SEVEN
“One Extensive Garden”?
Citrus Schemes and Land Use in the Cook Islands, 1900–1970
Hannah Cutting-Jones
Kai Kainga, or land eating [is] getting unjust possession of each other’s lands [and is] a species of oppression.
—John Williams, missionary to the Cook Islands, 1838
In Cook Islands’ mythology, Rongo, the god of cultivated crops, and his brother Tangaroa, god of the sea, were born of the earth mother Papa into a universe shaped like the hollow half shell of a coconut. Rongo went on to create taro irrigation and obtain the first kumara (sweet potato) from the heavens. Thereafter, small wooden carvings of Rongo’s image placed at the edges of kumara plantations blessed the harvest, and parcels of cooked taro presented to the god signaled peace (see figure 7.1). Similar to other island societies in Oceania, Cook Islanders held a sacred and ancient connection to their environment, out of which grew not only creation myths and genealogical lineages, but life itself. Kumara, taro, breadfruit, coconut, bananas—these foods provided more than subsistence; they represented wealth, status, and cultural survival.
Cook Islands soil would also be the arena of a century-long struggle over intensive, commercialized agriculture. Missionaries sent by the London Missionary Society (LMS) were the first Europeans to settle in the Cook Islands in the 1820s, and although they altered land-use patterns, the most significant environmental changes took place after the Cooks became a Protectorate of Britain in 1888 and accelerated even further when New Zealand annexed the islands in 1900. Waves of European settlement and influence by missionaries, traders, and government officials affected land tenure patterns. The exploitation of natural resources pulled Cook Islanders into a global marketplace and permanently altered their ecology and landscape. New Zealand’s direct political involvement from 1900 shaped and directed citrus production for export, in particular. As land and labor for oranges and other cash crops displaced subsistence production, a greater reliance on imported labor and foodstuffs developed, with migration both feeding and responding to this cycle.
Figure 7.1. Rongo, the Māori god of kumara and cultivated plants and Mangaian god of agriculture and war. Source: Internet Archive Book Images, no restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.
Unlike the experience of many other Pacific Islands, however, Cook Islanders retained ownership of their land throughout the political, economic, and cultural changes brought about by the establishment of an export market. Leaders never permitted land sales or allowed the implementation of “alien plantation economies,” though hopeful settlers repeatedly sent letters asking for permission to plant lucrative crops in the islands.1 The relationship between Cook Islanders and their land proved strong yet flexible enough to survive participation in a century-long agricultural export economy—a market that eventually collapsed, at least in part because of the clash between European and Indigenous land-use customs. By 1970, the rainforest had begun to re-envelop abandoned citrus plantations, and Cook Islanders, now running an independent nation, reconsidered land use—this time on their own terms.
Rarotonga, the largest, most populous, and capital island of the Cook group, is located 1,634 miles northeast of Auckland, New Zealand. With its fifteen islands occupying over 850,000 square miles of Pacific Ocean, the Cooks have a total landmass of 88 square miles, with just 16 percent suitable for agriculture.2 The southern islands, including the capital Rarotonga, are primarily volcanic and support a variety of crops, while the northern group are atolls where few plants grow and people traditionally subsisted on a diet of coconuts and fish.
Polynesian settlement in Rarotonga goes back a thousand years, with two independent parties of immigrants arriving at the end of the twelfth century. Two men, Tangiia of Tahiti and Karika of Samoa—who would both become ariki, or chiefs, of Rarotonga—proceeded to ally with settlers already inhabiting the island. The leaders then allocated a slice of land reaching, as one local recounted, “from the sea to the mountain,” or a tapere, to the head of each family group.3 These plots fell across three zones, the coastal, lowland, and upland, with most plantings traditionally located in the lowland areas.4 Kin groups bickered constantly, yet “every inch of land on the island was claimed by one party or another.”5 These quarrels did not prevent the planting of food crops.
Considered living descendants of the gods, ariki could institute ra‘ui, or sacred prohibitions, over lands or lagoons to secure resources for feasts or important occasions. For generations the practice of ra‘ui provided a way to avoid the overexploitation of coconut groves, taro plantations, and fishing grounds that otherwise might lead to scarcity and starvation. Ariki might also declare a piece of land or particular food permanently tapu, or forbidden, and therefore beyond the reach of lower-status individuals. Breaking tapu or ra‘ui was punishable by death. Those who lived on and planted an ariki’s land lived by these guidelines and contributed crops as tribute, thus affirming the chief’s authority as their leader and protector.6
While titles were significant, in pre-contact Rarotonga “there was no conception of the sale of land or its produce,” no individual ownership of surplus resources, and no trade. This gave little incentive to produce food beyond what was necessary for subsistence, tribute, feasts, or gifts.7 Islanders usually worked on their kin group’s tapere and were expected to contribute willingly to the productivity of that community. Rows of coconut palms or chestnut trees marked boundaries between breadfruit, bananas, taro, plantains, and coconuts grown in the rich soil between Rarotonga’s rugged mountainous interior and the coast.8 Gardens established in coastal swamp areas risked greater devastation from floods and hurricanes.9 Wild orange trees, introduced in 1789 by the mutineers of the infamous Bounty, grew wild in the valleys.10 Missionaries later criticized Rarotongans’ cultivation patterns and intermittent destruction of crops.11 Initially, however, they were impressed.
