Sunday Dancing

Upsets Cook

Islanders

Members of several Raro tonga youth clubs created some thing of a furore in the Cook Islands recently in going aboard the liner Northern Star on March 15 to entertain 1,400 tourists. The thing that upset many people was that March 15 was a Sunday.

A CORRESPONDENT. signing himself “Eye Witness”, wrote to the Cook Islands News that he was “very surprised” to hear that certain youth clubs had been “allowed” to go aboard the Northern Star on that day “to earn money for their own pockets”.

He then asked the editor of the Cook Islands News whether enter taining tourists on Sundays did not conflict with the laws on not working on Sundays, and whether the provi sion of sabbatical entertainment would not open the road for working on that day.

The editor replied that it was ob vious that ships were bound, in future, to arrive at Rarotonga on Sundays, but shied away from ex pressing any further opinion.

However, to show that the question of working on Sundays was not new in Rarotonga, the editor quoted an editorial from Te Torea, a Cook Islands paper of June 5, 1897, which stated that “Sabbatarian objections should not be allowed to stand in the way of pressing necessity”.

Puritanical Conceptions

Te Torea’s editorial was prompted by another shipping incident—the re fusal of a gang of Rarotongan wharf labourers to complete the unloading of a cargo of perishable goods on a Sunday from a ship that had reached port the previous day. The wharf labourers had knocked off at mid night on Saturday when a few hours’ work in the early hours of Sunday would have enabled the ship to con tinue her voyage.

The same issue of the Cook Islands News which reprinted the 67-year-old editorial from Te Torea included a letter from a church elder, James

G. Matkin, who expressed the opinion that: • Dancing on the Lord's day “must violate the spirit of the Sab bath in the conscience of a true Christian”. • But publicly condemning the young people who had danced on board the Northern Star, or legislat ing against their precedent, would “not alter their present frame of mind towards this holy day”.

The writer added: “We must have the equanimity to allow them free dom of choice”.

Other Cook Islands leaders, how

ever, did not view the Northern Star incident with the same eqanamity as Elder Matkin.

Teaukura Roi, a member of the Cook Islands Legislative Assembly, said at a public meeting that it was “wrong” for the entertainers to go aboard the liner; that the liner’s Sun day visit had “already caused trouble with the churches”; and that it was this sort of thing that “spoiled tourism”.

Another Legislative Assemblyman, Tangaroa Tangaroa, said at the same meeting that tourism in the Cook Islands should not be allowed to in terfere with local customs, and that no tourists were wanted on Sundays.