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Rapa Nui - Ep 91
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On today’s episode, Jessica talks with Friar Francisco Nahoe and Mata'u Rapu about how a priest and a filmmaker got involved in repatriation efforts for Rapa Nui (Easter Island). We learn how 19th and 20th Century European sheepherding ventures circulated Polynesian crania from Rapa Nui across the world; how UNESCO recognition can harm indigenous communities; the close relationship between environmental protection, cultural heritage, and indigenous rights; and most of all how the Rapanui people themselves provide an outstanding example of resilience in the face of environmental precarity and Euro-American colonization. Finally, we explore the challenges of living up to the leadership and legacy of both ancient ancestors and living elders in the effort to find a collective, multi-generational Polynesian voice.
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/heritagevoices/91
Links
- Heritage Voices on the APN
- Eating up Easter
- Eating up Easter on PBS (Amazon)
- Eating up Easter (PBS)
- British museum public access catalogue
- Moai: Contest Objects from the British Museum Collection
- Article about British Museum Employee who Stole Artifacts from Collection
- Another film made by another Rapanui documentary filmmaker, Leo Pakarati, about Hoa Haka Nana Ia.
- Smithsonian Moai
- Stone Figure Head and Shoulders
- Smithsonian to return ancestral remains to Indigenous Australians
- https://www.instagram.com/smrapu/
- https://linktr.ee/smrapu
Contact
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome to Heritage Voices, Episode 91. I'm Jessica Equinto, and I'm your host.
Discussion on Rapa Nui
00:00:15
Speaker
And today we are talking about Rapa Nui. Before we begin, I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the Nooch, or Ute People's Treaty Lands, the Dneita, and the ancestral Puebloan homeland.
Guest Introductions
00:00:28
Speaker
Today we have Friar Francisco Nahoy and Mata'u Rapu on the show. And the two of them are going to introduce themselves. So Friar, can we start with you? Yeah,
Identity and Residency of Francisco Nahoy
00:00:37
Speaker
so I'm fra Francisco Nahoy and I live in California at the moment. Like Mata'u, whom you'll meet in just a moment, I belong to the Ropanui people of Easter
Introduction of Mata'u Rapu
00:00:49
Speaker
Island. Yuran Kourua, my name is Matau Rapu. I am a documentary filmmaker, also from Rapa Nui, and I am currently based on Dakota land here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Love it. Okay. So what what got each of you into the the type of work that you do today?
00:01:13
Speaker
Well, I'm a Catholic priest, so I guess my primary identity, at least in so far as apostolic engagement is concerned, derives from being a Franciscan friar and a Catholic priest. But I you know have spent a lot of time time over the last 40 years on the island, and I've often felt that I have sort of two lives that I live, one that's connected to the island and that one that's connected to the rest of the world.
Repatriation Efforts of Rapanui Ancestral Remains
00:01:49
Speaker
But um just recently, the Council of Elders
00:01:53
Speaker
we call them Temalhattu, asked me if I would be their North American delegate for the recovery and repatriation of Rapanoi ancestral remains that have found their way into US or Canadian museums or departments of anthropology or private collections. And yeah, I i thought This sounds like an appropriate thing for me to attempt to do. Of course, I'm learning on the job, but that's ah that's really what what brings me here tonight. It's the best place to learn, I guess, right? Just just
Communication Challenges and Cultural Perception
00:02:31
Speaker
do it. do i Learn by doing. Let's not fiddle around too much and just get to it.
00:02:37
Speaker
yeah Well, I, you know, yeah a lot of things pushed and pulled me into working in documentary film. But I think where it all came full circle for me as an indigenous Rapa Nui was when I realized that There is a problem with communication. There's a problem with the way in which our story is Rapa Nui is communicated to the rest of the world in that and
00:03:17
Speaker
Pancho, I i know you know you've felt this too. Whenever I introduce myself, hi, I'm from Easter Island or Rapa Nui, people are confused because they think it's an isolated desolate island and that nobody lives there.
00:03:33
Speaker
and when people eventually get on an airplane, if they're, you know, fortunate to come down and and visit our our island, they see that the image that is painted of Rapa Nui is very different than what the reality is of Rapa Nui, that we are a living, thriving culture, that we know who made our statues, the Moai, and what they're used for. And so when I realized that there's this communication issue, I realized that that the work that I was doing as a filmmaker is really a potential answer to that. So I think I've dedicated a ah lot of my career now to focus on issues around Indigenous
00:04:27
Speaker
cultures, my own, and also being allies to other filmmakers to tell their stories so that there is a more complete picture about indigenous communities and indigenous people out in mass media.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, so can both of you talk a little bit about the efforts that you have both done on those, both of those fronts? So on repatriation and then, you know, like what what kinds of films have you decided to take on, for example? So first of all, it sounds um on the face of it as if we're, you know, we've got two separate spheres of interest and and we're talking about two different aspects.
00:05:08
Speaker
of Rapa Nui culture and the world building activities of the indigenous peoples. I don't think of it that way though.