MISSIONARIES INFLUENCE LAND USE
Shortly after his visit to Rarotonga in 1827, John Williams, the indefatigable LMS representative, painted the island as a picture of beauty, abundance, and successful agriculture. Williams planned to continue Christianizing the Cooks, a process begun by the two Tahitian missionaries he left on the island in 1823, Papeiha and Rio. As Williams wrote:
The whole island was in a high state of cultivation [and] there are rows of superb chestnut-trees planted at equal distances, and stretching from the mountain’s base to the sea, with a space between each row of about half a mile wide [and] divided into small taro beds, which are dug four feet deep, and can be irrigated at pleasure.… The pea-green leaves of the Taro, the extraordinary size of the Kape [gigantic taro] lining the sloping embankment, together with the stately bread-fruit trees on the top, present a contrast which produces the most pleasing effect.12
In 1830 Williams sailed again to Rarotonga, this time with Reverend Charles Barff and his family (see figure 7.2). The Barffs joined the Pitman and Buzacott families, who had arrived in 1827 and 1828, respectively. Stunned anew by the island’s lush vegetation, Williams noted in his journal:
June 3. Saw the fine island of Rarotonga.… It had a fine romantick [sic] appearance from the vessel, the lofty mountains separated by deep ravines and all covered with a beautiful foliage, formed a majestic [sic] landscape. The extent of Cultivation was to us a novel sight, almost every Individual having his … small farm cultivated with plantains … taro, yams, etc., so that the whole settlement appeared one extensive garden.13
Figure 7.2. An engraving depicting the confiscation and destruction of idol gods by European missionaries in Rarotonga. John Williams, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands, 1837.
These glowing descriptions suggest Rarotongans cultivated the land to its utmost, industriously mixing crops to utilize shade and soil. Leaders expected every able-bodied person to farm, with individuals publicly shamed if they shirked their duties.
Most Islanders resided in kin groups near their lowland plantations. Missionaries swiftly targeted non-nuclear living arrangements as a potential spiritual stumbling block. Thus, one of their first goals was to relocate Rarotongans from their ancestral lands and communal homes to individual houses for nuclear families situated near one of three missions constructed at Avarua, Aorangi, or Ngatangiia. But tensions developed as Islanders settled on others’ lands or abandoned common-law spouses; some chose to return to their gardens.14
By the early 1830s, missionaries had introduced the first cash crops and encouraged locals to grow sweet potatoes, coffee, copra, and citrus to trade with passing merchant and whaling ships in exchange for a variety of goods. As Cook Islands historian Ron Crocombe asserted, in support of both the growing cash economy and church projects “settlement became nucleated and concentrated on the coastal plain” while cultivation continued in the valleys.15 Market houses constructed next to each mission allowed the ariki of corresponding regions to oversee commercial exchanges by 1840.16
Rapid conversions and social restructuring impacted land use in unexpected ways. The “extra wives” of polygamous relationships returned to their families of origin and their children went on to inherit land through the maternal rather than paternal line.17 Epidemics drastically reduced populations.18 Lands abandoned through death or relocation reverted to the heads of various descent groups or were absorbed by neighbors.19 All the while interactions with the outside world increased as Rarotonga became a well-known pit stop where ships could re-provision and recruit deckhands.
