1805. The captain was looking for laborers for a seal-hunting colony in the
Juan Fernández group, a group of sparsely inhabited islands 600 km off the coast
of Chile They kidnapped 22 men and women, intending them as labourers to work on
the island of Alejandro Selkirk, the small island 170 km from Robinson Crusoe
island, the inspiration for the classic book by Daniel Defoe. After several
days of sailing, the islanders were allowed on deck. The men immediately jumped
overboard. Unable to recapture them, the crew shot at them. It is said that one
man managed to swim back to the island; the others drowned. What happened to
the women is unknown. Later on, other whaling ships kidnapped islanders when
they needed to replace crew members, or desired women. Although the islanders
were very curious, the behaviour of these European ships was unpredictable and
sometimes deadly. Over-excited islanders, hanging onto the small boats were
assumed dangerous and some were shot for little or no reason. Such occurrences
caused them to violently reject later-arriving European ships, particularly if
a previous one had caused trouble. Disaster arrived in December 1862 when Peruvian slavers came looking for captive to sell. Rapa Nui was not the only island to suffer but it was the hardest hit because it was closest to the South American coast. Eight ships arrived to Easter Island in December 1862. About 80 seamen assembled on the beach while goods such as necklaces, mirrors and other items were spread out to entice the population. At a signal, guns were fired and islanders were caught, tied up, and carried off to the ships. In the confusion, at least ten Rapanui were killed. A second and third landing was attempted in the following days, but defensive measures forced a retreat back to the ships. Some 2000 Rapanui islanders were finally kidnapped. That was more than half the population and among the men were the chief or king of the island and his successor as well as all of those who were well versed in the culture and knew how to write the rongorongo script. This script was the only Polynesian script to have been found to date and so far no one has been able to decipher it.
Some of the kidnapped were sold in Peru as domestic servants; others for manual labour on the plantations and others for the guano mines. Food was inadequate and discipline harsh; medical care was virtually non-existent. Islanders sickened and died as the working conditions were grim. As word of the activities of the slavers spread, public opinion in Peru became hostile to this trade in human beings.(11) Newspapers wrote angry editorials and the French Government and missionary societies protested. Convinced that the entire so-called immigration scheme was damaging the reputation of Peru in the eyes of the rest of the world, the Peruvian Government announced that they would henceforth “prohibit the introduction of Polynesian settlers.” A similar practice, called blackbirding had occurred in Australia, with the kidnapping of Pacific islanders to work in the sugarcane fields of Queensland.
The Peruvian government decided to send the captured islanders back. A barely seaworthy ship was selected to return them. Although large enough for 160 passengers, the Peruvians packed 470 islanders on board. The captain of the ship knowingly embarked carriers of smallpox and settled them on each of the islands. The ship became an unsanitary pest-ridden hellhole, filled with smallpox and dysentery victims. By the time the ship sailed, 162 islanders had already died and many others were ill. The ship headed to Easter Island to drop off 100 Rapanui islanders but when they reached the island, only fifteen were still alive. They were put ashore, along with the infected men carrying smallpox. The ship sailed on to the west with its miserable cargo, heading to other islands that had been hard hit by the slaving trade. (12) This inhumane evil deed created devastating epidemics for the Polynesians from Rapa Nui to the Marquesas Islands, nearly wiping out all of the islands’ indigenous populations. This was the cause of the death of the Rapa Nui culture, as it had been practised up till then-- the rapaciousness of European white slavers.
