The Future of Tokelau: Decolonising Agendas, 1975-2006

By Judith Huntsman and Kelihiano Kalolo

The Future of Tokelau is a sequel to Judith Huntsman and Antony Hooper's Tokelau: A Historical Ethnography (1997), and follows the history of that small Pacific nation from the 1970s up to the recent referendum in which Tokelauans decisively voted against independence. This is an extraordinary story a dramatic narrative sometimes taking place under the palm trees of far-away Tokelau, sometimes in the bland offices of New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, sometimes in the monumental UN building in New York. Officials and politicians and Tokelau elders all play their role and the repeated clash of cultures leads to comic, bizarre and often disturbing outcomes. A superbly researched study of the politics of a small state in a modern world, The Future of Tokelau is also an illuminating picture of MFAT, its operations and relationships, and a brilliant critique of the United Nations and the way it conducts its affairs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Jan 9, 2007
• ISBN: 9781869406653

Book preview

The Future of Tokelau – the sequel to Tokelau: A Historical Ethnography (1997) by Judith Huntsman and Antony Hooper – follows the history of this small Pacific nation from the 1970s up to the 2006 referendum in which the Tokelauans voted to remain a dependency of New Zealand rather than become self-governing in free association with New Zealand. Over the course of this history, Huntsman, with assistance from Kelihiano Kalolo, astutely documents the mismatch of cultural assumptions, expectations and values played out by officials, politicians and Tokelau elders on a stage ranging from the coral atolls of Tokelau, the bland offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the monumental UN building in New York. The Future of Tokelau is a superbly researched study of village social life and politics in a modernising world; an illuminating picture of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, its operations and relationships; and a brilliant critique of the United Nations and the way it conducts its affairs. But it is the lumanaki – or the future of Tokelau – as perceived by the Tokelau people that is at the centre of this perceptive book.

THE FUTURE OF TOKELAU

The Future of Tokelau

DECOLONISING AGENDAS, 1975–2006

JUDITH HUNTSMAN

with Kelihiano Kalolo

First published 2007

This ebook edition 2013

Auckland University Press

University of Auckland

Private Bag 92019

Auckland 1142

New Zealand

www.press.auckland.ac.nz

© Judith Huntsman, 2007

eISBN 978 1 86940 665 3

Publication is assisted by the History Group, Ministry for Culture and Heritage

National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Huntsman, Judith.

The future of Tokelau : decolonising agendas, 1975–2006 /

Judith Huntsman with Kelihiano Kalolo.

eISBN : 978-1-86940-665-3

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Tokelau—History. 2. Tokelau—Economic conditions.

I. Kalolo, Kelihiano. II. Title.

996.15—dc 22

This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of the publisher.

COVER DESIGN: Christine Hansen

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

PART ONE

ONE Preamble – 1960 to 1974

TWO The Ministry Takes Charge

PART TWO

THREE Māopoopo Compromised – the Tokelau Public Service

FOUR Pule / ‘Authority’ – Political Roles and Institutions

FIVE Te Lumanaki o Tokelau / ‘The Future of Tokelau’ – Tokelau, New Zealand and the United Nations

PART THREE

SIX A Tokelau National Government – the First Design

SEVEN A New House for Tokelau – the Second Design

EIGHT Aiming Towards Self-determination – 2003–06

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for a small grant that enabled me to begin documentary research on Ministry files in 1999, and for permission to access files that are not yet generally available, both at Archives New Zealand and within the Ministry. The Ministry’s archivists, specifically Graeme Eskrigge, Karen Bolger and John Mills, have been graciously responsive to my requests and helpful in resolving problems. Archives New Zealand staff were invariably informative and accommodating. A special thanks to John Fleming, who was Advisory Officer in the Ministry’s Tokelau Unit in 2004–06 when I was completing my research, for expediting my use to recent files.