Missionaries worked to eradicate or modify cultural practices they considered ungodly, but they also advocated for Cook Islanders to retain the titles to their lands.20 This approach was not altruistic, but part of a range of actions to shore up their own power and lessen the influence of the worldly whalers and beachcombers increasingly washing up on shore, and the guns and liquor they brought with them. Further, missionaries for decades reaped the rewards of cash-crop production in support of church projects. Similar to Tonga, Hawai‘i, and Tahiti, ariki in the Cooks agreed to work within mission-proscribed laws to consolidate their authority and gain access to imported goods. Within just two decades of European settlement, in fact, the chiefs were proudly exporting produce. In 1852, E. H. Lamont, recently shipwrecked on Penrhyn, the northernmost island in the Cook Group, recounted with surprise that the three ariki of Aitutaki presided over regular markets and had already organized a sizable shipment of oranges to California. As a result, they “were in great glee, hoping it was the commencement of a new and successful trade.”21 The ariki also understood that increased settlement would lead to more commerce, and by 1855, as the whaling industry waned and market houses folded, they negotiated limited European settlement and allowed individual traders to open shops. Ariki continued to control crop production and distribution—primarily wild oranges at this time—although ideas of a free market and elective democracy remained anathema to Cook Islands custom for many years.22
Loads of fresh produce began arriving in New Zealand from Rarotonga in the 1860s, primarily through a renewal of Māori–Cook Islands connections. Paora Tūhaere, paramount chief of the Ngāti Whātua in Auckland, worked to establish trading and cultural relations with the Cook Islands in the early 1860s. On July 5, 1863, Tūhaere’s ship the Victoria, which had sailed to Rarotonga on June 19, returned to Auckland carrying 43,000 oranges, 1,000 coconuts, 270 pounds of pears, 200 pounds of arrowroot, 8 tons of taro, and an important Rarotongan chief, Kainuku Tamako. Nineteen New Zealand Māori made the voyage, including Tūhaere himself.23 The visit marked a Māori reconnection that would be strengthened through future commercial exchange, migration, and intermarriage. By 1865, the Cook Islands sent between ten and fifteen shipments of oranges annually from Rarotonga to New Zealand.24
In the 1870s, with New Zealand’s demand for tropical produce increasing, and against the admonitions of missionaries, ariki began permitting larger numbers of prospective traders and planters free entry to Rarotonga. The chiefs also bought several schooners and organized most of the inter-island trade in the Cook group as well as commerce with Tahiti and New Zealand. By 1885, ariki-led trade was flourishing, “worth an estimated 60,000 pounds a year.”25 In addition, many chiefs formed partnerships to open teashops and trade stores.26 Ariki took full advantage of new economic prospects.
As export revenue increased, however, European traders tried to wrest profits away from ariki. Avarua store owner J. H. Garnier complained in an 1890 letter of Tahitian traders bribing Rarotongan ariki, outbidding local traders such as himself and making away with “thousands of dollars’ worth of produce which should have been entering the harbour of Auckland.” Garnier’s message was clear: “I am most anxious to see the entire trade of these beautiful and fertile islands secured to New Zealand,” and to his own wallet.27 Overall, the Church’s influence lessened during this period as other Europeans and New Zealanders intensified their efforts to control the bourgeoning citrus trade.
Still, missionaries to the Cooks and other Pacific islands felt their work of civilizing as well as planting the seeds of faith had borne fruit. William Wyatt Gill, first a missionary to Mangaia and later to Rarotonga, wrote in 1876 that “the outward condition of these islanders has been marvellously improved since the introduction of Christianity. The soil is better cultivated, waste lands have been reclaimed [and] numerous places once sacred to the gods are now planted for the good of mortals.”28 They had successfully transplanted a Protestant vision of land management. Yet looking back in 1885, Reverend Gill also noted the unintended environmental effects of the mission era:
The woods of Rarotonga, when I first knew the island some thirty-two years ago, were everywhere vocal with the song of birds … [But now] I have more than once ridden round the island without hearing the cry of any but sea birds. The stillness of the forest would be intolerable but for the pleasing hum of insects as the sun declines.29
Scholars have corroborated Gill’s impressions; as native land bird stocks became depleted and could no longer serve as a food source, attention turned to agricultural expansion.30
As James Beattie and John Stenhouse have illustrated, Christian contemporaries of Reverend Gill who settled in New Zealand also worked to “make wild nature bountiful” by introducing European farming practices to Māori Christians. And like their Māori relatives, Cook Islanders soon pursued the production of produce for trade, as well.31 The relationship that both Europeans and Islanders shared with the natural world was complex and varied, with some seeing extractive potential and others leaning toward conservation.
Ariki privilege superseded customary occupation rights of common planters during this period, for example, and the chiefs acquired great wealth in the process. In a juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern, chiefs turned again to ancient customs of land use, reinstituting restrictions on planting lands, or ra‘ui. Now, however, rather than safeguarding resources, they adapted the practice to commercial trading by fixing the price of island-grown produce and fining those who broke ra‘ui by selling below the set price. Unscrupulous chiefs could declare crops ra‘ui in wait for the highest bidder.32 European traders fought against the use of ra‘ui, but government officials, following a laissez-faire policy and wanting to shore up Cook Islanders’ trust, upheld the local planters’ rights. Even so, Europeans influenced the market by controlling the sale of copra bags, fruit cases, and other manufactured items needed for the trade.
