Aitutaki

Polynesians settled Aitutaki between about 1225 and 1430. Oral tradition holds that the island was named by Te Erui, who raised it from the ocean after voyaging from Avaiki, while other accounts name further settlers, among them Ru, Te Munakorero and Ruatapu. Marae and other inland sites record centuries of Polynesian occupation before European contact, and taro cultivation in the wet inland flats shaped both the landscape and the social order.

The Bounty, commanded by William Bligh, sighted Aitutaki in 1789, shortly before the mutiny, and European visits followed. The London Missionary Society reached the island in 1821, when Polynesian teachers, among them Papeiha, were landed here — before the mission was established on Rarotonga — and conversion was rapid. Aitutaki was the first of the Cook Islands to take up Christianity, and the Cook Islands Christian Church at Arutanga, built in 1828 by Papeiha and Vahapata, is the oldest church in the country; the strict mission code reordered village life around the Sabbath.

Aitutaki became part of the British protectorate of 1888 and was annexed with the rest of the islands to New Zealand in 1901. In the Second World War New Zealand and American forces were stationed here, and two airstrips were built in 1942 by American and New Zealand engineers working alongside islanders. In the 1950s flying boats on the Coral Route from Auckland to Tahiti alighted in the lagoon off Akaiami, where passengers went ashore for breakfast and a swim, until the service ended in 1960. Since self-government in 1965 the island has lived increasingly from visitors, while its population has fallen as families moved to Rarotonga, New Zealand and Australia.

Church and dance shape the year, as across the Cook Islands, but Aitutaki has a particular reputation in both. Its choirs and the unaccompanied harmony singing of the Cook Islands Christian Church fill Arutanga's old church on Sundays, and Gospel Day in October brings nuku, village pageants in which biblical episodes are acted and sung in costume. Dance and drumming teams from the island compete strongly at the national Te Maeva Nui festival, and versions of the same repertoire are performed at island nights for visitors.

Craft traditions continue in women's sewing groups, which make tīvaevae, the appliquéd and embroidered quilts given at weddings, funerals and hair-cutting ceremonies, and in weaving with pandanus and coconut leaf for mats, hats and baskets. Carving, canoe building and the making of flower ei and head garlands remain everyday skills rather than heritage displays.

Social life is organised by village, family and church, with the ariki and sub-chiefs still holding standing in matters of land and ceremony. Land is held under customary title and leased rather than sold, which is why resorts are small and locally connected. Rugby, netball, cricket in a local form and outrigger paddling fill weekends. Manners are those of a small island where everyone is known: greet people on the road, accept hospitality, keep voices and swimwear for the right places, and expect Sunday to belong to church and family.

Fewer than two thousand people live on Aitutaki, making it the second most populous island in the country and far smaller than Rarotonga. They are spread among villages ringing the main island — Arutanga, Amuri, Ureia, Vaipae, Vaipeka, Tautu and Nikaupara — each with a church, a hall and a scattering of shops. Government offices, the hospital and the harbour are concentrated at Arutanga.

Work is mostly tourism, government service and growing food. Resorts, guesthouses, boat crews, drivers and builders depend on visitor numbers and feel every interruption to flights; taro is still cultivated in irrigated inland plots, coconuts and bananas grow everywhere, and fishing inside and outside the reef supplies both households and restaurants. Remittances from relatives in New Zealand and Australia matter to many families, and young people leaving for school and work abroad is the central social fact of island life.

Days begin early and slow in the afternoon heat. Shops keep short hours, almost everything closes on Sunday, and news travels by word of mouth and radio. The practical problems are those of a remote small island: the cost and reliability of imported food and fuel, freshwater supply and sewerage close to the lagoon, waste disposal, exposure to cyclones, and the dependence of the whole economy on a short air link to Rarotonga.

The island eats from the lagoon, the reef and the garden. Ika mata — raw fish diced and cured in lime juice, then dressed with coconut cream and often onion and tomato — is the dish visitors are most likely to be offered and the one families make most readily. Alongside it come rukau, the young leaves of the taro plant slow-cooked in coconut cream, boiled or baked taro and kūmara, breadfruit, and pork or chicken.

A feast takes the form of an umukai, cooked in a pit oven on hot stones and covered with leaves, brought out for weddings, birthdays, church occasions and sometimes for visitors alongside a dance performance. Poke, a baked pudding of mashed banana or pawpaw thickened with arrowroot and served with coconut cream, is the usual sweet. Fresh fish — tuna, wahoo, mahi mahi, parrotfish and reef species — is grilled, curried or eaten raw, and game fishing is a pastime as well as a source of food, with contests held beside the Arutanga wharf.

Day-to-day shopping means the small stores and market stalls at Arutanga for fish, root vegetables and fruit, with New Zealand groceries filling the gaps between shipments. Restaurants cluster on the west coast and lean on what the boats bring in; lagoon cruises cook lunch over a fire on a motu; and drinking coconuts, coconut cream and lime appear in nearly everything made at home.