The Catholic missionary Eugene Eyraud, who in 1867 also died from TB, contracted on the island, got the message back to his superiors that the population were in dire straits and were on the brink of extinction. With 97% of the population dead or gone in less than a decade, much of the island’s cultural knowledge had been lost. Worse was to come. During this period, a company based in Tahiti, called Maison Brander half owned by a Tahitian Alexander Salmon Jr, had been buying up all the land that had been previously owed by the Rapanui who had perished in the slave trade, with the aim of creating a large sheep ranch for exporting wool. The ranch was to be managed by the megalomaniacal convicted murderer Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier. who had acquired additional land. Dutrou-Bornier, already with a reputation of fraud, gambling debts, gun-running, having abandoned a wife and child in France, had arrived on the island in April 1868. He quickly visualized the opportunities on a largely unpopulated island without European jurisdiction. Dutrou-Bornier bought up all of the island apart from the missionaries' area around the township of Hanga Roa in exchange for trivial gifts, built a fancy wooden house, proclaimed himself lord of the island and took a Rapanui wife. Two daughters were born and their descendants still live on the island today. Dutrou-Bornier aimed to cleanse the island of most of the Rapanui. With this purpose, Dutrou-Bornier moved off a few hundred Rapanui to Tahiti, as indentured labour on the coconut and oil plantations on the islands of Cook, Tahiti and Marquesas, also owned by Maison Brander. He wanted to ship islanders to Tahitian plantations, but the missionaries had their own plans to ship the Rapanui to missions in southern Chile or Mangareva Island. For three years the Church and Dutrou-Bornier skirmished. Then the Frenchman led a group of his supporters against the missionaries. With guns, a cannon, and burning down the islander huts, he and his supporters ran the island for several years as self-appointed ‘’governor’’ having evicted the missionaries.
Later, the island was further depopulated, as many Rapanui were induced to leave for other islands: Nearly 200 went to Tahiti to work on plantations and another 150 were moved to the Gambier Islands. Only about 175 islanders, mostly older men, remained under Dutrou-Bornier’s control, and the island was turned into one vast sheep ranch. In 1877, Dutrou-Bornier’s despotic reign ended when he was murdered by islanders after 9 years of a living hell. ON the death of his manager, Alexander Salmon Jr returned to Easter Island and bought up any remaining land. As owner of nearly all the island and sole source of employment, Salmon then became de facto ruler. As he was not a religious man, and a Jew, the priests did not like him. Bishop Jaussen in Tahiti appointed a Rapanui, Atamu te Kena, ‘king’ to protect church interests from Maison Brander, but Salmon ignored him. However, Salmon was an honest man and was said to be interested in the welfare of the people, and so the population started to recover. This was the era of the strong Tahitian influence on the Rapanui language and culture.
In 1868, J. Linton Palmer came on the HMS Topaze; Admiral Lapelin came on the La Flore in 1872, Lieutenant-Capt. Geiseler arrived on the Hyane in 1882, and the USS Mohican came to the island in 1886. All of these visitors collected artefacts for various museums, including some statues that were laboriously removed from the island. Due to the enormous loss of the population, the deaths and the kidnapping of the island’s leadership, an island census in 1877 revealed there were only 111 islanders left and only 36 of them had any offspring. All of the Rapanui people today claim descent from those 36.
Although Chile claimed it had the most warships in the Pacific, the government desired to acquire other symbols of power, which meant capturing the only unclaimed, inhabited island in the South Pacific. In 1888 a Chilean Captain, Policarpo Toro Hurtado, took formal possession of the island in the name of the Republic of Chile. The Chilean government signed an agreement with the remaining few landowners. It was called the ‘’Treaty of Annexation of the Island,’’ written both in Spanish and the Rapanui language. The latter translation stated that Chile was offering ‘’protection’’ and ‘’friendship’’ but certainly not annexation which occurred in the Spanish version.(13) After the Chilean government fraudulently annexed Easter Island in 1888, it was leased to Enrique Merlet, a businessman from Chile, who took control of the island by purchase lease and occupation. The whole island had been turned into a sheep ranch, and all the Rapanui islanders were confined to Hanga Roa village. A wall was constructed around the village and islanders were forbidden to venture into the rest of the island without permission. To secure the wall, it was supplemented by guards, gates, and fencing. If islanders protested against forced labour, Merlet burnt their crops.