In their bid to further control the citrus market, by 1900 foreign traders had formed a “fruit ring” of several hundred members to set prices and trading terms. Cook Islanders organized protests and boycotts.33 The rise of the Union Steamship Company—the New Zealand business founded in 1875 and known by the turn of the century as the “Southern Octopus” due to its far-reaching grip on Southern Hemisphere trade—further disrupted Cook Islander–run exports by transporting oranges to New Zealand from Tahiti and reducing demand for Cook Islands produce there.34 Meanwhile, locally owned and expensive-to-run schooners struggled to compete with Union and other large steamers arriving from California, Australia, and New Zealand. Ariki-led trade declined further following the formal annexation of the Cooks in 1900.
THE LAND COURT, 1903–1910
As New Zealand began the process of governing the Cook Islands, land reform sat at the top of the colonial agenda. One of the primary goals of administrators was to increase fruit production solely for New Zealand consumers, which would ostensibly benefit both economies, as Cook Islanders could spend cash-crop earnings on imported goods manufactured in New Zealand.35 One agriculturalist noted that although “the total acreage is not large, the soils [in the Cook Group] are capable of producing a wide range of tropical crops, all of which are needed by this Dominion.”36 Cook Islands’ growers at first seemed happy to comply with New Zealand administrators as long as they received timely and fair compensation. The main focus for all involved became the increased production of bananas, tomatoes, and particularly oranges at the expense of subsistence crops like kumara and taro, if necessary. As a result, export agriculture increasingly modified plant distribution and ecological diversity.
But establishing a successful fruit export industry during this political transition faced steep obstacles. The ariki balked at relinquishing control as growers experimented with various, and often disappointing, cash crops. Coffee trees, for example, were easily planted but, when prices faltered, neglected in the bush. By 1900, hundreds of acres of arable land sat unused.37 Walter Gudgeon, the first resident commissioner appointed after annexation, regarded traditional land tenure and the control wielded by ariki as the primary obstacle to commercial development. Only land redistribution, Gudgeon believed, could overcome this problem.
And so, striking at the heart of Cook Islands land traditions by modifying people’s relationship with their chiefs and resources, Gudgeon conducted a series of hearings from 1903 until his retirement in 1909. Collectively termed the “Land Court,” the hearings attempted to erode ariki privilege by reallocating land ownership according to use and occupation, not customary status. Gudgeon argued that the ariki had co-opted common peoples’ land rights during the missionary era. He hoped the chiefs might go along with ideas of modernization and use their influence to support the court’s goals. Officials assumed a more equitable distribution of land rights would incentivize and thus increase cash-crop production for individual planters. In addition, smaller plots might increase the number of long-term leases offered to Europeans residing in the Cooks, whom administrators viewed as models of efficient farming methods.38 However, loyalty to one’s ariki and kin group—largely reflected through regular contributions and sharing of food resources—formed the basis of the Cook Islands’ social structure. As Richard Gilson observed, with ariki in charge of the market, most Islanders could (literally) “not retain all the fruits of their labour,” even with the promise of a paycheck. This, combined with the fact that exports through the 1920s mainly depended on simple and immediate returns on wild-growing oranges, meant many lost interest in planting cash crops. Gilson concluded that “one of the greatest mistakes of the European merchants [and officials] was to assume that commercial opportunities and credit would encourage the islanders to cultivate their land more intensively.”39
The Land Court’s decisions were ultimately problematic, and its achievements limited. New Zealand’s belief in the superiority of individual land ownership clashed with Cook Islanders’ tradition of quick earnings and communal distribution. New land titles ensured security of tenure for Indigenous planters but resulted in “excessive fragmentation of ownership” and ever-smaller, co-owned plantations that left little incentive to cultivate cash crops. The court (re)awarded to ariki over half of the lands in question as many Islanders were either unaware of the court proceedings or too intimidated to submit a claim. Steep tributes to ariki were formally abolished, however, as were the assumed rights of “parasitic relatives,” while potential monetary gains for planters remained complicated.40 Overall, the process eroded ariki support for an administration that ended their absolute control over the land, and with it, much of their wealth.41
Not only did the court’s decisions disrupt cultural norms, but it was increasingly evident that intensive cash-crop production also threatened subsistence farming and caused environmental problems. In the early 1900s, planter Varopaua M. Mana Taiava in Aitutaki complained bitterly about the effects of the Land Court rulings:
All our natural food supply we used to have in abundance before the investigation is no more. Each man is required to put his hands in the soil all the time now in order to get a living or else start stealing which is about the rule of the day. There is no more “tapu” and the sacredness of the “raui” now is a thing of the past. The water supply is bad and filthy.42
He went on to say that “the court chained us” when residents, required to “put [their] land into cultivation,” had to then pay all expenses incurred. Otherwise, he faced the “seizure of his property.” People had little recourse to challenge Gudgeon’s rulings, but some resented what they perceived as forced participation in a market economy.43
For all of these reasons, the Land Court’s reforms did not immediately lead to a profitable export market. After two years, a frustrated Gudgeon asked New Zealand officials to empower him to force Cook Islanders to plant their lands; they refused.44 Wide-scale planting had not been undertaken by World War I, either, when New Zealand officials asked the Cooks to contribute not only soldiers but surplus foodstuffs to the war effort. Planting continued, but unsystematically. Another large push to efficiently export produce from the Islands would have to wait until the 1930s.