Historical Misinterpretations and Cultural Survival
00:05:17
Speaker
One of the factors that led to the dispersal of Rapa Nui human remains into anthropological museums all over the world is the lack of any continuity between the experience that the islanders are having of themselves, on the one hand, and how visitors to the island, starting in 1722, when a Dutch fleet ah arrived there on Easter Sunday, how how they experienced the island, right? And so there's a sense in which Matatu's larger project, which is really a matter of giving a voice,
00:05:57
Speaker
to the indigenous peoples of Rapa Nui is intimately linked to recovery and repatriation efforts. In this respect, he these activities on the part of ostensibly on the part of Temohatu, the Council of Elders, and Kodeipa, which is the development commission on the island, and the various agents that they have at work in different sectors of the world where we're likely to encounter Rapanui human remains. And let me tell you, they're all over the place, right? I mean, people ah have come from all over the world to Rapanui and taken human remains away as if they were prizes.
00:06:40
Speaker
but Right. So it's um it's a challenge to try and figure out where these are and how we can convince people to give them back to us. But that's really a a matter of finding our collective indigenous voice and ah asserting it in a matter that is really of critical interest, I would say, to every living Noponoi person, whether that person fully appreciates it or not.
00:07:10
Speaker
Our island is known everywhere in the world because of the world building activities of our ancestors on what was at the time the most isolated place on the planet, most isolated place of human habitation on the planet.
00:07:33
Speaker
And, you know, ah partly it was the astonishment of non-Polynesian peoples who came to the island starting early in the 18th century and thereafter at what our ancestors had achieved that led to the the current problem that we're trying to rectify now, namely the dispersal of our human remains. But I would say that we owe this effort to our ancestors who have given us so much. And we owe everything to them really, ah partly because the culture that they built on the island was oriented toward the survival of islanders themselves and the transmission of survival techniques anchored especially in the principle of collective labor for great projects.
00:08:32
Speaker
that made it possible for there to be. modern descendants of the ancient Dapanui people who who created the magnificent material culture for which the world knows the island. So where, you know, these repatriation efforts are part of that larger framework of reference that is ah basically giving ah voice to an indigenous community that hasn't been listened to, at least not on its own terms, really almost ever.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think my, you know, I'm fairly new to this work around repatriation, but it's not foreign to me. my I have many members of my family who are scientists. My dad is an archaeologist.
00:09:27
Speaker
who trained under Bill Malloy, who was one of the first are archaeologists and you know ancestor to Fr. Francisco here, who who worked on the island. And I also came across the work of repatriation in one of my first independent films, I would say.
Documentary 'Eating Up Easter' and its Impact
00:09:49
Speaker
I i produced a film called Eating Up Easter.
00:09:53
Speaker
which which which played on PBS here in in the U.S. in 2020. But it largely centers around a woman by the name of Bama Piedu. She was an elder in the community. She did a lot of work around the issue of microplastics and and plastics and trash management on the island. But prior to that, she did repatriation work. She lived for a very long time in France cataloging artifacts that existed in different museums in Europe and in other places.
00:10:33
Speaker
And it was through being with her and filming with her that I really sort of started to understand that side of her story. And what's impactful to me, and this has happened to me several several times in my life now, is that there are there are there are things that happen. there There are unexplainable things that happen at particular times in my life that shoot me into a ah direction.
00:11:02
Speaker
ah which is what I believe is meant to be. So ah well what happened in this film is that in 2018, I was finishing the film, it had taken me about six years to make. And we we're about a month away of finishing And then I get a message from a friend of mine on Rapa Nui, letting me know that Mama Peter had had passed away. And the island was in mourning. She was an incredibly powerful woman and leader on the island.
00:11:36
Speaker
And I had been with her in the edit, looking at her face for for those six years, right? Whether I was actually with her filming with her or editing her words on my computer. It was very visceral, even though I was on the other side of the world. I was in Minnesota, right? And that was one of those impactful moments. Another more recent impactful moment is when Pancho called me or we connected over the repatriation work that he had been doing. and Another elder from Rapa Nui suggested that that I connect with him ah over over the the repatriation work. And he tells me, he says, are you still living in Minneapolis? I was like, yeah, why?
00:12:35
Speaker
And Pancho, you clearly say it is just seared into my mind and you said, The University of Minnesota has has bones from Ahuheki. Here I am so feeling like I am the only, well, I know I'm the only Rapa Nui, except for my kids, in Minnesota. I've lived here for about 14 years and less than a mile from my house are bones of my ancestors.
00:13:08
Speaker
Right. And so like, like the these are these just like moments in my life that keep pushing me, propelling me into different directions. So it was an incredible honor to be with Pancho and with Susana Nahoe, an archaeologist from Rapa Nui, and participate in taking possession of those bones from from the University of Minnesota. But it really also just kind of set me on a track to realize that I Even though I live on the other side of the planet for my community, I have a very important position in in where I am living here and in the United States to be of service.
