Akono'anga Maori: Cook Islands Culture (review)

Ron Crocombe and Marjorie Tua'inekore Crocombe are well known for their lasting contributions to the study of Cook Islands culture. According to their long-standing political position, they have promoted the publication of local views, and thus they have paid special attention to editing and publishing both old manuscripts and contemporary authors' views. The present volume is in line with that policy and represents a major enterprise of putting together articles by nearly thirty Cook Island writers—too numerous to be individually mentioned here—covering major aspects of their culture and social life. Thus the book represents insiders' views with a rich variety of local perspectives on both traditional and modern questions. The aim of the volume as a whole is serious. It is a contribution to the discussion about cultural development in a Pacific mini-state with a resident population of 13,000 and many more Islanders living and working overseas. The articles do not represent a nostalgic view of a lost past but discuss the problems of Cook Islands society in a very concrete way, taking an open position on questions of politics, economy, domestic violence, and even recent developments in Rarotonga's nightlife.

The creation of local forms of artistic expression that are globally recognized is one of the main trends in the native people's quest for cultural recognition. The Cook Islands are well known for their expressive culture. This recognition precedes the recent admiration for their dance performances made widely known by growing numbers of tourists visiting the islands. Already in the nineteenth century, as a result of learned missionaries, the poetics of the islands received wide attention. Local writers also began publishing local oral traditions and poetry a hundred years ago. It is therefore no wonder that the book begins with a group of articles discussing the artistic expression of the islands. The impact of tourism and thus how the outsiders' demands have influenced artistic expression from dance to wood carvings seem to be main concerns of the authors. However, the local but selective interest in different forms of art seems to be a strong counterbalance to tourist demands, thus guaranteeing at least some degree of inside determination for the future development of Cook Islands' art.

The articles in the second part of the book discuss basic cultural patterns, and language is foremost. The number of the speakers of the indigenous language is small, and given the large proportion of Islanders living in English-speaking countries and maintaining close connections to the home islands, the future of Cook Islands Mäori is vulnerable. The great proportion of people still speaking Mäori as their first language seems to be encouraging, however, and a look at the Islanders' Internet discussion sites opens new perspectives. The creative use of Mäori on the Internet well deserves an independent empirical study. As a part of the basic cultural patterns, the book also discusses important and central issues of beliefs, rituals, and economy; add to these the problem of violence and its development, from tribal warfare to domestic violence.

Government and corporate power receive critical treatment in the volume and the problems of postcolonial economic structures become very obvious. The consolidation of economic and political power is counterbalanced, however, by the proliferation of voluntary associations. If Cook Islands economy and politics are dominated by a few families, it would have been interesting to have more information about the relationship of these associations to the kinship relationships and their possible overlap.

On the whole, the articles give a Rarotonga-centered view of the social and cultural situation in the Cook Islands. This is understandable because the great majority of the population is living on the...