I am indebted to past and present New Zealand Government officials and others who shared their recent and remembered experiences and thoughts. Some even provided copies of letters, reports and other documents they had written to Antony Hooper and myself. They include, in no particular order: Frank Corner, H. H. (Tim) Francis, Ken Piddington, Neil Walter, Tony Angelo, Graham Fortune, John Larkindale, Tony Browne, Adrian Macey, Tony Johns, John Springford, Suzanne Loughlin, Rod Gates, Don Stewart and Lindsay Watt.

The generosity of photographers of Tokelau in providing images nearly overwhelmed me and I must thank all those who made their images available (even if they were not used in the end): Michael Field, Angela Gregory, Tony Johns, Valerie Green, Bill Gasson, Herman Oberli (via Paul Cotton) and Tony Hooper, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the New Zealand Defence Force. Also I thank Julie Park and Jack Patana for taking needed portrait photographs at short notice, and Tim Mackrell for numerous expert photographic services.

Numerous Tokelau people have, over the years, contributed in discussions, reports and explanations to my understanding of their views and perspectives. I cannot name them all, but recognising the risk of neglecting someone, I feel an obligation to personally thank Tioni Paselio, Kaloline and Pelenato Palehau, Otila and Vaha Tavite, Casimilo Perez, Aleki Silao, Manea Paselio, Vaelua and Feleti Lopa, the late Logotasi Iosefa, the late Kula Fiaola, Ivoni and Loimata Iupati, the late Ema Aliu, Matafele Pereira, Aga and Amusia Patea, Nua Hakai, Dr Iuta Tinielu, Dr Iona Tinielu, Betty Pedro Ickes, Ioane Teao and Fulimalo Pereira-Evans.

This book has been something of an off and on ten-year project. I am grateful to Auckland colleagues and friends, who encouraged me and commented as I talked both formally and informally about parts of it. I am especially grateful to Robin Hooper who read early drafts of all chapters, to Aleki Silao and Tony Johns for their informed reading of the chapters in which they figured, and to Tony Angelo for checking the whole manuscript from his legal perspective. Elizabeth Caffin encouraged me to write this book from the start and she and her staff at Auckland University Press periodically urged me on when I thought it would never end. My thanks to them for their continual support and final care, to a very perceptive anonymous reader, and to editor Michael Wagg for smoothing the final text with tact and sensitivity.

I am of course extremely grateful to Kelihiano Kalolo for his input to this work. In stating the usual caveat that any errors or misrepresentation are entirely my own and regretted, I must specifically exempt Keli from any responsibility for them.

Over the past 40 years I have enjoyed the friendship and hospitality of Tokelau people in all the atolls and within New Zealand. I cannot name everyone – the time is too long, the people too many – so I do heartily thank you all.

Finally, Keli especially thanks his wife, Atene, for her patience and support, and so do I.

Introduction

Tokelau is the second smallest dependency over which the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization has oversight (Pitcairn is smaller). New Zealand is a nation-state of which Tokelau is by Act of Parliament ‘a part’ and within which reside presently an estimated seven times more Tokelau people than are living in the homeland. New Zealand is also the ‘administering power’ responsible to the United Nations Special Committee for the welfare and future decolonisation of Tokelau, and this responsibility rests with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The Future of Tokelau is about the interaction of tiny Tokelau and the vast United Nations, mediated by New Zealand. It is also a sequel to Tokelau: A Historical Ethnography (1996), a study of Tokelau from its ancient history (as it is told in Tokelau) to the late 1960s and early 1970s when Antony Hooper and I conducted intensive ethnographic research in the three atolls. The story told there was of how the three atoll communities came to be as they were when we encountered them, and, more particularly, of how and why they were different from one another.

The Future of Tokelau is historical too, but it is a short history, taking up where the earlier book ended (the first chapter recapitulating and expanding upon the last chapter of its predecessor) and concluding in 2006. Its overriding theme is the future as it is perceived by Tokelauans, who speak among themselves of their lumanaki, and the perceptions of others who speak, from a distance, of ‘the Future of Tokelau’. Between the two there is a mismatch. Other mismatches, resulting in misconceptions, miscommunication and incomprehension, abound and will become apparent as the story unfolds.