ORANGE REPLANTING SCHEMES AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
Wild oranges comprised the bulk of Cook Islands exports between 1900 and 1930, with the 1920s being the most profitable decade.45 Taking cues from the thriving Southern Californian citrus market, New Zealand officials attempted to put the Cook Islands’ orange industry—which then consisted primarily of fruit from scattered inland groves—on a more scientific and technological footing.46 The first director of agriculture to the Cooks, Mr. Bouchier, died from injuries he sustained while attempting to save his botanical research during a 1935 hurricane.47 Affected by the global economic depression, Cook Island growers petitioned New Zealand for assistance in 1936. The government responded, taking control of the marketing and export of fruit in 1937.48 Maurice Baker, a citrus expert from Jamaica, arrived the same year to replace Bouchier and reinvigorate the industry. Baker worked quickly to implement a series of Citrus Replanting Schemes (CRS) and presented new strains “evolved by grafting exotic orange buds to lemon stock.” He pressed growers to establish model groves of ninety trees each supplied by the government’s nursery, and promised these would produce fruit in only six years.49 Baker and others had high hopes for the one hundred plantations created under the scheme and predicted a huge increase in overall output by 1950.
But Baker’s plans failed. The initial scheme of 1939 was “virtually still-born,” according to New Zealand geographer W. B. Johnston. Even after officials agreed to organize cultivation and give 50 percent of the profits to landowners once their debts were repaid, growers still rejected the plan due to concerns over land titles and planting methods. As Johnston wrote in frustration, “The most jealously guarded heritage of the native is his right to the land which, by law, he cannot sell. The Cook Islanders detested leasing their land, and the administration failed to gain their cooperation.”50 In response, officials passed an Occupation Rights law of 1946 allowing multiple landowners to grant one owner full planting rights on shared property, dependent on his continuous occupation of the land. Cook Islanders remained wary, but by 1960 724 plots had been established on 450 Rarotongan acres and produced almost 50 percent of the total agricultural exports from the Cooks.51 Exports increased again in the 1950s, but shipping and storage problems continued. A canning plant constructed in 1961 on Rarotonga was soon using most of the island’s excess oranges to make “Raro,” a popular but low-value juice sold in New Zealand.
This partial success held mixed results for Cook Islanders. They desired the imported goods oranges could buy; entire families gathered the fruit between April and July from wild and cultivated trees scattered far from packing sheds. But, according to Ron Crocombe, for some growers “the planting of citrus” became “a strategy for protecting their land rights rather than a commitment to [commercial] citrus production.”52 In addition, inter-cultivation, or growing plants for local consumption, such as watermelons, manioc, kumara, and taro, among the wild orange trees, was common practice and encouraged casual growth of citrus. Interdependent crops provided shade, lessened erosion, and bolstered food security.
