cultural development body

Interview

Jon Jonassen: heading new

THE Secretary of Cook Islands’ new Ministry of Cultural Development, Jon Jonassen, is a composer and traditional drummer. He worked as Foreign Affairs Secretary and was Director of Programmes for three years for the South Pacific Commission in Noumea. His new ministry, known locally as Tauranga Vanaga, is geared to promoting the indigenous language, customs, traditions and cultural practices. One of Jonassen’s major projects is the 1992 6th Pacific Arts Festival in the Cook Islands. Jonassen spoke to Pacific Island Monthly’s Angela McCarthy in Rarotonga: What is the work of the new ministry?

It is wide-ranging and looks not only at traditional arts and culture but contemporary aspects as well. The new Ministry is called Tauranga Vananga (Nest of Knowledge) or Ministry of Cultural Development because the Prime Minister considers the emphasis should be on the development of art and culture.

We don’t just want our culture strong in ourselves but we want it to sustain people and 'mcourage income-generating activities.

How do you see this happening?

This can happen across the board. Take marae , for example.

They are important in terms of tourism so

we need to develop on this so they become something tourists respect and want to know more about. But also they are important to us culturally so we want to encourage the use of maraes in the old ways too, such as for investitures. Investitures need the traditional costume of tipute which is made from the breadfruit or wild hibiscus bark. By encouraging traditional investitures we bring back the utilisation of this type of clothing and establish a trade. We are creating a need which creates a job and also provides for tourists.

Does this sustain a culture or does it just use or exploit it?

Look at Hawaii, shops are selling carvings, there is the Polynesian Centre, people always say “Aloha” ... these are all yardsticks of how alive a culture is.

But in some ways the feeling about Hawaii or Waikiki anyway is that you could be anywhere and that the carvings are so massproduced that they could be from anywhere.

Well it is not everyday culture any more ... maybe some of the spirit is gone from the carvings, but the carving is there as a Polynesian piece of art. It’s difficult but you can turn around the tourism and use it to sustain culture.

What is your personal brief?

I have two main projects. The first is to coordinate the ministry. You see, the

embryo was here from last year when preparations started for the 25th 1990 Constitutional Celebrations. I joined in February, and with the support of Cabinet and the Public Service Commissioner have added on staff and gathered in the other branches for which the department is now responsible Archives, Museum and Library. In the past these three worked more or less independently and often overlapped. My second project is to get preparations underway for the 6th Pacific Arts Festival which we are hosting in 1992 ...

What is happening so far with the arts festival?

The Arts Council met here in December to approve the programme we have proposed. Then we have to move on it.

It is a huge exercise to organise from accommodation, catering and transport to the actual arts and cultural programmes. Using figures from the past festivals at Townsville and Tahiti we are predicting that at least 3000 people will be coming a lot of people.

Our Ministry have set up a 1992 Arts Festival Committee to start organising the different areas. There are three of our permanent staff on the committee and more will be added, as well as a lot of voluntary help. We are pursuing many fundraising activities. I personally want to involve as many groups as possible utilise the two art groups and the writers and music groups. It's a scary responsibility the more help and involvement the better.

What is the theme for the festival?

The theme is Seafaring Pacific Islanders.

The New Zealand Maori are retracing their tracks here to prove they did pass through the Cook Islands the Hawaiians may also, and the Tahitians.

Samoa and Tonga are said to have come here, too, and we would like them to prove it by retracing their journeys of the past as well.

A challenge?

Yes. As part of the preparation for the festival the Prime Minister announced earlier this year that a NZS2O million cultural centre will be built. There has been a lot of negative reaction to the cost of the complex, with people, including artists, saying it is not needed. To put it in perspective the original concept was proposed so that the Prime Minister had a total plan to present to potential donors. We need something better for the festival. Major activities like this often force the hand for establishing infrastructures. We got our National Stadium because we were hosting the Mini Games and it is used frequently now. The old Constitution Park (where the festival will be based) has a very old building. The new building will include sports facilities, better staging for the song quest, beauty pageants, dancing shows etc. However there is a budgetary constraint. For 1990 the ministry had only NZ$3OO,OOO to spend on the site.

Most of that has gone in plans and landfill. □

Can you name some of the achievements of Tauranga Vananga last year?