00:13:52
Speaker
I think that's absolutely the case, right? With regard to Mama Piru, you know, ah this is ah a little bit of a convoluted story, but I'll i'll i'll start. In the period from roughly 1868,
00:14:12
Speaker
well into the 1950s, Dopanui was basically colonized by a series of private sheep herding franchises, and starting with an Anglo-Tahitian operation called Maison Brandeir, and continuing with a Franco-Chilean franchise operated out of Balparaiso, called the Compagnie Vislae Pacqua.
00:14:51
Speaker
and ah culminating in the subsidiary of the Williamson Balfour Company, a Scottish sheep herding franchise called The Seveep, the Compagnie Explota Dora Isai Pasqua. So, in fact, when it happened in 1888, Chile annexed Napanui and immediately turned the island over to one of the sheep herding franchises and gave them
00:15:23
Speaker
the authority, in effect, to administer the island. So this this made the Williamson-Balfour Company and its agents also the agency of Chilean colonialism on the island. Now, during this period, the director of the Williamson-Balfour franchise on the island, a fellow by the name of Henry Percival Edmonds,
00:15:50
Speaker
put a bounty, in effect, on Rapa Nui Crania and persuaded Rapa Nui people to bring them to him. And he handed them over to collectors, right and the left.
00:16:07
Speaker
I'm working with a couple of institutions right now, so I don't want to identify them, because I don't want to impede the progress that we're making. But in some cases, you know, ah these collectors made gifts of these Rapanoi Crania to North American and European museums.
00:16:27
Speaker
So, in the 1920s, one of these collectors received at least several crania, both for him to give away to others or in some cases to sell to others, and for him to develop his own personal biological anthropology collection.
00:16:51
Speaker
So this was a an Austro-Chilean filmmaker who had this private collection that eventually his heirs in the 1970s, this is during the dictatorship, alienated entirely. They sold the collection to a London broker.
00:17:11
Speaker
who then distributed these Napanoi materials and probably, you know, the the physical remains of other indigenous peoples of of Kile as well, all over the world. Well, two of those Napanoi crania went to museums in New Zealand.
00:17:30
Speaker
Now, I'm still trying to find out who the London broker was because I want to find out what else he had and where else it went, right? yeah But these materials that ended up in the two ah New Zealand museums, they were Te Papa Tonga Reva and the the Natural History Museum at the University of Canterbury, which I believe is on their South Island. You know, these just became part of those physical anthropology collections.
00:17:58
Speaker
But also in the 1970s, there is a growing Maori activist movement, largely modeling itself off the American Indian movement here in the United States.
00:18:12
Speaker
And these Maori, the Maori are the indigenous Polynesian peoples of Aotearoa, which is the endonym of what ah most of the rest of the world calls New Zealand, right? These Maori activists eventually were able to convince the government of New Zealand that it had a moral responsibility to repatriate the human remains that had been taken from the Maori Marai and from the Maori peoples of the Chatham Islands. So, the government of New Zealand,
00:18:49
Speaker
Now, you're still following me, right? We started on Rapa Nui, we went to Chile, from Chile to London, from London to New Zealand, all right? So the government of New Zealand in 2007 founded a governmental agency called Karama Aotearoa, which is basically you know New Zealand repatriations, and they facilitated the repatriation of Moriori ancestral remains to the Chatham Islands, and Maori ancestral remains to the various Marae. And when these repatriations had taken place, these same Maori activists said, okay, now you have to give back the Polynesian ancestral remains from the other islands. And they started with Napanui. And they did it by contacting Mama Piru.
00:19:39
Speaker
because she had a profile both in you know ah material culture repatriation and in environmental activism.
Success Stories in Repatriation
00:19:48
Speaker
So in 2018, this would have been shortly before she died, she traveled with a group from Noponoi to New Zealand, and they took possession of these two crania and brought them back to the island through continental Chile.
00:20:06
Speaker
So the first repatriations and the first international repatriations as well took place then thanks to Mama Piru's activist profile and you know her her activities on behalf of of, I would call it, building consciousness of indigenous rights and responsibilities.
00:20:30
Speaker
so That's really the the the the beginning of the repatriation of Rapanoi ancestral remains to the island. That was in 2018. Then in 2019, 2020, 2021, the National Museum of Natural History in Kile,
00:20:52
Speaker
repatriated all of the remains that they had in their custody, the majority of which had been handed over to them in 1955-56 by Tor Heyerdahl, who had led the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to the island. Now, I want to make a distinction between the kind of activity undertaken by the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition in 1955 and things that happened previously, like, for example, what was going on in 1920. In the first place, Heyerdahl and all the senior researchers on that expedition signed repatriation agreements.
00:21:36
Speaker
with the authorities and with the elders of the island. I had no clue that they had done this. I was shocked out of my gourd when I stumbled across a reference to it in correspondence that I was filing through and actually found a copy of the repatriation agreement. What had happened, and and you know, Matatu's dad is also very aware of ah these issues. When you put sheep on an island that's never had sheep before, right? What do they do?
