Tokelau

Polynesians from Samoa settled Tokelau about a thousand years ago, and each atoll — Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo — developed its own village. Commodore Byron sighted Atafu in 1765. Between the 1840s and the 1870s, native teachers sent by the London Missionary Society in Samoa and by French Catholic missionaries on Wallis converted the atolls: Atafu became Protestant, Nukunonu Catholic, and Fakaofo both. In 1863 Peruvian slave raiders carried off nearly all the able-bodied men, most of whom died of disease abroad; afterwards each atoll came to be governed by a council of elders, the Taupulega.

Tokelau was declared a British protectorate in 1889 and annexed in 1916, administered with the Gilbert and Ellice Islands before being transferred to New Zealand administration in 1926 and formally to New Zealand in the late 1940s. Tokelauans are New Zealand citizens. Referendums on self-government in free association with New Zealand in 2006 and 2007 both fell just short of the two-thirds majority required, so Tokelau remains a non-self-governing territory and stays on the United Nations decolonisation list. Since November 2012 its electricity has come almost entirely from solar power, the first territory in the world to make that switch. Sea-level rise is an existential threat.

Tokelau is strongly communal and Christian. The inati system shares the catch and the produce out equally among all families. The Taupulega, the council of elders, governs each village, and the "Ulu-o-Tokelau", the head of government, rotates each year between the three atoll leaders. The Tokelauan language and the fatele — the song and dance, shared with Tuvalu, that is performed at community gatherings — are central to identity.

Extended families live together, Sunday is for church, and communal work days organise much of village life. A large Tokelauan community in New Zealand, many times the island population, keeps close ties and sends support home.

About 1,500 people lived across the three atolls at the 2016 census, one village to each. The economy is almost entirely New Zealand budget support and the public service, plus subsistence fishing and coconut, remittances, postage stamps, and income from the ".tk" internet domain, whose registry operator, Freenom, withdrew in 2024. There is one small hotel and one resort, both on Nukunonu; most visitors stay with families by arrangement. Each atoll has a school, a small hospital, a store, and a small administration.

The ring of islets around each lagoon is low, narrow, and crowded, and king tides regularly wash across the land — the reason climate change is not an abstract issue here.

Fish is the mainstay — tuna and reef fish, shared through the inati — along with coconut in every form, and swamp taro (pulaka) and breadfruit where they grow. Pork and chicken are feast food. Imported rice, flour, and tinned goods from the supply ship fill out the diet. Most dishes are baked or simmered in coconut cream and shared out among the households.

There is essentially no tourism — Tokelau receives only a handful of visitors a year, most with family or official connections. The experience is the atoll itself: the lagoon and its reef for snorkelling and fishing, the fatele evenings, the village churches, the islet of Fenua Fala off Fakaofo, and the sheer remoteness of the place. Any visit must be arranged in advance through the Tokelau administration in Apia, including transport, a host family, and permission from the Taupulega.