It’s not enough to talk about our culture, we have to live and breathe it, says Papa Mitaera Ngatae Teatuakaro Michael Tavioni BEM. For us the question is how do we breathe life into our culture, our arts and the artists who continue to put our country and culture on the world stage, and usually at their own or someone else’s expense, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.

Art and culture continue to play a crucial role in Cook Islands – though if one says arts and culture in the Cook Islands, they generally think you are referring to performing arts like Tamure, Ura and dance teams. But there is so much more to the growing ways by which we tell our stories and we have pioneers carving out new pathways around the world who are doing just that. The only people that seem to have not heard about them and are celebrating them is us.

Last year Cook Islands News reported on a short documentary on Cook Islands artist and carver Mike Tavioni, which won an award at the Paris Short Film Festival. Director Glenda Tuaine said at the time she was “totally surprised” that Taonga: An Artist Activist had won best short documentary at the festival. Taonga: An Artist Activist has since been selected for the Short Circuit Pacific Rim Film Festival in Victoria, Canada.  

And as this indigenous story of ourselves and one of our arts Ta’unga makes its way around the globe, Tuaine said: “To the creative minds and supporters in the Cook Islands this is another recognition that our stories, Cook Islands stories, told by Cook Islanders made by Cook Islanders are international stories that the world wants to see and hear…and that we have the talent right here to make film.”

In fact, the film has been screened in New Zealand, Australia, Kurdistan, Paris, Brussels, Geneva, and India, and is set to screen in the USA and Canada. It has now won awards in Paris, Brussels, Geneva and India. Yes, that’s right, a film made in the Cook Islands, by Cook Islanders telling Cook Islands stories about our people, art, culture and ta’unga is being heard around the world – and driven, paid for and funded by those same people and art councils and indigenous film distributors like Maoriland in Aotearoa

What’s that you say, is there more? Yes, that’s not all, our own Mii Taokia produced an animation film called Ko Au' (his second short film) based on the Rarotongan myth Katiakati. Taokia says animation is amazing and a game changer for how we can preserve our history and our storie, that hold the values of our people and the traditions of our culture and customs, and how we can preserve that in the modern time for future generations to look at and to learn from. 

Or if you missed it, yet another film called Burning of the Gods, which was directed by Cook Islanders Karin Williams and produced by Sharlene George. The film opens with the prophetic words of Niuean artist John Pule and continues as a visual tone poem, without dialogue or narration, moving into the past to ask questions about the future.

A young man travels back in time, from luxury resorts and lagoon tours through pandemic and population exodus, to early Christianity when missionaries incinerated his island’s atua and marae. Finally he reconnects with his tipuna who settled the island a thousand years ago. The film’s structure adopts Polynesian perceptions of non-linear time, where past, present and future intertwine. The past coexists with our present and future. Our ancestors are ever-present, alongside and within us.

Our stories, told by our people, with our people front and centre, not cheesy side actors or based on stereotypes about ourselves from others. They are indigenous toketoke stories in a format of this modern time, and stories that echo from our generations past.

If we need to have a look at how we diversify our economy, to look at how we can get our story to the world, to advance what is uniquely us and tackle issues like the environment, colonisation, the preservation of our culture from commodification or just celebrating who we are, then the arts, beyond the timeless beauty that is tamure and ura or dance shows, can do that for us. They just need a hand up from government, our communities at home and around the world so that they can continue to tell, show, direct and celebrate all that we are as people of Avaiki Nui, Avaiki Roa, Avaiki Pamamao, Moana nui Atea.