| Description |
"The Cook Islands are fifteen islands scattered over an area of 2 million square kilometres of ocean. Situated near the centre of Eastern Polynesia, the islands lie within close proximity of the French Polynesia archipelago to the east and the Samoa islands to the west.
In 1965 the Cook Islands gained a status of internal self-governing and the establishment of the Legislative Assembly, then Parliament thereon after…..and so began the Cook Islands journey into shaping itself as a nation.
In the 1970s, the government realised the importance of oral history and especially the traditional knowledge possessed by the elders of the nation. This led to the establishment of the Tumu Korero division to collect, record, and document oral histories. These are currently housed in the National Archives, and George Baniani, the Manager of the National Archives, was a member of the team that implemented this project. The intention of the government was to have these oral histories published and fed into the education system as resources for our children.
In 1992, the Cook Islands hosted the Festival of Pacific Arts and a fantastic cultural complex was erected to house the Ministry of Cultural Development, but more importantly, the National Auditorium to showcase the vibrant performing arts of the Cook Islands. This building itself has fostered the development of the performing arts and has ensured the rapid growth and enormous interest in the arts, especially from the younger generation of Cook Islanders.
The theme of the Festival of Arts was traditional navigation, and it highlighted the knowledge and skills our ancestors held in overcoming this great expanse of ocean. They had the knowledge of the stars, wave patterns, and migratory birds to guide them from island to island. They settled and populated islands from as far as Palau of the Micronesian islands to Rapanui in the far east of Polynesia, and this was accomplished a thousand years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. " |