The narrative is not strictly chronological. Part One provides historical background. Chapter 1 introduces groups and collectivities of actors and recounts a series of events in which they figured from 1960 to 1974, while Chapter 2 relates the almost simultaneous events of the mid-1970s that set Tokelau on a new course. Part Two takes up three distinct but intertwined topics in three consecutive chapters – the public service, governance, and self-determination – tracing the course of central concerns and issues as they were variously initiated, developed, redirected, transformed, interpreted, and misunderstood through to the end of 1992. The three chapters of Part Three deal with three ‘designs’ for Tokelau’s future in chronological order. Financial and legal matters are sidelined: issues of funding and finance are mentioned from time to time because they are enmeshed with other matters, but a close examination of them is beyond my competence and would be invidious in some instances; legal matters, I also only touch upon, again owing to lack of expertise and also because they have been very competently written about by Tony Angelo, Professor of Law, Victoria University of Wellington.

This book is both a history and a story. It is a history in the sense that it reports on real events and real people, and that it is set in real times and spaces. Yet it becomes a story in the way that it is put together, and in how events are related to one another and to people involved in and with them. It is a story constructed from the different points of view of collectivities or groups of people, represented by specific actors. Any such collection of people is never homogeneous – of one mind or harmonious voice – but for the purposes of this story that dissonance is somewhat submerged. Who then are the people that form these different choruses? Tokelau, as a people, is the foremost, for it is their future around which the story revolves. But this is not a chorus that always sings in harmony – either in the homeland or abroad. Likewise, the New Zealand Government’s several statutory bodies are not always in tune, and their tunes change from time to time. Even the United Nations has been known to modify its song over the years.

The study is tri-sited. Indeed, it concerns two sites of extreme difference – on the one hand, atolls far from anywhere else in the central Pacific, and on the other, the United Nations, the international forum and global centre of diplomacy. Between these two extremes is New Zealand. Yet this is not a tale of exploited colonials and overbearing colonialists, of high-minded internationalists and narrow-minded administrators. There are no villains, victims or heroes, but there are different perceptions and points of view, diverse agendas and intentions, and an abundance of misunderstandings and misconceptions. There is also a plethora of meetings and missions, advisors and consultants involved with proposals and projects, many of which come to nothing in the end.

First-hand or ethnographic research is conducted at a particular time, and the events and arrangements observed and recorded exist in a ‘slice of time’. Studying how Tokelau has changed over 40 years, I have observed a series of such ‘time slices’, or ‘still pictures’, and then worked them into a story – a ‘moving picture’ so to speak – filling in the spaces between by talking to people about what has transpired in those absent intervals and listening to Tokelau people in New Zealand who have been visiting or are receiving news from their homeland. Tracking change is a complex process, affected by a multitude of events and situations – and, of course, by selective or self-interested recall. Even the ‘slices of time’ when I was present could be distorted by specific situations – things do not change smoothly, and in Tokelau villages, any ‘slice of time’ is apt to be unusual in some way. With this caveat, part of the story is constructed from my ethnographic fieldwork in the atolls as follows: (i) two and a half years of intensive field research between late 1967 and the end of 1971; and (ii) four shorter periods of field research at five-year intervals from 1976 to 1991 and a brief visit in 1997. Tony Hooper also visited Tokelau at some of these same times; his fieldwork, which I draw upon, complements my own.