00:22:06
Speaker
They walk all over the Ahu and the burial sites. They knock rocks loose. They pull up grass from the roots, which contributes to erosion, which then exposes the grave sites.
00:22:20
Speaker
So part of the reason that there were crania being just carried off by visitors to the island all the time is because they were exposed to view, largely because of the the erosion you know that the sheep herding ventures generated. The point I'm trying to make here is simply this. There is a close relationship between environmental degradation the endangerment of Rapanui traditional burial sites and the the repatriation efforts are being undertaken now. So in some cases, you know, the relationship is that environmental degradation leads to the taking away of ancestral remains.
00:23:13
Speaker
But the the Mama Piru example also suggests that environmental activism in a certain sense goes hand in hand with the kind of indigenous self-assertion of dignity that is implicit in these recovery and repatriation efforts. So I just want to underscore how important Mama Piru is for us on a variety of different levels.
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah. She sounds like an incredible lady. I mean, I don't even know exactly what to say there, but I sent you a ah link to the, um, Amazon prime video place where they, where they park my documentary honor. So the eating up Easter. So take a look at it. I mean, it's worth, it's worth watching.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, I already had it like up and was was just when we finished going to tell my husband that we have a new movie to watch. very we um I went in the field with some some elders from Comanche not too long ago with the Comanche Nation and they were talking about that movie Prey that was on Hulu. They did like a version all in Comanche.
00:24:31
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. So I had to like go back and rewatch it afterwards before the, before I saw them again the next time so we could, we could talk about it. But yeah. So now I'm like, okay, we honey, we have our next, our next video assignment. Yeah. It was awesome. I totally recommend watching it by the way. But yeah but but this reflection on um Mama Piro and her, her work just underscores for me.
00:24:58
Speaker
The close relationship between the assertion of indigenous rights, environmental protection efforts, and in our case, the recovery of ancestral remains, you'd think that they would be separate spheres of activity. In fact, they're deeply integrated. I never quite thought about it in that way, the what you were talking about with the sheep and Yeah, that's a really interesting, I mean, obviously environmental protection plays into cultural heritage since, you know, culture is not just about the archeology, it's about the the the land and the the natural resources as well.
00:25:38
Speaker
but I thought that was a really interesting tie-in, how you're talking about how the environmental degradation also causes the the cultural degradation and so on and so on. We are already at our first break point, and we will jump right back in when we get back. When Mama Peter passed in 2018, we decided to to dedicate the film to her. And one of the questions I get a lot,
00:26:07
Speaker
from audiences after they watched the film is, so who's who's doing her work now? Who picked up what what she was doing? And it's hard for me to answer that.
00:26:22
Speaker
not because there aren't people doing that work, there are people doing that work. But I feel like there are individuals in her generation and previous generations, and I include my my dad in this too, is that, you know, when you look at elders,
00:26:42
Speaker
they are giants. you know They have power, they have mana, they have all of this to be able to and move communities, to get people to work, to you know yell at authorities, political authorities in the face. um you know And they have that charisma in them, I think, that It's difficult, it's difficult to say how then subsequent generations and fill those shoes, right? Me and Francisco, me and Pancho, we are that next generation. And we, it is our charge to fill those shoes. That when you look at the at who she was and the power that she is, it's hard to say, yeah, I can do what she did, at least for me, it is. And so
00:27:41
Speaker
that it kind of it kind of leans into something that's deeper about, I think, the Rapa Nui culture too, which,
Cultural Reverence and Modern Reflections
00:27:48
Speaker
you know, our Moai, our statues, that what in many ways it makes our island famous around the world. There are images of our ancestors, right that we know that to be true. Our ancestors, we, Pancho and I, are descendants of the carvers of those statues, but so much of our culture is about
00:28:15
Speaker
ancestor worship is about elder reverence to these individuals, these powerful people in the past. So in the documentary work, I see my work as that, as as I'm creating these digital moai statues so that we can, you know, you can ah hop over to Amazon and live with Mama Pidu just as she was alive, right, in in a in a sense.
00:28:44
Speaker
But I think when I think about the work, this repatriation work of bringing our ancestor bones back, back to their place, yeah I think of that as something that transcends just our generation.
00:29:00
Speaker
whether whether we understand that or not. It's something that's part of our culture, you know, to to have that reverence and that respect for for these people who, for many different reasons, were taken away from their home. And so I guess that's kind of how I make the connection between the work that I do now as a documentary filmmaker and the work that I look forward to doing in more of this repatriation work to be able to also not only to communicate the importance of the work to our own community and have that conversation, but I think also be able to communicate that out to the different institutions that that have these ah these these items, whether they are
00:29:52
Speaker
and ancestral bones, whether they are artifacts, unique artifacts. There's ah there's an element that we as Rapa Nui are not able to access fully of ourselves and our culture because these things are in locked closets or behind glass panes in museums and other research institutions. And I think that's where, when we talk about riding the ship, it's when indigenous communities and these different institutions are on an equal playing field to talk about what is right and how can we make amends of maybe wrongs that were made in the past. So one one of the effects of saying, you know, for for UNESCO to say, Rapa Nui is a world heritage site, right? That means
00:30:48
Speaker
those Moai belong to the world, not to the Dapanui. Right. So this actually reinforces the British Museum's argument that there's no, you know, Hoa Hakananiya is in a better place in London than, than in, you know, Oromo. Because, you know, that's, that's what the ethos of extraction is all about. We are preserving this material for science and science is higher than anything.