Merlot sold his control to the Williamson-Balfour Company. Known as CEDIP (Compania Explotadora de la Isla de Pascua), it became the next effective sovereign of Rapa Nui and continued running the island as a sheep farm from 1903 for the next 50 years. Williamson-Balfour Company was a Scottish owned Chilean company, founded in Valparaiso in 1863 as a subsidiary of the Liverpool shipping company Balfour Williamson, founded by two Scots, Alexander Balfour and Stephen Williamson. The company was involved in the export of nitrates and wool to England. The company kept the boundary wall around Hanga Roa. The company had 70,000 sheep on the island, which would have caused enormous erosion and loss of vegetation as well as destruction of the unique cultural remains of the Moai. Stone walls were erected all over the island, with stones taken from the ceremonial platforms. During the company's rule and for several years after, the Rapa Nui people were confined to the township of Hanga Roa, literally fenced in for fear they would steal the sheep. They were not allowed to leave without permission, virtual prisoners in their own homes. The company put a barb wire fence across the entire island although the enterprising islanders managed to disappear 3000 sheep in one year.
Neither the general public in Latin America nor the government of Chile paid much attention to Rapa Nui over the years. It was, simply, a Chilean colony. But life for the islanders was so grim that they revolted in 1914. By that time, living conditions on the island were appalling; islanders were deprived of their land and access to nearly all drinking water. People were without clothing and often food. If a despairing islander stole a sheep to feed his hungry children, he was deported to the mainland. Leprosy was endemic. In desperation, the Rapanui petitioned the Chilean government to allow them to emigrate en masse to Tahiti. The Chilean Bishop Rafael Edwards heard of the plight of the islanders, and came to see things for himself in 1916. He found the conditions desperate and shocking, and he laid responsibility directly on the sheep company which had given all the good water to stock, deprived the islanders of land, confined them to the village, and extracted forced labour from them. Edwards exposed these problems and his efforts resulted in termination of totalitarian company rule. There were several uprisings against the company but their lease was again renewed in 1936 by the Chilean government, although the Rapanui could now have limited access to a little bit of their own land.
In 1953, the Chilean government didn’t renew the lease and transferred the island to the Chilean Navy and the sheep farming operations finally ceased. When I was there last year, I noticed there was not one single sheep left on the island. Perhaps a sheep is a reminder of so much deprivation and horror. Williamson Balfour Motors S.A. is still owned by the British company, Inchcape Inc, and is now the importer and distributor of BMW and Honda cars in Chile. By the late 50s, a few Rapanui people had been educated in Chile and complained bitterly about Navy rule, travel restrictions, suppression of their language, unpaid labour, inability to vote, and arbitrary Naval decisions that could not be appealed. One islander, Alfonso Rapu, became a leader of this discontent. However it was not until 1966 that the Rapanui people were allowed to freely move around their own island, when they gained Chilean citizenship. On July 20, 2007 a constitutional reform in Chile, gave Rapa Nui and the Juan Fernandez Islands (also known as Robinson Crusoe Island) the status of ‘’special territories’’ of Chile. This island continues to be governed as a province of the V region of Valparaiso, the coastal city near Santiago which harbours the headquarters of the Chilean Navy.
Another great theft from the Rapanui people occurred, a robbery few would be aware of or acknowledge. Two and a half million years ago, a volcanic eruption created the beautiful crater of Rano Kau about one km in diameter, on the south west corner of the island. The lake’s surface is covered with fresh water reeds, floating on top of 10 meters of water. The steep walls of the crater offer protection from the salt winds and grazing animals. This is where the last Toromino tree was found growing and saved from extinction. In soil samples taken from the far side of Rano Kau in 1965 the drug rapamycin was found in the bacteria Streptomyces hygroscopicus and given the name relating to its origin of discovery. It is a very important immunosuppressant, used to suppress the normal immune response in human transplants, especially kidney. Rapamycin also inhibits a key protein complex involved in signalling pathways in cancer progression, named mTOR. The pharmaceutical companies use this drug for clinical trials and extensive cellular research. I would bet a million dollars, no royalties have ever been paid to the Rapanui people for this discovery. The only acknowledgement is a small plaque on the far side of the Rano Kau crater. Rapamycin is marketed under the name rapamune and licensed by the pharmaceutical company Wyeth. At present prices, a chemically synthesied rapamycin costs $600 for 1 mg.