The benefits that more traditional agriculture provided were important because industrialized citriculture came with serious environmental consequences. Pacific Islands have highly dynamic ecosystems “particularly vulnerable to rapid and irreversible changes resulting from human activities.”53 Pests like fruit flies and European-introduced rats consumed as much as one-third of Rarotonga’s subsistence crops in the first years of the twentieth century and attacked the wild orange groves that made up an “overwhelming proportion” of fruit trees until the 1950s.54 Before officials initiated the replanting schemes, they reported that “most of the [orange] trees were old and were suffering from a variety of untreated diseases. As they were planted at random through bush and undergrowth, caring for them was arduous and time-consuming.”55 Under the citrus schemes, workers removed wild trees in suitably flat locations to make room for cultivated orange groves or tomatoes, at four months a fast-growing cash crop option. This “short-sighted exploitation of the islands’ forest resources” later returned to haunt those involved in transforming the land.56
Environmental impacts were soon evident. As resident commissioner H. F. Ayson wrote in 1941, “The island is rapidly becoming unfertile due to erosion by rain and also due to a lack of humas [sic] in the soil aggravated by the lack of shelter trees.”57 Attempts to convince growers to spray, fertilize, and prune their new trees were initially unsuccessful, as Cook Islanders questioned both how these practices affected the land and whether (and when) they would result in higher returns.58 Officials continued to invest in the new plans, even holding an Agricultural Field Day in 1941 advertising “the progress [already] made in the replanting scheme and for the purpose of interesting the leaders of the island in replanting shelter trees.”59
An expanded Department of Agriculture transformed the land. They paid workers to plant thousands of trees, shelter belts, and cover crops, all the while managing spraying and pruning on a wide scale. By 1940, the department had constructed twenty-eight gassing rooms on Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Atiu, and Mauke. New chemical fertilizers reduced waste caused by disease and pests from 30 percent to 1 to 5 percent, but at significant environmental cost.60 Pesticides and chemicals coated the trees and leached into the soil and streams; workers extracted centuries-old chestnut trees. In their place, Baker directed growers to plant “quick-growing pistache” trees (Albizzia falcata) brought from Samoa, whose wood was also used to construct fruit crates.
To the frustration of local administrators and resident Europeans, Cook Islands planters found creative ways to resist the new guidelines, such as leaving the impostor trees on their land “untrimmed and unchecked.” They also carried out more violent opposition, such as uprooting the newly planted shelterbelts and leaving their gardens exposed. Through these actions Cook Islanders pushed back against altering the landscape in such extreme and permanent ways.61 Today, some blame the replanting scheme pesticides for long-term health effects and lagoon pollution and cite the widespread culling of chestnut trees with critical loss of shade for a variety of crops.
The impact of intensive agriculture was also emotional and cultural. Geographer Kenneth Cumberland wrote that even with limited economic growth created by the Citrus Replanting Schemes, the post-war period was “accompanied by both economic and spiritual depression amongst the Cook Islanders,” as shipping again lagged, fruit spoiled, and workers abandoned agricultural for wage jobs both in Rarotonga and in New Zealand.62 Initially, growers had been happy to accept loans, but came to feel the administration lured them into debt and measly reimbursements. In addition, Cumberland estimated that due to the focus on cash crops over food production, between 1945 and 1960, people’s traditional diet was “replaced by a diet composed largely of store products” consisting of tea and bread for breakfast and tinned meats for lunch.63 The story of commercial citriculture can be directly linked to import dependency and its resultant health problems in the Pacific Islands.
Nor were the consequences of modern agriculture and the measures used to protect cash crops limited to the land. In the Pacific Theater of World War II (1939–45), fishing diminished in the lagoons of Rarotonga. Rules of tapu and ra‘ui had been nearly abolished, and this combined with increased fishing with toxic plants and explosives led to a shortage of the former dietary staple.64 Over-fishing and new agricultural techniques exacerbated and accelerated soil erosion and insect infestation. By the end of the war, “incipient erosion of the hill-country” due to excessive scrub burning and other factors carried large quantities of silt into the lagoons, which, along with runoff from pesticide use, poisoned inland streams on Rarotonga and further impacted fish populations and the health of the reef ecosystem. By the 1960s, fishing, according to some visitors, was virtually non-existent.65 Severe leaching and erosion on Atiu and Mangaia also led to the implementation of reforestation projects in 1951 and 1959, respectively, primarily to produce more fruit-case timber.66 In 1963, a Rarotongan elder, Tongareva, spoke out against plans to establish a joint Japanese-New Zealand tuna fish cannery on the island, arguing, “Next they will be asking for land.” The cannery was never established.67
CONCLUSION
Cultivated orange trees take six years to produce fruit. As Cook Islands planters waited—and watched their young people move away or take up wage labor—they sank ever deeper into debt and disillusionment. Shipping and transportation problems, low prices, labor disputes, competition, migration—all of these played a part in the final collapse of the citrus industry in the early 1970s, but none were as significant as incompatible ideas of land use and the determination of Cook Islanders to control their own environment and resources.