00:31:20
Speaker
Well, I mean, obviously I'm a Catholic priest. I have certain opinions about what's highest and it's, you know, as valuable as science is. Yeah. We do not fall on our knees and worship science.
00:31:35
Speaker
And, you know, one of the, I mean, I agree with Matau, there really is no one person who is attempting to replace Mama Piru, or who could, even if they were to attempt something so foolhardy. But I can say that I think, you know, today, if you go out to the archaeological sites,
00:31:58
Speaker
You'll see just regular Napanoi people, some of them even young Napanoi people, bending down to pick up garbage, stuff it in their pocket, and keep walking, right? I remember distinctly, maybe let's say 30 some odd years ago,
00:32:14
Speaker
being at, we were at Hanganoi, you know, before the restoration of awaki Ahu Tungariki. And yeah, there was just a ton of ah plastic there and I started picking it all up and and tucking it away. And people actually made fun of me. Nobody making fun anymore. And that's because of the influence of Mama Piro.
00:32:41
Speaker
So I wouldn't say that there's any one person who's replacing her, but that I see a lot of people now doing things that she did. And, you know, she's she was a very funny person, too. But I mean, I can't tell you how many times you'll hear people on the island say, especially when they have some reason to confront the the sort of neo-colonialist attitudes that you'll find, you know, sort of tucked in all over the place. They'll say, you know what, just pick up your garbage and your flag and take it away now.
00:33:19
Speaker
And I mean, that was, she she was famous for that, right? and But but it's it's an ethos that you now see everywhere. And I have to say that I don't think that that's that's not really a bad thing.
00:33:35
Speaker
because it people are starting to recognize that there is an indigenous Nopanoi identity that is worth preserving. The world is a richer place for the descendants of the ancient Matamua who carved those statues. That just makes me sad that that's like a new revelation. You know what I mean?
00:34:03
Speaker
o Well, it's not a new revelation to the Napanui. I mean, we kind of always felt that way about ourselves. But by when I would say that what is new is that the Napanui are beginning to recognize that they have a voice in the world. Right. And that's really the centerpiece of Matau's work. Right. To amplify that voice.
00:34:27
Speaker
Well, and I think to add to that, you know, as Rapa Nui just sort of assimilates more into the rest of the world in the sense that people have Netflix accounts and they're on Instagram and they're, you know, they're they're watching stuff from the other side of the world. Like we also have the opportunity to leverage to not be kind of smashed, I guess, by by the rest of the world. Like technology now and all of the other things, which can also be detrimental to a lot of our cultural practices, right? And community building and all of that also helps to serve and give us a voice to the rest of the world so that people, people finally see us, right? people
00:35:19
Speaker
no longer say to me, well, most people still say, oh, I didn't realize people lived on Easter Island. But now there is less of those people.
00:35:30
Speaker
you know and And I would say the same for a lot of other Pacific Island communities, isolated communities, even other indigenous groups right that they just jump in and they start creating and they start you know making new clothing lines that that appear in in New York and the photographers and fashion models. I don't know, I can only think about ah Instagram right now. but yeah yeah You know, I think i think that has that has power. that That really has power to kind of like get our identity out to to the rest of the world. And what we find so often in documentary work in particular, but just really sort of any sort of nonfiction work, is the the possibility to build empathy around individuals through these storytelling mediums.
00:36:26
Speaker
Right. So a lot of the work that we do is as documentary filmmakers is try and find an emotional narrative arc in the story in order to engage an audience. And it doesn't matter if that audience has ever been to Rapa Nui or New Zealand or Hawaii or whatever. But the fact that we're humans and we can see another human being and empathize with them is critical.
00:36:55
Speaker
I think not only for the storytelling aspect, but for all of these things that we're talking about, right? So that then when me and Pancho are knocking on doors saying, hey, we would like to have access to to you know, the belongings of our ancestors, like they see us as people, and they see our ancestors also as people. I think this question, I've always sort of on the Fed's part of the project, I want to talk to you a little bit more about this, about, you know, this element of like,
00:37:32
Speaker
I mean, Hoa Hakane Na Naia is largely debated, I would say, by a lot of Rapa Nui on whether it should stay in the British Museum or it should come home. And I don't have a position on where it should be, but my position is wherever it is, the Rapa Nui should have access to it. You know what I mean? Because it because i I have...
00:38:03
Speaker
I remember meeting so many talented carvers on Rapa Nui when I was younger who had never seen these artifacts. They they had only seen them in picture books by Thor Heyerdahl, by other people, and they were trying to replicate Yeah, they're trying to replicate something that their ancestors made from a photograph because they don't have access to the actual object. And that is yeah incredibly sad. And by and large doing a darn good job of it.