Kelihiano Kalolo has contributed significantly to this volume. I first came to know Keli in 1970 when, as a young man recently returned from advanced telecommunications training in New Zealand, he volunteered to assist me with such routine ethnographic tasks as mapping Atafu village. Thus was established a friendship that 20 years later contributed to his arrival, accompanied by his family, to undertake tertiary studies at the University of Auckland in 1990. He completed his BA degree with distinction and was awarded an MA scholarship. He gained first-class honours for his MA thesis on education in Tokelau (Kalolo 1995), which in turn gained him a University of Auckland doctoral scholarship. At this point, he was confronted with a common dilemma of mature students. His family, now including two grandchildren – and shortly there would be more – had only just managed financially in Auckland, but this was becoming more and more difficult. Moreover, in Tokelau, people had become increasingly aware of his accomplishments and capabilities, and were calling for his return. Torn between a strong sense of obligation to his immediate family, extended families, his home atoll of Atafu, and Tokelau, plus an equally strong academic commitment, he tried to fulfil both. His appointment as Tokelau’s Director of Education, as well as his numerous family and community responsibilities, eventually thwarted the completion of his thesis. His disappointment was tempered when we agreed that parts of his doctoral research and writing would be incorporated in this book. His insights and deep knowledge of Tokelau and his versatility and subtle fluency in the language have enriched the whole enterprise. From the outset, we have shared our observations and understandings, and have continued to do so throughout the book’s writing. Keli began his field research in 1994 with his MA thesis, and from 1997 has participated in Tokelau life both as an observing scholar and a fully engaged member of the community. Thus, though my direct research in Tokelau ceased in 1997, the ethnographic input to this book did not.

Tokelauans resident in New Zealand figure lightly in the present study. I undertook field research with Tokelauans living in and about Wellington in 1972. In Auckland, I have occasional, regular, or continual interaction with individual Tokelauans. Thus, the primary ethnographic sources on New Zealand-Tokelau communities and activities, based on field research primarily among young people, are Sallen’s (1983) study of scholarship students and her 1984–98 more general study of the younger generation (Green 1988, 1998).

The New Zealand Government, mainly represented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the late Island Affairs division of the Department of Maori and Island Affairs, and the State Services Commission, has for years been interacting and negotiating with Tokelau, and reporting to and negotiating with the United Nations with respect to Tokelau. Since 1967, I have from time to time had access to documents concerning these relationships. An unanticipated month-long wait for transport to the atolls in 1981 was opportune for close study of files then held at the Office of Tokelau Affairs. Island Affairs files have been accessed at Archives New Zealand in its several locations. Foreign Affairs files at the archives and maintained by the Ministry were investigated more recently. The archival documents referenced herein are identified by their location, file series numbers, volume or part, and date. I caution that they may no longer be in the same place where I initially viewed them.

My understanding of New Zealand’s changing practices and policies, arrangements and aims regarding Tokelau has been very considerably enhanced by informal conversations and discussions with officials directly involved over the years (cited as personal communications). My aim has been to understand why the administering power, through its concerned officials, has acted and reacted in the way that it has – much in the same way as I have tried to understand Tokelau and Tokelauans’ actions and reactions in changing circumstances. This has entailed reading the literature by and about the Ministry of Foreign/External Affairs and some of its senior officers, and indeed, as a North American, coming to understand something of how the New Zealand Government works. I have sought to approach the United Nations in the same manner. My sources on its perspective are a combination of ‘general knowledge’, official documents and statements electronically available, and, most importantly, relevant Foreign Affairs documents.

In early manuscript drafts, I identified specific New Zealand actors only by office or role – e.g. Official Secretary, Administrator, Prime Minister, and so on. This was a kind of superficial confidentiality – a matter of etiquette. However, I was persuaded for reasons of both style and comprehension to name those in particular official positions most of the time.

While the narrative related here is based primarily on my own field and archival research, it is heavily informed by my ongoing collaboration with Antony Hooper. In the atolls, Tony lived and worked in Fakaofo, while I lived and worked in Nukunonu and Atafu. In New Zealand in the early 1970s, my intensive research was in the Wellington metropolitan area, while his was in Auckland and elsewhere. More recently he has resided in Wellington, interacting with the Tokelau communities there, while I remain in Auckland. We have always shared our information and understandings, and have usually agreed, though occasionally productively disagreed, about Tokelau matters. When we first began our Tokelau studies in 1967, we did not anticipate that they would be so long-term, so absorbing, so diverse. We have delved into Tokelau’s past, savoured Tokelau’s present, and will follow with interest and fascination the emerging ‘future’ of Tokelau.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Preamble – 1960 to 1974

E tau nei ki fea, Tokelau to tā vaka?

‘Tokelau, where will your canoe fetch up?’