In 1965, the Cook Islands gained political independence but remained in “free association” with New Zealand, and plans to construct an international airport in Rarotonga commenced. With its completion in 1974, tourism became the new economic mainstay of the Cook Islands, replacing agriculture. Citrus replanting efforts continued, albeit on a much smaller scale, and the islands continued to produce fruit for New Zealand, now mainly in the form of canned “Raro” juice. Opportunities in New Zealand and Australia pulled many away, some of whom never returned. Most adults balanced limited subsistence farming with other jobs, producing enough root crops and fruit for their families and selling any surplus at local markets.68
The migrant ecology envisioned and imported by missionaries, Europeans, and New Zealanders—one that attempted to implement intensive export agriculture and transform traditional land tenure—failed, due to a large extent to Cook Islanders’ resistance and cultural resilience. As a result, land use in the Cook Islands today is probably quite similar to what it was two hundred years ago. The amount of land dedicated to cultivating subsistence crops has lessened significantly, but commercial cash crops are relegated to history. An industrialized system of agriculture proved unsustainable, as evidenced by the repeated attempts of the Land Court and replanting schemes to modify land use. Valuing land simply as a commodity clashed with the values of Cook Islanders, both ariki and commoner, and with the health of island ecosystems. Poisoning their beautiful lagoons, increasing erosion, and introducing pests, commercial agriculture never gained a secure place in these islands.
An example from my time in the Cooks helps illustrate the enduring power of connections there between people and place, environment and culture. A series of rainstorms pummeled Rarotonga the week before my research trip in 2015. While at the National Archives a few days later, the main archivist in hushed tones described two landslides that occurred on the island the previous day. I assumed flooding or erosion caused them, but she understood the events as signs foretelling the impending deaths of prominent Cook Islanders. The next day a beloved and well-known Catholic nun died, once again linking legacies of outside influence with ancient beliefs. I was reminded that land on Pacific Islands is “imbued with the spirits of the ancestors and binds together those who share rights in it.”69 On the way back to my apartment, I stopped by an outdoor market to pick up locally grown taro, breadfruit, bananas, and kumara. I then visited a small family run store to purchase tinned biscuits and coffee. Cook Islanders, in step with their traditions and environment, continue to cultivate an adaptive and ever-changing landscape.
NOTES
Epigraph: John Williams, Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands (London: J. Snow, 1867–1869), 116.
1. Richard Gilson, The Cook Islands: 1820–1950 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1980), 140; Michael Bellam, The Citrus Colony: New Zealand-Cook Islands Economic Relations (Wellington: New Zealand Coalition for Trade and Development, 1981), 9.
2. Ron Crocombe, Land Tenure in the Cook Islands (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1964), 3.
3. Cook Islands Native Land Court Records, minute book Vol. 1 (Microfilm, originals in Rarotonga, University of Auckland), 173.
4. Caradoc Peters, “Human Settlement and Landscape Change on Rarotonga, Southern Cook Islands.” PhD diss., University of Auckland, 1994, 105.
5. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 63–64.
6. Cook Islands Land Court Records, minute book Vol. 1, 13.
7. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 19.
8. Ibid., 16.
9. Peters, “Human Settlement,” 142.
10. Ibid., 139.
11. Ibid., 74.
12. John Williams, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises to the South Sea Islands (London: J. Snow, 1837), 204.
13. “A Journal of a Voyage Undertaken Chiefly for the Purpose of Introducing Christianity among the Fegees [Fiji] and Haamoas [Samoa] by Messrs Williams & Barff in 1830,” p. 9, cited in Peters, “Human Settlement,” 129.
14. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 66.
15. Peters, “Human Settlement,” 315.
16. Rodney Hare, “Food Marketing and the Problem of Imported Food in Rarotonga, Cook Islands.” PhD diss., University of Auckland, 1980, 35.
17. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 67–68.
18. By 1867 the population of Rarotonga had dropped from approximately 7,000 to 1,856, and in 1846 almost 20 percent of children on Mangaia were orphans.
19. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 68.
20. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 72; Cathy Banwell, “ ‘Back Seat Drivers’: Women and Development on Rarotonga.” MA diss., University of Auckland, 1985, 138. Foreigners wanting to move to the Cooks initially met strong opposition from the missions, which enacted laws to bar them from settlement. Later, government officials would uphold this.
21. E. H. Lamont, Wild Life among the Pacific Islanders (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1867), 90.
22. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 193.
23. Te Waka Māori o Ahuriri 1, no. 4 (July 25, 1863): 4, accessed July 26, 2016, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/waka-Māori. This Māori newspaper was published from 1863 to 1871.
24. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 176.
25. G. F. Mills, Islands in the Shade: 60 Years of NZ Rule in the Cook Islands (Wellington: Socialist Forum, 1962), 1.
26. Gilson, Cook Islands, 82.
27. A. D. Couper, “Protest Movements and Proto-cooperatives in the Pacific Islands,” Journal of the Polynesian Society 77, no. 3 (September 1968): 263–274.