Debate on Artifact Repatriation
00:38:37
Speaker
Those artisans are fantastic. I mean, they're they're really, really good.
00:38:41
Speaker
yeah You know, it's interesting that there are actually works of contemporary Rapa Nui artisans in the British Museum now. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, you could. but I mean, they have a public access catalog. So just go to the public access catalog and yeah, just start searching for works under under Rapanui Easter Island and and the names of of artisans whom you know. Right. Awesome. Benetokipate, for example. And yeah so forth. And and so so it's it's ironic that there would be, you know, these modern pieces
00:39:20
Speaker
that were largely given to the the British Museum by persons who had visited the island and had either been given these things from the artisans or had had purchased them from the artisans, right? So, on on the one hand, there are those materials in the British Museum. On the other hand, there's Hoa Hakanamaia, which just happened to be the only moai that the ah HMS Topaz could plausibly carry off that wouldn't sink the ship.
00:39:51
Speaker
Right, because most of the Moai obviously are too big to carry ah carry away. Thank goodness. That's probably the only reason they're still there, right? Yeah. So, I mean, a good number of the Moai on Rapa Nui are larger than the Sarsens of Salisbury Plain at Stonehenge, just to put them in perspective, right?
00:40:13
Speaker
So you would you couldn't imagine carrying one of those those big stones. Well, now we discovered that they carried the one from Scotland all the way down to the Salisbury Plain, but you know it it it'd be a multi-generational project. And that's roughly the size of the moai. But there are more than a thousand of them all over the island, and our ancestors moved them to every point of the island that they are, because they're all carved in one location.
00:40:41
Speaker
and and have been moved from that location to the places that they are now located. So it's phenomenal engineering in addition to theyre their artistic abilities. And I get it that, you know, world cultural patrimony wants to have access to it. I don't think any Rapanui are saying that but people shouldn't have access to it.
00:41:06
Speaker
But the argument of the British Museum, you know, not just with regard to Hoa Hakananaia, but, you know, the Elgin marbles and anything else, right, is that they are better preserved in London than they would be anywhere else in the world. Right, right.
00:41:23
Speaker
But, you know, then we discovered, what was it just last summer? I mean, it's barely 13, 14 months that British Museum official turns out he'd been pilfering materials from the British Museum and selling them on eBay for 15, 20 years. Oh, my Whoa. Right. So so much for the safer here in London theory. All right. I realize they're not going to they're not going to sell Oaxacan on eBay.
00:41:52
Speaker
But I'm not, you know, I'm not sure that that London really is the right place to preserve Hoa Hakananaiya. So anyway, i i I do agree that Rapa Nui has its own work to do in order to be ready to take possession of Hoa Hakananaiya. But I ah kind of feel like that's exactly the sort of work that we need to be doing.
00:42:21
Speaker
we need to be preparing ourselves for taking full responsibility of our cultural patrimony. And I i have to say, too, that I'm very hopeful. You know, I see a lot of indications that we're moving. Maybe, you know, maybe we're taking one step forward and and two steps backwards sometimes, but other times, you know, we're taking two steps forward.
00:42:47
Speaker
And what can I say? Indigenous autonomy is never easy. It's just as fraught with difficulty as any kind of civic engagement and autonomy is anywhere.
00:43:05
Speaker
But you know you have these these are skills that you have to learn. And so we as struggle as we might with the demands of of ah democratic decision making, I think we're still moving in the right direction when we challenge ourselves to do these things. OK, so it's time for our second break. And again, we're just going to jump right back in when we get back.
00:43:30
Speaker
One thing I did want to ask you guys, I mean, I kind of what you were, you were starting to get to right there at the end is where, where did both of you want to go with all of this? Is there like an end goal that you have in mind? Is there a next film that you're itching to create? Yeah. what What's next?
00:43:54
Speaker
Well, I'll go first. I mean, i you know i I would say early into the learning process of what is out there in terms of repatriation.
00:44:07
Speaker
what is out there and the work that needs to be done. So along with that, there's this film that I've been really interested in doing, which is somewhat connected, which really has to do with the time in Rapa Nui, where I say a lot of a lot of the mysteries, this idea of the mystery of Easter Island came about. And and it it really has to do with in the 1800s, slave ships from Peru coming out to the Pacific.
00:44:44
Speaker
and taking slaves from the Pacific Islands and bringing them back to Peru. And one of those islands that they stopped at was our island. And they took a lot of our population. Pancho, I ah don't know if you recall the number, but I've heard around at least 2,000 people, maybe about half of the population. Wow, yeah. and That's man probably right.
00:45:10
Speaker
And many of those people were elders, there were older individuals who held those stories, right? That oral history, we're an oral history culture, right? So we pass down our information from generation to generation. And if you all of a sudden break that chain through the slave raids, a lot of that and information about oral history is lost.
