Cook Islands

Polynesians settled these islands from around AD 1000, arriving from Tahiti, and Rarotonga features in New Zealand Māori tradition as a staging point for the canoes that reached Aotearoa. A Spanish expedition sighted Pukapuka in 1595, and Cook charted several in the 1770s. The London Missionary Society arrived in 1821 and, working with the ariki (high chiefs), made the islands strongly Christian and imposed a code of strict "blue laws".

Britain declared a protectorate in 1888, and in 1901 the islands were annexed to New Zealand. In 1965 the Cook Islands became self-governing in free association with New Zealand: Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens, New Zealand handles defence and assists with foreign affairs by agreement, and the Cook Islands otherwise runs its own affairs and makes its own treaties. It has taken an increasingly assertive line abroad: in 2001 the two governments signed a declaration setting out how that foreign-affairs role works, and in February 2025 the Cook Islands signed a comprehensive strategic partnership with China, along with a memorandum on seabed minerals, without consulting Wellington first. New Zealand suspended tens of millions of dollars in funding over it, and relations were repaired only in April 2026, when the two signed a defence and security declaration and New Zealand resumed about NZ$29.8 million a year in aid.

The defining social fact is depopulation. For decades Cook Islanders have moved to New Zealand and Australia, where well over 100,000 now live — 80,532 people identified as Cook Islanders in New Zealand's 2018 census, and about 28,000 more were counted in Australia, many times the number who remain — leaving the outer islands especially small and ageing.

Cook Islands Māori culture is close kin to New Zealand Māori and Tahitian, with its own island dialects, the standing of the ariki, the high chiefs, who sit in the House of Ariki alongside parliament, and a deep Christian overlay. The Cook Islands Christian Church, which grew out of the London Missionary Society mission of 1821, is much the largest denomination and anchors village life; Sunday is quiet and church-centred; and churches ring with unaccompanied harmony hymn singing.

Dance is a point of pride — traditional dance is the country's most prominent art form, each island has its own dances and annual competitions, and Cook Islands drumming is known internationally. Other living traditions include tīvaevae, the appliqué quilting that women make together in groups called vainetini, wood and stone carving, and the tumunu bush-beer party on 'Atiu, once a secret society and now also a visitor experience.

About 15,000 people live in the Cook Islands — 14,987 at the 2021 census — roughly three-quarters of them on Rarotonga, with Aitutaki the next largest and the other islands small. The economy is built on tourism, which makes up around 70 per cent of GDP: there were more than 168,000 visitors in 2018, and numbers were back at record levels in 2025. Fishing, black pearls from Manihiki, offshore banking and aid fill out the rest.

Rarotonga has a hospital, secondary schools, government offices, and a single loop road; the outer islands have infrequent flights, irregular shipping, and thinning populations. Everyday life runs on gardening and reef fishing alongside wage work, church on Sunday, and family ties that stretch to Auckland and Sydney.

Ika mata — raw fish marinated in citrus juice and coconut milk — is the signature dish. Feasts bring taro, kūmara (sweet potato), and rukau (taro leaves, often cooked in coconut milk), and poke is a pudding made with banana or pawpaw and served with coconut cream. Fresh fish comes straight off the reef and the boats.

Rarotonga's Punanga Nui Market is a good place to look for local produce and cooked food. Otherwise the shops are stocked with New Zealand goods, and imported staples fill the gaps. On 'Atiu the tumunu gatherings serve home-brewed "bush beer" in a ritualised round.

Rarotonga is ringed by lagoon and reef, best at Muri, where the water is shallow and clear and small motu sit offshore; it is the island's biggest tourism draw, and glass-bottom-boat and snorkel trips run over the coral. The Cross-Island Track climbs from the Avatiu valley past the 413 m needle of Te Rua Manga ("the Needle") and down to Wigmore Falls and the south coast, while the ancient inland road, the Ara Metua, runs three-quarters of the way round the island past marae including Arai Te Tonga, the most sacred shrine on Rarotonga.

Aitutaki, a short flight north, has one of the most photographed lagoons in the world — a broad triangle of turquoise water with sandbars and fifteen motu, among them Tapuaetai (One Foot Island), often called the best view of the whole lagoon and reached by cruise boat. 'Atiu grows coffee and is ringed by makatea cliffs honeycombed with caves, some used for burials and one the nesting place of the kopeka, a swiftlet found nowhere else; Mangaia and Ma'uke are ancient raised-coral islands with the same fossil-reef cliffs and cave systems; and Mitiaro has limestone caves and two freshwater lakes. The remote northern atolls — Manihiki, Penrhyn, Pukapuka — are very hard to reach; Manihiki, known as the Island of Pearls, has black-pearl farms dotted around its lagoon.