Ecologies of Resilience

Abstract The history of Rapa Nui has often been told as a cautionary tale meant to reflect on the destructive tendencies of our own civilization, but it looks quite different when told from a Rapanui perspective. This interdisciplinary study uses new source materials to explore an extraordinary story of Native resilience: seldom-used oral histories from Rapanui elders from the 1910s, a Rapanui-language account of its original settlement, and a newly reconstructed Rapanui Chronology of Years, as well as the latest physical data of environmental change on the island, reconstructions of the ancient night sky, and an innovative model of the historical productivity of traditional crops. They reveal the exact stars and winds the ancient Rapanui followed to locate this island originally; their embrace of new crop varieties, animals, and cultivation methods to ensure their subsistence; and their vulnerability to severe droughts and climate change. Rapanui resilience experienced its greatest test during the 1860s and 1870s when interethnic conflict, a punishing La Niña drought, introduced diseases, plantation enslavement, Catholic missionization, and colonization by outsiders struck the island in waves. But Rapanui elders remembered these events as much for their tenacious resistance and resilience to these challenges as for their tragic loss.