00:45:38
Speaker
And so now a lot of the work that's being done, I would say through science and archeology and all of that, is to try and piece back together the oral history that we understand or that we still have with what science tells us that is there, right? And and in that way, we can kind of sort of build back a little bit of history.
00:46:04
Speaker
in our community. But to me, that critical point of the slave raids was disastrous to our island. And that's something I think that there's opportunity to examine more. And and I'm really interested in because it what it means is that 2,000 of our ancestors most likely died somewhere in in Peru and are buried there.
00:46:29
Speaker
right so So talk about like the repatriation work that's happening in North America. There's also a lot that needs to happen and continue to happen in South America and then in in other parts of the the globe. So I'm just sort of really thankful and energized by the work that Pancho and Susana Mahoy and all these other people are doing in trying to sort of take ownership and take back those pieces of us, you know, that that were lost.
00:47:00
Speaker
and Yeah, that's fascinating. These slave raids that really devastated the island that Matatu was speaking about began in 1862, in October of 1862. The practice in the Pacific is called blackbirdy, and it began actually with Australians and raids into the islands that we would call today, Melanesian islands and Western Polynesia, like Samoa, Tonga, Futuna, Wallis, and so forth. But it's important to remember that blackbirding takes place in a global context, right? By this time, British abolitionists had basically shut down the transatlantic slave trade. The United States is engaged in a devastating civil war
00:47:58
Speaker
provoked primarily by the issue of slavery. Chinese coolly labor is shut down in the Pacific. I mean, there there are, what, three US Chinese exclusionary acts in the aftermath of the Civil War. But even before that, the United States is sending naval vessels into Chinese harbors to ah stop the outflow of of Chinese labor into the Americas. Well, of course, all of that impacts Peru and Chile, and so you know taking a page out of the Australian book, they go blackbirding themselves.
00:48:40
Speaker
this time Eastern Polynesia, the Marquesas Islands, the Tuamotu Islands, which are two of the five archipelagos of French Polynesia, and Dapanui. Dapanui was the staging area. So just in the latter months of 1862,
00:49:02
Speaker
We have Chilean and Peruvian ships coming to the island, taking, you know, 150 here, 200 there. And in in the arc of, I think it's like less than two years, like Mata'u says, ah close to 2,000 men and women are taken from the island, including our Ariki, the the class who had the knowledge of of the ancient
Historical Challenges and Resilience of Rapa Nui
00:49:31
Speaker
Rapa Nui writing system called Rongorong, and who were responsible for the cultural transmission of our ancient identity to subsequent generations. And it's it's really because of this dev devastation that happens in the 1860s that the island is completely vulnerable to a maniac Frenchman
00:49:59
Speaker
who seized power on the island in 1868 and ruled despotically until he was assassinated by islanders. yeah and And when this figure, his name was Dutrot-Bachnier, when he died, you know, then the Maison Brandeir sent another agent to the island. and And this was the environment in which, for example, the USS Mohican visited the island in 1886.
00:50:25
Speaker
and you know took away crania, including six of which I was, by the grace of God, able to recover this summer and hope to bring back to the island in a few months.
00:50:38
Speaker
So there there is a considerable amount of international disruption that's going on all over the world that augments the vulnerability of the island. But there's no question that the primary vulnerability comes not from an island population passively accepting you know colonization, private colonization by sheep herding ventures, but from an island community devastated first by slave raids, and then, you know, it it's interesting that the international authorities that intervened on behalf of the Dapanui were the archbishop, the Catholic archbishop of Papeete in Tahiti, Te Panos Jose, Te Panos is Polynesian name, but Etienne, Steven is the name, and King Kamehameha IV.
00:51:32
Speaker
these These are the the the international figures who intervened with the Peruvians, and the Peruvians didn't listen to them, but they also ah convinced the French to intervene. And, you know, France had just sent Maximilian and Carlota to to Mexico, right? So I can almost imagine the French diplomat saying, we could do this in Peru, too, if you want.
00:51:54
Speaker
and whatever but you know Whatever happened, it did convince the Peruvians to repatriate the survivors. Of the 2,000 who were carried off the island, only 15 returned. And they were infected with smallpox, oh which devastated the remaining 2,000 on the island. if So that by 1877,
00:52:22
Speaker
The population of the island was 111 people.
00:52:28
Speaker
Every living Rapanui, including Matauanai, are descended from those 111. So it's not like the Rapanui just rolled over and played dead and let people carry their ancestral remains away or let them carry away hoakananaiya. They were very nearly extinguished.
00:52:51
Speaker
And it was in this period, you know, I mean, even my dad was born in, let me think, 1940. When my father was born, there were only 500 Islanders. Today we are but close to 6,000 Matau. So, yeah I want to say that the Rapunui story From the beginning, I mean, from the very moment that Houtou Matua sent the the ah advanced ah guard, you know, the the seven young voyagers, to plant taro and kumara to prepare for the the immigration.
