VAAI HANGA KAINGA giving care to the motherland: conflicting narratives of Rapanui (original) (raw)

2004, Journal of Intercultural Studies

This paper retells the story of Rapanui from the perspective of the 'insider'. Particular attention is paid to cultural mistranslations of pertinent historical documents and the ambiguous and arbitrary nature of popular Rapanui legends and histories in some published texts. The paper examines the conflicting translations of the Rapanui and Spanish versions of the Treaty and Proclamation and their long-term ramifications in terms of land rights and self-determination of the Rapanui. People make their own history, but not of circumstances of their own choosing. (McCall, 1994, p. 11) Iama native of Rapanui (Easter Island) which locals also call our island, Kainga, the umbilical connection to mother earth. Since early childhood I learned Rapanui at home and Spanish in school and became interested in Spanish and Rapanui interpretations and translations as a teenager. This interest in translation was further fuelled by the conversations that I experienced with my ancestors. My grandmother, who was born in the early 1900s, explained that the Chileans had shortened my last name to Hito because my full last name Hitorangi was too difficult to pronounce (see McCall, 1994). She and other elders also always told me that the 'Treaty' was invalid, because Rapanui was never ceded to Chile. While working on the Warner Brothers/Kevin Costner feature film production of Rapa Nui in 1992, I first became aware of the mistranslation of a popularly accepted published legend whereby Hanau Momoko was interpreted as 'Long Ears' and Hanau Eepe was translated as 'Short Ears' (Heyerdahl, 1958). There is a phonetic error between the words Eepe, which means 'heavy set', and Epe, which means 'ear lobe'. The correct translation of Hanau Momoko is 'tall slender people' and Hanau Eepe is 'broad, strong or corpulent people' (Englert, 1970, p. 93). My concern with such misinterpretations and mistranslations about Rapanui led me to further investigate the Treaty between Chile and Rapanui. In particular how