Rarotonga

Who Owns What On

A clear head and a specialised type of brain is necessary to grapple with any system of land tenure. And this usually goes double in the Pacific Islands where the basis of native land ownership is hidden deep in the mists of forgotten centuries.

THE uncompromising title of Land Tenure in the Cook Islands is almost a guarantee that this book will be directed into the academic and semi-academic hands for which it was intended.

Nonetheless, if you can stand an occasional mental struggle, Dr. R. G.

Crocombe’s study of land ownership in Rarotonga does provide, as well, a skeleton on which a lot of the history of the island can be hung.

Although most of Rarotonga’s history began about the end of the 12th century. With the arrival of Tangiia’s canoe from Raiatea, in the Society Group, and of Karika’s canoe from Samoa, it is believed that Raro tonga was first inhabited by other Polynesians at least two centuries before.

It is thought that the original road right round Rarotonga was built by these earlier settlers —something that may be proved in time by the modern technique of radio-carbon dating.

Land Divided Up The earliest settlers were absorbed by the newer arrivals and the whole of the land was parcelled out to one chief or another. Out of this partitioned land and the titles that went with it developed the tribes whose titular head was an ariki.

Land was the basis of the social system, a means of sustenance and the reason for tribal wars. At the time of first European contract in the early 19th century, there were about 7,000 people living on Raro tonga —a similar population to that of today—and every inch of land was claimed by one partv or another, and sometimes by several, as land disputes were endless. The present Avarua district had been laid waste by war and land that was in dispute lay idle and neglected.

The apparently idle land and the disputes about it early inspired interference by Europeans the Missions being the first to impose “law codes” in an attempt to prevent wars over ownership.

In the period of colonial expansion in the Pacific, New Zealand became interested in the Cooks before Britain declared a protectorate over the Southern Cook Group in 1888 and handed actual administration oyer to the young Dominion. Annexation by NZ did not, however, take place until 1901 and part and parcel of the necessary legislation was the setting up of a Land Court. The prime reason for the Court was to deter mine, once and for all, land owner ship and to provide that such lands as the Maoris were not using were made available to European settlers.

Although the Cook Is. Maori was willing enough to get title to his land he never was disposed to believing that any was surplus to his require ments, and seldom showed the inclination to move over and make room for the European settlers that the early administrators envisaged.

The number of foreign planters in the whole of the Cook Islands has remained insignificant and none today derives a livelihood entirely from the land. „ In effect, the new land laws and their subseauent modifications often just exchanged new problems for old.

Rarotongans no longer went to war about their land disputes, but there was plenty to wrangle about in the Court. . , , Dr. Crocombe is a graduate of Victoria University, Wellington, NZ, but at present is a member of the Australian National University team engaged on research into land tenure systems in New Guinea. —Judy T udor.

(Land Tenure In The Cook

ISLANDS. Oxford University Press. 42/-.)