– CONTEMPORARY SONG TEXT

The story of what happened in and about Tokelau during the past several decades (1975–2006) demands an introduction to actors and events of the preceding decade and a half. The essential ingredients of narratives are actors and events. Actors are introduced first, for it is they who normally initiate and respond to the events, and unless their nature is known, their actions and responses are difficult to comprehend. The actors introduced here are categories or groups of people with particular notions, values, and ideas – in effect ‘cultures’. Not all the people of any group or category hold to exactly the same values or entertain identical notions and ideas. However, whether they are a people of a place or officers in government departments or representatives on a United Nations committee, they do have experiences and perspectives quite different from the experiences and perspectives of others. Events characteristically involve at least two actor groups, and below I traverse those events particularly relevant to the story that follows.

Actors and their ‘cultures’

Tokelau

From the latter half of the nineteenth century, the three Tokelau atolls were virtually internally self-governing, each doing things its own way. To outsiders they seemed much alike. They spoke a common language, and recognised and celebrated their bonds of kinship and a common past, but they were also self-consciously different – each had, and has, its own history.

The three atolls lie some 500 kilometres north of Samoa in latitudes of 8° to 10° south and longitudes 171° to 173° west along a northwest to southeast axis of some 150 kilometres. Atafu is the most northerly, Fakaofo the most southerly, and Nukunonu is positioned in between, a bit closer to Fakaofo. A fourth atoll, about 100 kilometres south of Fakaofo, called Olohega in Tokelau and Swains Island elsewhere, was historically part of the group, but has been progressively alienated (Ickes 1997, Skaggs 1994: 214–15).

According to Tokelau’s common ancient history, the autochthonous populations of the atolls were unrelated and mutually hostile. After an indeterminate era of inconclusive and periodic conflicts, Fakaofo became ascendant, conquering Nukunonu and impelling the original Atafu people to abandon their homeland (Huntsman & Hooper 1996: 127–39). Associated with Fakaofo’s ascendancy was the ‘great god of all Tokelau’, Tui Tokelau, whose location was in the beyond and was embodied by a huge stone standing before the god’s house in Fakaofo. Tui Tokelau’s principal worshipper (on behalf of all Tokelau) was Fakaofo’s reigning paramount aliki. Fakaofo exacted tribute from Nukunonu and periodically exploited the resources of deserted Atafu. Of lasting significance were the relations of kinship established between dominant Fakaofo and subordinate Nukunonu. Fakaofo men took Nukunonu women as consorts – but contrary, it is said, to the Tokelau practice of post-marital residence, whereby the man comes to live at the place where the woman resides. The children of these unions, though born in Fakaofo, were nonetheless attached to Nukunonu on their maternal side. This was the heritage of the man who was sent from Fakaofo around 1800 to resettle Atafu along with his wife, a Nukunonu woman. Thus, in the early 1800s when Western foreigners were appearing off Tokelau shores and on Tokelau beaches, they came to portray the three atolls as one polity (see, in particular, Hale 1846 and Wilkes 1845).¹ Fakaofo was dominant, home to the paramount aliki, host to the instantiation of Tui Tokelau, and recognised as the pule – ‘power, authority’ – over all Tokelau, including Olohega, which was also a Fakaofo outpost. Western visitors’ reports briefly document this atoll empire, which Tokelau narratives and genealogies tell of in far greater detail (Huntsman & Hooper 1996: Ch. 4, Matagi Tokelau 1991: Ch. 3). Western intrusions ended this empire, but not the relations between the atolls forged by intermarriage. All people in Atafu celebrated their (mostly) Fakaofo founding father and Nukunonu founding mother. Most people in Nukunonu and Fakaofo acknowledged ancestors and kin in both places.