28. William Wyatt Gill, Life in the Southern Isles; or, Scenes and Incidents in the South Pacific and New Guinea (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1876), 15, quoted in Peters, “Human Settlement,” 130–131.
29. William Wyatt Gill, From Darkness to Light in Polynesia (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1894), 127.
30. As Peters noted, “finally, the population turned to the swamp lands, between the other two zones, to plant taro” and other crops. Peters, “Human Settlement,” 69.
31. James Beattie and John Stenhouse, “Empire, Environment and Religion.” Environment and History 13, no. 4 (November 2007): 419.
32. Crocombe, “Land Tenure,” 187–189.
33. Cooper, “Protest Movements,” 264.
34. Bellam, Citrus Colony, 18.
35. “Tropical Products for NZ,” The Press 57, no. 10811 (November 12, 1900): 4.
36. Geoffrey Sylvester Peren, Agriculture of Samoa, Cook Islands, and Fiji (Palmerston North, NZ: Massey Agricultural College, 1947), 16.
37. Gilson, The Cook Islands, 136. Out of 8,000 acres, less than 1,000 were under cultivation, with about 300 being leased to Europeans. Cook Islanders owned and operated their own ships and ran inter-island shipping in the last decades of the 1800s, and by all accounts did very well. It is possible that Cook Islanders’ interest in cash crop production declined as the new government started to control shipping.
38. Richard Gilson, “The Background of New Zealand’s Early Land Policy in Rarotonga,” Journal of the Polynesian Society 64, No. 3 (September 1, 1955): 275; Gilson, Cook Islands, 148–149.
39. Gilson, Cook Islands, 82–83.
40. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 129, 145.
41. Bellam, Citrus Colony, 9; Gilson, The Cook Islands, 142.
42. Cook Islands Native Land Court Minute Book Vol. 2 (Microform), 1903–1908.
43. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 129.
44. Walter Gudgeon to the Hon. C. H. Mills, Minister administering the Islands, Wellington. “Cook and Other Islands,” July 20, 1905, in Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (Session II, A-3, No. 24, 1906), 10–11.
45. New Zealand Department of Island Territories, Cook Islands: New Zealand’s Tropical Province (Wellington: New Zealand Department of Island Territories, 1950), 12.
46. Edward Dallam Melillo, Strangers on a Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 104.
47. At least this was the official story. According to Jean Mason, who cited the former speaker of the Cook Islands Parliament, Raituti Taringa, locals said Bouchier died as punishment for his part in the destruction of the ancestral orange trees of Rarotonga.
48. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 143. Until that point various traders had established a monopoly “fruit ring” that controlled prices and shipping space.
49. It normally took ten years for Cook Islands wild orange trees to bear fruit, versus six for cultivated oranges, four for bananas, and four months for tomatoes.
50. W. B. Johnston, “The Citrus Industry of the Cook Islands,” New Zealand Geographer 7, no. 2 (1951): 126.
51. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 144–145.
52. Kevin Barry Short, “Factors Contributing to the Decline of Production in the Rarotongan Citrus Industry.” MA diss., University of Auckland, 1980, 40.
53. Jeremy Carew-Reid, “Conservation and Protected Areas on South-Pacific Islands: The Importance of Tradition,” Environmental Conservation 17, no. 1 (1990): 34.
54. Gilson, Administration in the Cook Islands, 11; Johnston, “The Citrus Industry,” 130.
55. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 143.
56. Ibid., 130.
57. Cook Islands “Annual Report, 1941/42” (file accessed at National Archives, May 2015), 5.
58. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 143.
59. Cook Islands “Annual Report, 1941/42,” 5.
60. New Zealand Department of Island Territories, Cook Islands: A New Zealand Province, 21–22. (My italics.)
61. Johnston, “Citrus Industry,” 131.
62. K. B. Cumberland, quoted in Mills, Islands in the Shade, 2.
63. Cumberland, quoted in Mills, Islands in the Shade, 3.
64. Peren, Agriculture, 23.
65. Quote from Jackson Webb, “Cook Islands Face a Dark Future?” New Zealand Herald (March 28, 1970). Information from both Webb and Peren, Agriculture, 24. Rarotongans are “burning off fern and scrub quite unnecessarily”—he says there’s no real reason for it, and it is “leading the erosion,” which carries “large volumes of silt into the lagoons” and affects the fish. Also, problems with insects and fungi.
66. Crocombe, Land Tenure, 147, 140.
67. Dick Scott, Years of the Pooh-Bah: A Cook Islands History (Rarotonga: CITC; Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), 287.
68. Pollock, These Roots, 161.
69. Ibid., 163.