Atiu

Atiu's traditions call the island Enuamanu, the land of the birds, and trace its people to Polynesian voyagers whose descendants divided the land into tapere, the strips running from the centre to the sea that the five villages still represent. The island was unified in about 1760 and went on to invade and dominate the neighbouring islands of Mauke and Mitiaro; the uninhabited island of Takutea, to the north-west, belongs to the people of Atiu and is managed by them as a wildlife sanctuary. Marae and older sites survive in the scrub of the makatea.

European contact came in 1777, when Captain James Cook sighted the island on 31 March and his ships made tentative contact with its people over the following days; the Raiatean Mai was travelling with the expedition as its interpreter, but the attempt to obtain provisions failed and the ships moved on. Christianity arrived in 1823, when John Williams of the London Missionary Society converted the island's leader, Rongomatane Ngaakaara Ariki, and the scattered settlements of the tapere were resettled in one central place, the five villages of which still stand together on the plateau.

Atiu followed the rest of the group into the British protectorate of 1888 and the annexation to New Zealand in 1901. After annexation the island exported oranges, coffee and copra, but poor shipping disrupted the trade and exports collapsed in the 1950s; commercial coffee growing was revived on a small scale in 1984. A grass airstrip opened in 1977 and the present airport in 1983, bringing a modest, guesthouse-scale tourism, while the population fell by two-thirds over the past fifty years through steady migration to Rarotonga, New Zealand and Australia.

Atiu is best known across the Cook Islands for the tumunu, the bush beer party. It began as a secret society, men meeting away from the villages to drink home-brewed beer, and it survives today in a more open form that is also offered to visitors as an island experience.

Church life is otherwise as strong here as anywhere in the country. The Cook Islands Christian Church anchors the villages, Sunday hymn singing in close unaccompanied harmony is the week's high point, and Bible pageants and choir competitions mark the church calendar. Dance and drumming teams represent the island at the national festival, and tīvaevae quilting and work with pandanus and coconut fibre continue in women's sewing and fibre-arts groups.

Birds carry unusual weight in local identity, in keeping with the island's old name. The kopeka nests in the caves and is found nowhere else; the kura, or Kuhl's lorikeet, long hunted for its red feathers, was reintroduced to the island in 2007 and by 2019 numbered several hundred; and thirty young kakerori, the Rarotonga monarch, were brought here in 2001 to establish a second population as insurance against disaster on Rarotonga. Land remains in customary title, hunting and gathering rights follow family lines, and the ariki still carry ceremonial authority.

Only a few hundred people live on Atiu, and the number has fallen for decades as families moved to Rarotonga and across the Tasman; the island's diaspora is far larger than its resident population. Almost everyone lives in the five plateau villages, where the school, clinic, island administration, churches and stores stand within a few minutes' walk of one another.

Livelihoods combine wage work with growing food. The island administration, school, clinic, airport and power supply provide most salaried jobs; taro, bananas, pawpaw, cassava and coffee grow on the plateau and in the makatea clearings; pigs and chickens are kept behind the houses; and fishing is done from small boats outside the narrow reef rather than in a lagoon. Guesthouses and guiding add income for a handful of families, and remittances from relatives abroad support many households.

The day starts early, slows in the afternoon heat and ends early too. Shops keep short hours, the island closes almost entirely on Sunday, and the flight days structure the week, bringing mail, freight, visitors and returning relatives. The persistent difficulties are those of a small remote island: the cost and irregularity of shipping and flights, keeping young people and skilled workers, water supply, limited medical care, and exposure to cyclones.

Food on Atiu comes from the garden, the reef and the deep water, with imported staples filling the gaps between ships. Taro is the foundation, boiled or baked and served with almost everything, along with kūmara, cassava, breadfruit, bananas and pawpaw. Rukau — young taro leaves cooked slowly in coconut cream — is the everyday green, and coconut in all its forms is the main seasoning and fat.

Fish is eaten fresh: tuna, wahoo and reef species grilled, curried or made into ika mata, the raw fish cured in lime juice and dressed with coconut cream that is eaten across the Cook Islands. Pork and chicken appear at celebrations, and a feast is cooked as an umukai in an earth oven of hot stones covered with leaves, brought out for church occasions, birthdays and family gatherings. Poke, a baked pudding of banana or pawpaw thickened with arrowroot and served with coconut cream, is the usual sweet.

Two local drinks define the place. Atiu coffee, arabica grown on the plateau and dried and roasted here, is served in nearly every kitchen and sold on Rarotonga. The other is the home-brewed bush beer of the tumunu, shared in rounds at the island's bush beer parties. There is no restaurant district: visitors eat what their hosts cook, which is much what the island eats.