The Marist mission forcibly removed 500 people from Fakaofo to Uvea, to the west and south of Tokelau, in 1852 (Huntsman 2004, Huntsman & Hooper 1996: 191–92). The atoll was almost instantly repopulated from the other atolls, and thereafter Fakaofo repeatedly rebuffed both Marist and London Missionary Society visitors. Fakaofo asserted its hegemony by steadfast adherence to Tui Tokelau, despite being the primary target of foreign proselytisers. By contrast, virtually simultaneously in 1861, Atafu sought and received Protestant teachers, and the people of Nukunonu committed themselves to the Catholic faith of a returned chiefly son. All this, of course, made political sense. By converting to Christian faiths, Atafu and Nukunonu rejected Tui Tokelau and thereby challenged Fakaofo’s domination. Other foreign intruders provoked Fakaofo’s eventual conversion, and the atoll ended up hosting two contesting Christian faiths – Protestant and Catholic.

In the early months of 1863, Protestant missionaries visited a dysentery epidemic upon Fakaofo, and slavers operating out of Peru ‘stole’ an estimated total of 253 people from all Tokelau, including most of the able-bodied men (Maude 1981: Ch. 9, Appendix; Huntsman & Hooper 1996: 204–10). During the remainder of the century, the Tokelau population gradually recovered, but Fakaofo could not reinstate its supremacy. The missions, and later, colonial powers, treated the atolls as three equivalent and autonomous polities. Fakaofo made assertions to the contrary from time to time, but they were dismissed by these outsiders who did not know their history, and resisted by Atafu and Nukunonu who did. From the latter part of the nineteenth century and indeed to the present, the three populations have been self-governing polities, protective of both their autonomy and their equality, withstanding the attempts of outsiders to compromise their internal pule and even their own attempts to outdo each other.

Yet Tokelau was subject to colonial presences, and usually welcomed them, viewing them as benefactors who would tauhi – ‘look after’ – them. Tokelau was formally pronounced a protectorate of the Western Pacific High Commission in 1889. In 1909 the atolls were included in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Protectorate and then annexed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony in 1916. In 1925–26, New Zealand assumed responsibility for the atolls’ administration on behalf of the British Crown, and the atolls formally came under the authority of the Governor-General of New Zealand who then delegated certain powers to the Administrator of Western Samoa (Huntsman & Hooper 1996: Ch. 8).

Following the Second World War, as a consequence of New Zealand’s changing relationship with Britain, Tokelau’s political status altered yet again. With the passage of the Tokelau Islands Act of 1948, Tokelau became a ‘part of New Zealand’ and, shortly thereafter, Tokelauans became New Zealand citizens. The Tokelau Islands Act 1948 with subsequent amendments establishes Tokelau’s political status as a dependency of New Zealand – a status which the vast majority of Tokelauans cherish.

Through the 1960s, Tokelau life remained much the same as in the earlier decades of the century. Each village of thatched dwellings and cookhouses, with spacious churches and meeting houses, and modest hospitals and schoolrooms, was located on an islet at the western margins of the atoll. Outrigger canoes were beached at the lagoon shore between the vertical sides of man-made coral platforms from which latrines extended out over the lagoon. Men paddled and sailed their outrigger canoes across the lagoons to harvest coconuts and other produce, swam in the lagoon and walked the reef to net or hook small fish, and guided their canoes over the reef and through breaking waves to capture pelagic fish of the surrounding ocean. Women typically stayed in the village, looking after the young and elderly, plaiting the coconut and pandanus mats covering the coral floors of their houses and cookhouses, and allocating and cooking the produce the men harvested and the fish they caught. As the Tokelau adage goes: ‘Women stayed [in their natal homes] and men went [in the path].’

However, life in the village was far more than the routines of harvesting and fishing, mat plaiting and cooking, because things communal took precedence and communal activities were a regular part of each week’s activities. There were meetings to attend, joint tasks to be undertaken, and games to be played. Elderly men met at least once a week to decide, to plan, to judge and reprimand. All women met, with the matrons in charge, to decide, to plan, to reprimand – and then to play – at least once a week. The able-bodied men either joined the elders or met on their own to organise communal projects and activities. The competing village ‘sides’ (fāitū) gathered to plan their projects and competitions, and several clubs convened irregularly in pursuit of their special interest. Many of these village groups were replicated in church groups that met regularly too. Life in Tokelau villages was busy – at times tirelessly so, with communal feasts and cricket matches and evening dance festivities carrying on for weeks at a time. All this activity, and indeed much of the fishing and harvesting, was carefully programmed and ultimately approved by the Taupulega – ‘Council of [male] Elders’.