As I was
wondering around the township during my visit last August, I came across an
occupation outside the mayor’s office, with tents, a make-shift kitchen and a
large number of the Rapanui flags. I was curious as to the protest and their
demands. I recorded an interview with a member of the Rapa
Nui council, ‘’We want to get back our land. We have a treaty of
1888 and we are demanding that Chile
fulfil this agreement. It’s a big problem as Chile won’t talk to us. We began to
occupy 5 years ago. We are putting pressure on the international tribunes to
mediate this situation. We are the rightful owners of all of the island of Rapa Nui. We want to take back the
control of immigration; there is a lot of contraband, the environment is being
destroyed and there is too much rubbish. The mayor (Luz Zasso Paoa who is
Rapanui) is also working on this and helps us with the occupation.’’
This was
confirmed by other sources. Along with huge increases in tourist numbers, the
population on Rapa Nui continues to grow with
the immigration of Chileans from the mainland. The total daily population of
tourists and locals combined is expected to reach 10,000 this year. Island
waste management and water sanitation systems are not designed for these
numbers of people and there is no infrastructure to support the increases in
visitors and residents. Some times the visitors give nothing back to the
economy as too often they visit for only one day and return to their ship to
sleep, sometimes 1000 tourists at a time. Unchecked development to accommodate
the increased numbers of tourists is unsustainable. The isolation of Rapa Nui
and their dependency on imported items limits Rapa Nui’s
options for dealing with increased pressure on their already over-taxed
resources. One of the partners, International Help Fund Australia, is actively working to alleviate some
of these pressures on Rapa Nui by promoting
recycling and composting programs, water sanitation projects and installing
composting toilets at the most heavily visited tourist sites.
Another
occupier at the protest camp gave me a short history of Rapa
Nui and the terrible atrocities that was inflicted on them. ‘’In
the year 1888, we made a treaty between our king and the state of Chile.
Essentially, Chile became a
friend of Rapa Nui, whereby Chile
has to respect the investiture of our king, and his authority. There is still a
king here who represents the people of Rapa Nui.
Moreover this piece of paper said the Rapa Nui
people will administer their territory. The flag of Rapa
Nui will fly at the top and the Chilean flag will fly at the
bottom, that was one of the points. This treaty did not deliver the territory
to Chile.
The territory should be given up to the king and the council. Chile was to pay for education and protect all
of Rapa Nui. It was not that Chile plant its
flag and is the owner of the territory. No, that wasn’t it. It was suppose to
be a friendly collaboration.
‘’After the
treaty was signed, in 1895, the island was handed over to the Chilean treasury
and leased to a company for 1800 Chilean pesos. The company (Maison Brander) with the Chilean police administered the island. At the point of a gun
they were removed from their land, they were rounded up and placed into the
centre of the island, the children, the elderly, men, women, about 200 people,
without food or water, nothing. They were kept in the church for 7-8 years, actually
a ghetto in 1895-6. The women were also tortured. ‘’Then there was a change in
the administration, the armed Chilean Navy took over the administration. They
ran Rapa Nui like a ship. It was really a
period of slavery, the people were still locked up on their own land. In 1933,
the Chilean Treasury signed Rapa Nui into
their own name. They didn’t allow us to return to our land but left us locked
up in our homes and people were tortured again.´´ The Easter Island Foundation
(www.islandheritage.org) confirms this statement. Military
control was arbitrary and any hint of ‘mutiny’ was quickly dealt with.
Islanders were still restricted to the village and the Navy had the necessary
personnel and firepower to enforce the rules. The Rapanui people were
frustrated and angry. Overbearing and often arrogant Naval Commanders had
little regard for their Polynesian subjects, flogging wrongdoers and publicly
shaving the heads of men and women, who displeased them.