One of the things I did when I came in was to look at the things shelved since the 70s and one was the Maori Language Committee. So the Ministry has been involved with the Education Department in setting up a committee that aims to strengthen the role of the Maori language through the Cook Islands.

We are also hoping to soon complete a book on the oral traditions of Aitutaki, which will be the first of a number of manuscripts we expect to publish. Much of the original work has come from the ministry that was disbanded in the 70s we are editing it and looking for publishers. Getting everything in order and typed up has been quite a problem but with the addition of another typist we should go faster now. We were involved in the largest and most difficult constitution celebration yet held here, and organising the sale of an audio cassette of the celebrations from which the artists involved will get royalties for the first time.

We ran the August Tumu Korero on the theme of seafaring oral traditions where we got all the outer islands (oral) specialists together and, from this, gathered important information relevant to the festival and to our history. This is now on tape and in documents at the archives.

We are also in the process of setting up a Cook Islands National Art Theatre, focussing on traditional dances etc. We are awaiting approval from Cabinet to go ahead with that one.

There are also many proposals on paper like a culture video unit, slack guitar workshop and support for community self

help activities.

Disappointments?

One big disappointment here for me is that the islands do give low priority to culture. The Prime Minister gives it very

high priority, but generally speaking people tend to take their culture for granted.

Also the budget is too small for the aims and objectives of the ministry NZ51,212,600. Lack of space is another problem. We presently have the Ombudsman offices in between ours although he is moving soon. It is hard to be organised when we are all on top of one another.

Some people in

Rarotonga, including

artists, feel that the ministry is more interested in making money out of culture rather than promoting culture for its own sake.

What is your view?

I think that is a premature

judgement. The ministry

needs to be looked at in perspective I believe its survival is linked with doing

productive activity I honestly do. A cultural division existed before and was done away with. Why was it so easy to wipe it out? Because people wanted to see results and didn’t. People criticise our budget but they don’t see that it cost NZ$3OO,OOO to bring the Northern Group islands alone to Rarotonga for

the Constitution Celebrations this year. I don’t see the tourist as an enemy but as a friend. It’s tourism that sustains people like (carver/tyedye t-shirt artist) Mike Tavioni. He supplies the same old products like tangaroa, but he also spends time creating. Then there is the t-shirt factory. They are creative and use traditional and new designs. People involved commercially, like them, are trying to bring back old motifs and incorporate ' them into their own designs part of the presentation of what is the Cook Islands. If they are able to survive they become resource people that we can utilise, say, with workshops. That is not to say that we ignore uncommercial interests like marae and recording oral traditions. A blend of tourist production and creative production is needed.

Many overseas artists get government grants and fellowships to do certain projects wouldn’t that be a better way of encouraging creativity here?

That idea is incorporated into the Ministry Act and will hopefully be linked with the Cook Islands Art Council so that they can look at applications and choose candidates with us putting up the grant. But once again we have budgetary restraints. If we could get help from organisations overseas it would be more possible. Right now we are having amazing interest in canoe carving and groups are asking for help with purchasing tools, and we can’t even help from our own budget with that. We’re actually looking through other governmental channels for assistance. We hope in the future once we are more established that such things can happen.

I hear there is going to be a Cook Islands painting going to Namibia soon how did that happen?

There has been increasing interest in us as a point of contact since we were set up, and particularly with the attention connected to the 1992 festival. We got a direct letter inviting

us to donate a painting. We have to cover the cost of freight and insurance which is surprisingly expensive. The artist is donating the work for the Cook Islands.

How can you help people with their art right now?

We can be a channel for them to overseas grants and interested parties, and we are trying to promote arts with prizes etc. We hope to have something like an Artist of the Year award soon, similar to Dancer of the Year. We ran the logo competition for the Arts Festival and gave out NZS9OO in prizemoney for that we are now running a festival song

composition competition in

conjunction with the music association. We are using local artists to illustrate the book on islands’ oral traditions we are

editing if possible using

artists from the particular islands concerned. In fact

whatever work we have we want to give to local artists. Our new sign, done by Mike Tavioni, is a good example of this happening. We want to network with artists but we can only help them if they tell us what they want. They need to feel that it is their ministry too. □