June 14, 2001 

By Michael Field

  New Zealand ’s Prime Minister Helen Clark is not your average demi-god but in Polynesia’s Cook Islands she gets treated like a paramount high chief.

   So few VIPs ever make it to the Cook’s capital on Rarotonga -- a lush, high-peaked and atoll fringed island of 67 square kilometres (27 square miles) -- that when they get one she or he is overwhelmed by the locals.

   Clark flew out of mid-winter bound Wellington to mark one of the world’s unlikeliest celebrations this week -- the 100th anniversary of New Zealand ’s annexation of the Cook Islands .

   Now the self-governing Cooks, home to 18,500 people, has visions of joining the United Nations but while New Zealand likes to largely wash its hands of its problems, few other countries regard it as an independent state. Most ambassadors accredited there -- including those of the European Union, France and China -- are resident in Wellington, with the Cook Islands providing a luxurious mid-winter escape venue, right on their patch.

   While New Zealand ’s administration of the Cooks up until 1965 was clumsy and inept, the Cook Islanders love New Zealand so much that over 40,000 of them live there.

   And as Clark well knew, around 70 percent of them in New Zealand vote for her Labour Party.

   So when the ageing air force jet touched down on the white runway of Rarotonga this week, she knew the reception would be warm. However, unlike the anticipated welcome, Clark is austere, mostly humourless and not given to any kind of personal indulgences.

   As she came down the gangway, large Polynesian men covered in little more than long leaves were waiting beside a canoe. In her best democratic and socialist traditions she tentatively stepped into it and was hoisted aloft while dancing girls welcomed her in a style symbolising the voyaging traditions of the Polynesians.

  At a couple of points she tried the kind of wave Queen Elizabeth could do in her sleep, but mostly she gripped onto the canoe sides. In Polynesia personal wishes and political style always give way to community custom.

   Around one thousand years before Europeans reached New Zealand , Cook Island Maori had set sail and colonised New Zealand -- then only a land of giant birds. Even still the people there can point to the place at Muri Beach where the great canoes left for Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud.

   With the South Seas awash in troubles, coups in the Solomons and Fiji for example, the Cooks is a haven of calm, warmth and sensuality. They are a prosperous, happy people with ready smiles and none of the tensions of elsewhere.

  Clark often found herself being eulogised as a fine flower and, with a new chiefly name, “the shadow of the island’s highest peak”.

   Dancing is big here and it most certainly is not modest any more. The women are shapely and show it; the men are masculine and interested, and make no attempt to hide it. The first Christian missionaries got the Cook Islanders out of grass skirts and into neck-to-ankle dresses. Now it’s back to grass skirts and coconut shell tops -- and for men and women alike, plenty of coconut oiled brown skin. Perhaps in a compromise to the later Christian God they’re forever saying prayers.

   As Clark got around Rarotonga on the main day of the celebration she was present at no less than 12 prayer sessions -- and reporters were excluded from the main state event which had a whole conclave of pastors and reverends on hand.

   One of the traditional leaders of the Cooks, a woman known as Pa Teupokotini Ariki Marie, was lyrical over Clark and New Zealand , noting that nobody else in the world honoured their annexation.

   “That the Cook Islands is doing so must, in itself, say something about this country’s relationship with New Zealand,” she said.

   Part of the passion is that the islanders have New Zealand citizenship -- offering one of the world’s easiest passports to travel with.

   Clark at a press conference showed she was not really sure what some of it was about, saying at one point that New Zealand got nothing out of it, and then, to a question, acknowledging that the culture, music and dance of the Cooks has vastly enriched the bigger land.

The problem for Clark and her government is that politically they’re not very happy with anything that seems even vaguely colonial -- they do, after all, now and again berate France for its relationship with French Polynesia and New Caledonia .

   The Cooks is also a legacy of a Premier Richard John Seddon who wanted to create an empire.

   Clark , mystified at the relationship, none the less accepted there was a strong sense of good will.

   “Without it we would not be commemorating the anniversary of the small Dominion of New Zealand in 1901 annexing the Cook Islands, an event that seems very strange to 21st century eyes,” Clark said.

   But it was a pretty good excuse for a party.

By Michael Field

This is going to be a sight worth seeing -- New Zealand ’s austere and humourless Prime Minister Helen Clark carried around on a platform borne by barely clothed hunky men and lithe women.

   It’s happening next week at Rarotonga airport as the Cook Islands celebrates the 100^th anniversary of New Zealands annexation of the Polynesian Islands .

   They’re a dreamy kind of place and any excuse for a party does.

    Ms Clark’s known disinterest in the Pacific would normally see her shy away from such a frivolous event, but political sources say she is going for one reason alone -- Fiji .

   It goes back to the tense Pacific Forum in Kiribati last October. Ms Clark was on the warpath, particularly opposed to Fiji ’s then acting Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase who she went out of her way to snub. She was also anxious to ensure that this year’s forum was not held in Fiji .

   This was where she had an advantage because she used one of New Zealand ’s aging air force Boeing 727s to get to Kiribati , taking a handful of other leaders with her, including Cook’s Prime Minister Terepai Maoate. He had just had major surgery in New Zealand . Ms Clark lobbied him for support against Fiji ’s bid for the forum, asking him to support New Zealand to move the forum to Niue .

   Dr Maoate did a deal; the Cook’s would support New Zealand , provided Ms Clark came to the big party.

    In the event the forum went to Nauru as a compromise.

   So about midnight Monday Ms Clark, the Maori Queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, a handful of ministers and politicians and journalists will wing into the beautiful Rarotonga for a birthday party of doubtful origins.

   Most New Zealanders have little idea of how they got hold of the Cook Islands , or why.

   New Zealand author Dick Scott’s book “Years of the Pooh-Bah” filled in some of the story of New Zealand rule.

   “Neglect and a vague benevolence have been the hallmarks of that rule,” he wrote.

   “Ignorance originally drew New Zealand to the Cooks with false hopes of enrichment; ignorance of the land and its people has remained a permanent condition.”

   The Cook Islands did not really exist as a single entity when New Zealand annexed them in 1901. The northern Cooks, for example, are closer to Samoa culturally and linguistically; the southern Cooks, including the divine Aitutaki, were largely isolated islands to themselves.

   New Zealand ’s Prime Minister of the day, Richard John Seddon, a larger than life character, was clear why he wanted the Cooks, saying the warship Mildura was ready to sail immediately to annexation, despite strongly held opposition in New Zealand to such expansion.

   “Her mission is to help you, to help this colony, and to help the empire…. There are those who for years have long looked with longing eyes.”

   A Maori MP, Hone Heke, argued that from a sentimental point of view he wanted to be joined with the Cooks but urged New Zealand not to make the same mistakes it had made with the Maori.

   When the annexation bill passed through Parliament Seddon sang Rule Britannia and God Save the King.

  Since 1965 the Cooks has been “in free association with New Zealand”, giving it‘s people New Zealand citizenship. More of them live there than in their homeland.

   The Cooks, with its 15 atolls and high islands and a combined land area half the size of that of Singapore spread over an ocean greater in area than the Indian landmass, remains barely viable.

   Yet its people and its undeniable beauty make it a marvellous place to have a party -- even for Spartan Ms Clark .

Copyright: Michael Field