‘’We are here because of the situation. We demand of the Chilean Treasury
that it removes their title and return it to us, the owners. Rapa Nui has
fulfilled her side of the agreement, when is Chile going to fulfil theirs? If Chile does not withdraw its title, Rapa Nui will move towards independence. It is not up to
the free will of Chile.
I give them 1 to 2 years. The rest of the people here who don’t have links with
Rapa Nui should leave. If they are married to
a Rapa Nui they can stay but the rest should
leave. The mayor is in agreement with some things but she can’t make any
decisions.
‘’It has been a fight for many years, not just now, we have had four occupations.
We want to control the economy as well, the administration, the policies social
and political.’’ Chile
earns millions from the tourist industry as each visitor pays $60 to enter the
park and very little of this money is returned to the Rapanui people.
‘’Rapa Nui is very rich, not only the
land but the future of the island is with the ocean. We have minerals as well
as oil. We, the original inhabitants have to live with what we have, the cultural
aspects, the archaeology, and the natural resources to resolve our social
problems. It is a big fight. If Chile
continues ignoring the treaty, we are going to die. They are bringing over 100
planes a year here but we must control this aspect. The profits must return to
the original people. Chile
is a big country, much bigger than us. Chile has its own natural resources,
why does it have to take ours? We have our Parliament of Polynesia, where we
all met two years ago. We were there also because we have a convention with the
triangle of Polynesian islands, where we all want independence from the colonial
powers. We do not want o continue being under their control.’’
This
unlikely civilisation thrived on Rapa Nui for
at least 500 years. Despite limited resources a few thousand islanders carved
and transported more than 8000 tons of massive stone sculptures across a hilly
landscape. This story is one of the impact of people and the transportation of
unwanted species onto the fragile ecosystem of a remote island in the Pacific. The
victims of cultural and physical extermination by imperialism and megalomaniacs
have been turned into the perpetrators of their own demise, according to
Diamond. We can learn a lot from the Rapanui people, powerful, innovative
geniuses of their race, who have survived the most ghastly atrocities.
The BBC
reported that the occupation camp was broken up on December 3, 2010. At least
25 people were injured when Chilean police used pellet guns to evict the
occupation after three months. The occupiers declared the land the buildings
were on had been illegally taken from their ancestors.
I owe a
debt to the recently published book, ‘’Questioning Collapse´´ edited by
Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee for bringing my attention to this injustice.
REFERENCES
1) Diamond,
J. 2005. ‘’Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Collapse’’ Penguin Books,
p118.
2) Hunt, TL
and Lipo, CP 2007. Chronology, Deforestation and ‘Collapse’ Evidence vs Faith
in Rapa Nui Prehistory. Rapa Nui Journal
21, 85-97.
3) Hunt, TL
and Lipo, CP 2010. ‘Ecological Catastrophe, Collapse, and the Myth of ‘Ecocide’
on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) p32-36 in the book
‘’Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the
Aftermath of Empire’’ eds McAnany, PA and Yoffee, N Cambridge University Press.
4) Athens, JS 2009. Rattus exulans and the Catastrophic Disappearance
of Hawai’i’s Native
Lowland Forest.
Biological Invasions 11, 1489-1501.
5)
Peterkin, JG 2010. ‘A Companion to Easter Island A Concise Guide to the
History, Culture, and Individual Archaeological Sites at Rapa Nui.’ p36 Impreso
en Grafica LOM
6) Peterkin,
JG 2010 ibid p117.
7) Metraux,
A. 1957 ‘Easter Island: A Stone Age
Civilisation of the Pacific.’ Translated by Michael Bullock. New York, Oxford
University Press.
8) Diamond,
J. 2005 ibid p91.
9) Haun, B.
2008. ‘Inventing Easter Island’ University
of Toronto
Press p8.
10)
Diamond, J. 2005 ibid p109.
12) www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter _Island
13) Peterkin, JG 2010 ibid p22.
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