A person’s position was determined primarily by age. Toeaina and lōmatua – ‘elderly men’ and ‘elderly women/matrons’ – each collectively exercised pule (‘authority’), directing and admonishing younger men and women respectively. The toeaina assembled as the Taupulega had collective village-wide responsibility for good order and peace, and were the recognised spokesmen and decision-makers for the village. The authority of age was acknowledged in all activities; a senior person was properly in charge and deferred to whether a group was preparing food or fishing or harvesting, and even when two people were engaged in some activity the elder one would direct the younger. While this age hierarchy was pervasive, it was one in which a person’s position changed as they aged, so that over time they incrementally gained more authority over others and became less subject to others’ authority themselves.

The village polity was composed of a network of extended propertied families or kāiga, each collectively controlling canoes, houses and productive land. People were ‘attached to’ (tau) all kāiga on both their mother’s and father’s sides. Kāiga provided for their members’ livelihood, harvests from their lands and catches from their canoes being divided among them. Membership in kāiga also entailed obligations to support other members, to co-operate in the exploitation of kāiga resources, and to obey the instructions of its senior members: the toeaina who directed kāiga affairs and protected its interests, and the female fatupaepae – literally ‘foundation stone’ – who resided in the family homestead and ‘distributed’ (fakahoahoa) its resources. These two elders were or represented a brother–sister pair, and were expected to honour, respect and support one another at a distance. The sister and brother relationship was the core of the Tokelau kinship universe.

Through the 1960s and for many decades before, life in Tokelau was concerned with kāiga and the numerous rights and duties these multiple affiliations entailed, and with communal village activities that took precedence over kāiga affairs. Weekly meetings and days designated for certain activities structured the normal week, ending with hours of church services and activities on Sunday. The arrival of the supply ship, bearing visitors and officials, disrupted these routines, but only four times a year or fewer. On those days there was rarely enough time to do everything. The ship was unloaded and reloaded, visitors were hosted, official matters were dealt with, copra was weighed and paid for, and basic supplies of flour, rice and sugar, necessities of soap, kerosene and tobacco, and perhaps some dry goods were bought. Occasionally, the ship might bring a party of visitors from one or both of the other atolls to celebrate an event, such as a church opening, or a team and its supporters to compete in cricket. It was only on these rare occasions that Tokelau as a whole came together. On the one hand, people reconnected with kin from other villages, eating together and gifting one another. On the other hand, people represented their village, intent on outdoing the other (or others) in whatever activity had brought them together. While in a sense they were all Tokelau together, they were also three villages engaged in serious contests of one-upmanship.²

Tokelau abroad

To foreigners, Tokelau is a remote and isolated place, difficult either to get to or away from. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, visits by missionaries – and later, British Protectorate officials – were frequently thwarted by the absence of any transport. Indeed, throughout the twentieth century, officials were regularly frustrated in their attempts to reach the atolls, and there were lengthy periods when there was virtually no documented outside contact. Yet Tokelau people departed and returned, left and stayed away, right throughout their documented history. They went for mission training and schooling to the then Ellice Islands and Samoa. They were missionaries to Papua. They worked in Samoa. They were recruited labourers in the Phoenix Islands, Banaba, and even Hawai‘i. At Olohega, the Jennings family had established an ongoing community of Tokelau workers, numbers of whom moved on to American Samoa and eventually Hawai‘i, founding a Tokelau community there (Ickes 1997).