00:53:33
Speaker
the The island has been characterized by survival under the most acute conditions of environmental precarity imaginable. And you know that continued when environmental precarity morphed into the vulnerability of islanders to visitors with guns. And, you know, they're really culminating in the the slave raids that Mata'u began talking about. So this this is also the beginning of the expatriation of our ancestral remains. So week we, you know, Mata'u and I can't do anything about
00:54:22
Speaker
the Rapa Nui who died in Peru, or the Rapa Nui who died from smallpox when the 15 survivors were brought back. by By bending our efforts toward the repatriation of the ancestral remains of our of our ancestors, we are in a certain sense declaring that whatever may have happened to them, they still have intrinsic value That is the duty of the living to the dead. And that's basically why we're involved in these activities. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. And thank you obviously for that work that you do on behalf of your, you know, your people and and the land and your ancestors with all of that in mind, like if there's one thing that you wish, like,
00:55:20
Speaker
the public knew about Rapa Nui, like what would be the one like piece that you would want to leave people with? ah I'd say we're still here. And we're as ornery as ever. um Yeah, that's great. I mean, Rapa Nui people, met thought you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I i just feel like Rapa Nui people are so
00:55:51
Speaker
Brilliantly, humorously, marvelously full of themselves.
00:56:00
Speaker
that you you'd never know that this was, ah you'd think they were the descendants of of Alexander the Great or somebody, right? That they'd conquered the whole world. We didn't conquer the whole world. We just survived in the most precarious place that the globe had to offer the world at the time. Yeah. That's our real claim to fame. Not even the Moai, as yeah magnificent as they are.
00:56:29
Speaker
Yeah, but survival and resilience. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So I have, you know, you can, you'll pardon, you'll pardon the doppadoy for being so full of themselves under the circumstances. It it served us well when it was the only thing between us and complete extinction, that belief that, no, we can do this. And that there's value in our way continuing. Yeah.
00:56:57
Speaker
Yeah. I still see that in Rapanoi people. It's the the thing that probably impresses me the most about them. I don't know. Yeah. No, I completely agree. Even I think about eating up Easter, the issue of micro plastics and trash, it it exists throughout Polynesia, right? Like, but what made the world Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Throughout the world. Right. But when you put a more on a poster surrounded by plastic, it like alerts people. Yeah. That image is. Oh, I mean, I looked it up while we were talking and I definitely had a reaction to it. So so it's like that. It's like that visceral reaction of
00:57:52
Speaker
Oh, no, something really important is getting is being damaged. Yeah, absolutely. Amazing and unique is going to go away. Right. And so I think the work is is to really apply that same feeling, that same sentiment to Rapa Nui artifacts, to Rapa Nui the remains.
00:58:22
Speaker
I think that there's a lot of really powerful things that that that we can use, that we can do. And now I'm going off off a train. I'm sorry. My train of thought is kind of dwindling a little bit. But yeah, i I completely agree with you, Pancho. I think, you know,
00:58:41
Speaker
I'm really proud of being Rapa Nui because of what our ancestors were able to overcome and achieve and do all of this stuff. You know, my dad would often ask, who sort of like, put this query out of like,
00:59:01
Speaker
What can we do today that is of massive scale and importance that the Moai were for our ancestors? Like, how do we match that? Wow. You know, I don't know what that is because even a skyscraper, I mean, like so building so a skyscrapers seem to be like really easy because they go up all the time, you know.
00:59:26
Speaker
Yeah. But I think that that there's that there's that thinking back. And I think, Pancho, when you talk about that survival and resilience, I think that that's also important for us, Rapa Nui, not living in Rapa Nui and finding our way out in the rest of the world, you know, and holding on to sort of that that understanding of identity and culture ah wherever you are.
00:59:56
Speaker
Because there's a lot of us that don't live on Rapa Nui, like, you know, these two people that are talking to you now, right? But our connection is always there and for future generations, they will also be so.
01:00:07
Speaker
Well, that is a ah beautiful place to end on. Um, so I just want to say thank you to both of you for, for not only coming on the podcast and and sharing your time and and your thoughts and your experiences with, with everyone listening, but you know, like the, really the heart of your story, um, your people's story and and survival and talking about things that are not always easy easy to talk about. So I appreciate all of that.
01:00:34
Speaker
I appreciate you guys and I'm very excited to go watch this movie. So everybody check out the show notes and look up Eating Up Easter. We'll have a link to it. So thank you again. Right on.
01:00:53
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Heritage Voices podcast. You can find show notes at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com slash Heritage Voices. Please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play Music Store. Also, please share with your friends or write us a review. Sharing and reviewing helps more people find the show and gets the perspectives of Heritage Voices amazing guests out there into the world. Now we just need more of that in anthropology and land management. If you have any more questions, comments, or show suggestions, please reach out to me at Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. If you'd like to volunteer to be on the show as a guest or even a co-host, reach out to me as well, Jessica at livingheritageanthropology dot.org. You can also follow more of what I'm doing on Facebook at Living Heritage Anthropology and the non-profit Living Heritage Research Council or on Twitter at LivingHeritageA. As always, huge thank you to LiableEnqua and Jason Nez for their collaboration on our incredible logo.
01:01:58
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.