Post #768176 by Club Nouméa on Sat, Sep 3, 2016 5:51 PM

Ariki Day

The day after I arrived in Rarotonga, I was wandering the back road of Avarua when I crossed paths with a group of Kanaks from New Caledonia. Well aware that they were just as much fishes out of water as I was in this part of the world, I sauntered up to one of them, smiled, and said in French "You're not from around here are you?"

He laughed and told me they were part of a French Pacific delegation that had just arrived for the big event on tomorrow. Event? He said there was a big gathering with singing, dancing and lots of people would be there from all over the Pacific.

Upon checking the Cook Islands News, it turned out he was referring to Ariki Day, a national holiday in the Cook Islands held annually to honour tribal chiefs. "Ariki" is a word that basically means chief or elder.

So the next day, I dressed up for the event, putting on my best barkcloth tapa-patterned shirt, my Gordons "Future Shock" tee-shirt, and grabbed my camera for the big event.

It was not long before I came across what was effectively a roadblock on Avarua's main drag:

As part of the ceremonies, every year one tribe is formally welcomed onto the territory of the Avarua tribe whose territory includes the national auditorium where the celebrations are held. The visiting tribe is selected on a rotating basis, and represents all of the other tribes, because if the host tribe had to welcome all of the other tribes onto their land it would take forever and a day.

Proceedings then moved onto the national auditorium, where the assembled Arikis sitting on the stage greeted delegations from around the Pacific, including a Maori delegation from New Zealand:

The Maori crew played the role of mainland Big Bros to the poor little islanders as they strode onto the grounds of the national auditorium; doing the full power dressing thing - black clothes and cloaks and waving their ceremonial speaking sticks and pushing their mana to the hilt. The official Rarotongan response was hilarious. To greet the Maori delegation, the Cook Islanders trotted out a dance troop of reedy little guys dressed in grass skirts who performed an interpretive dance. By the end of it, it was clear they were taking the mickey out of the Maoris as they each put one hand on top of the other, held them up horizontally and then started opening and closing them like crocodile jaws. The mimed message was clear in any language: "Man, you guys TALK too much!!!". All the Cook Islanders had a good belly laugh (as did I).

There is a fair bit of good-natured ribbing that goes on at such events between Maoris and Cook Islanders. I once attended a welcoming onto a Maori marae on a very cold, wet winter's day in Wellington, where various international Polynesian delegations were being greeted. The Cook Islands group was led by a very impressive speaker who played the role of the big Ariki from the ancestral lands with an "I dunno if the weather in this place is up to much, and you really SHOULD be honoured we bothered coming" attitude which caused much mirth in the aisles. His words were gleefully translated for me by a lady from the Tahitian delegation I was with, as she could pretty much understand everything the Rarotongan was saying in Cook Islands Maori (it is effectively a dialect of Tahitian).

Anyway, back to the proceedings. They lasted about 3 hours, with formal speeches from the various delegations, and speeches from the arikis. Most of them were in Cook Islands Maori, unlike in past years, where English tended to be spoken, and this is part of a recent trend by Cook Islanders to reclaim their language for official purposes, including in their own Parliament. There were a couple of signs outside encouraging visitors to speak at least some Cook Islands Maori:

Probably the low point of the event was the speech by the Cook Islands Prime Minister, who is in the doghouse at the moment for not stepping down although he has lost majority support in the House. The Cook Islanders were very listless as he spoke, many of them pointedly ignoring him and starting their own conversations. The proceedings were however enlivened by a Cook Islands dance troop:

Everything was wrapped up by about 1 pm so we could all head back outside into the stadium's grounds for some kai:

The rush for food was such that I was somewhat dismayed and decided to sit down on a park bench for a while. The wife of one of the Arikis saw me and came over to chat. "We were up all night making that lot. Each of the tribes on the island pitched in. Various of them did their food in an umu (cooking pit) but we just used electric ovens and microwaves as it was quicker. You should get in there while you can...

"But it's like a buffalo stampede!" I protested (not inaccurately either).

She looked and smiled at me like a concerned auntie: "Well, if you don't push your way in, you won't get any lunch..."

So I elbowed my way through the thronging horde and grabbed my lunch:

A coconut and a bundle wrapped in tinfoil:

Which proved to hold enough food to feed an extended family: roast pork, fried chicken, taro and kumara (sweet potato). Not being able to eat it all, I offered some of the meat to a stray dog who was successfully doing the rounds as people ate their lunches on the grass. The very filling lunch was washed down with some water (saving the coconut for later) while I listened to the father and son act providing musical entertainment:

So that was my first Ariki Day, and thoroughly enjoyable it was too!

The earliest known tiki mug: "Ruru and Weku", designed by Harry Hargreaves of Crown Lynn, New Zealand, 1949.

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2016-09-03 23:46 ]

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2016-09-04 23:43 ]