Catholic and Protestant churches in Samoa hosted Tokelau students and workers during the late nineteenth century. When New Zealand assumed administrative responsibility for Tokelau in the mid-1920s, Tokelau households were established in and around Apia, and others lived in Samoan villages – usually as spouses with their children and occasionally other kin, and sometimes as pastors with their families. By at least 1937, some of them joined together in a Fakalāpotopotoga (‘Association’), with the primary aim of accumulating funds to purchase land to accommodate and support a Tokelau community in the vicinity of Apia. The Association expanded in about 1950, when more people had moved from the atolls seeking employment or for schooling, and in 1960 the first piece of land was bought. Though two other parcels were acquired later, the spirit of the Association waned just as its aim was achieved. With Western Samoa independence in 1962, Tokelau people there became aliens in a foreign land rather than an equally colonialised people under the same administering power. Their non-citizen status in Samoa, together with their status as New Zealand citizens, spurred the initial migration to New Zealand. The Association’s membership dropped precipitously from a 1950s high of more than 400 to just over 150 in 1971. The diminished community persisted, hosting people from the atolls in Apia for schooling or medical treatment, and people in transit to New Zealand from Tokelau or visiting Tokelau from New Zealand.³ Thus, Apia became a temporary residence or way station rather than a destination.

Most of the very earliest Tokelau migrants to New Zealand in the late 1950s and early 1960s had lived in Samoa for some time. They initiated the classic pattern of chain migration, paying fares and hosting others from both Samoa and Tokelau. However, Tokelauans also arrived in New Zealand direct from Tokelau, either assisted or sponsored by the New Zealand Government. Between 1963 and 1965, 40 young unmarried people were sponsored to work and twelve students received scholarships for post-primary schooling. In the later 1960s, the Tokelau Resettlement Scheme (see below) primarily assisted family groups to settle in the central North Island and scholarships continued for a few students each year, and more people arrived, either to stay or visit, hosted by an increasing number of kin already established in New Zealand. By the early 1970s at least an equal number of Tokelauans could be counted in New Zealand and in Tokelau (Huntsman 1975: 183), and by mid-decade the New Zealand population had well outnumbered that of the atolls. At the same time, the atoll population was only some 300 persons less than its highest figure of 1900 a decade before. This apparent phenomenal growth of the New Zealand Tokelau population, from about 445 in 1966 to 2008 in 1974, may be accounted for in part by the uncounted number who migrated direct from Western Samoa and in part by the reproductive success of the young people who had migrated in the early 1960s.⁴

The Wellington region was home to the largest number of Tokelauans. A lesser number lived in Auckland, and the central North Island towns of Rotorua and Taupo were home to numbers of resettled families and young single people who had married locally. A few people ended up in the South Island for various reasons, and there was a scattering of others elsewhere in New Zealand (see Wessen et al. 1992: Ch. 7 for a fuller discussion). Scholarship students filled households during the holidays, and parents and siblings visiting from Tokelau swelled household numbers. Geographically, the Tokelau atolls and New Zealand were indeed two distinct places (some 3000 kilometres distant), yet the messages and movement flowing between them made them socially one.

The United Nations and the Special Committee on the Implementation of the Declaration on Decolonization (‘Committee of 24’)

The Charter of the United Nations states the responsibilities and obligations of its members who administer non-self-governing territories based on the ‘principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount …’; they are to ‘accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost … the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories’. Specifically, they are:

(a) to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement …;

(b) to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory …;

(c) to further international peace and security;

(d) to promote constructive measures of development …; and

(e) to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General … statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions ….

(United Nations 1945: Chapter XI ‘Declaration regarding non-self-governing territories’, Article 73)

The membership of the United Nations expanded dramatically in 1960, when Cyprus and sixteen newly independent African nations took their seats. The voices of the decolonised called for immediate steps to end colonisation, to allow all peoples to be free and independent, and they prevailed. The General Assembly on 14 December 1960 passed Resolution 1514 (XV), declaring:

(a) The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.

(b) All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

(c) Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.

(UNGA 1960a)

A companion Resolution 1541 (XV), passed the following day, set out three options for self-determination by which a non-self-governing territory would be deemed ‘to have reached a full measure of self-government’ and would be considered decolonised (UNGA 1960b):

(a) Emergence as a sovereign independent State;

(b) Free association with an independent State; or

(c) Integration with an independent State.

(Principle VI)

The option of ‘free association with an independent state’ was