Rapa Nui
The 2010 Hanga Roa land occupation, the documented record of the December 2010 evictions, and the Pacific ties that connect Kānaka Maoli to the Salish coast
The Record
Hanga Roa, 2010 — Occupation and Eviction
Beginning in July 2010, members of Rapa Nui clans peacefully occupied buildings and sites in and around Hanga Roa, the island's principal settlement, in support of long-standing claims to ancestral lands they hold were taken from their families and never lawfully returned. The occupations were sustained for months and were the subject of communications to the Government of Chile by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
On 3 December 2010, Chilean Carabineros carried out an operation to evict occupiers from the disputed properties. Amnesty International recorded that more than twenty Indigenous people were injured during the operation, and expressed concern regarding human rights violations committed against the Rapa Nui in the context of the unresolved land claims. International press reporting from the same period documented the use of pellet rounds at close range and dozens of injuries.
In 2011 an International Observers' Mission travelled to the island and published its findings through the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, examining the evictions, the criminal proceedings that followed, and the underlying question of Rapa Nui land tenure and self-determination.
The Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi records these events as a matter of Pacific Indigenous concern. The account above follows the published documentation listed below.
Sources
AI Index AMR 22/006/2010. Records Amnesty International's concern over human rights violations against the Rapa Nui in the context of unresolved Indigenous land claims, following the 3 December 2010 eviction operation in which over twenty Indigenous people were injured.
Report of the International Observers' Mission to Rapa Nui, 2011, published by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs and the Observatorio Ciudadano.
The Special Rapporteur conveyed concern to the Government of Chile regarding the violent evictions, and the threat of further evictions, of Rapa Nui who had peacefully occupied buildings and sites since July 2010 in support of ancestral land claims.
Contemporaneous press reporting of the December 2010 clashes and the injuries sustained during the eviction.
Pacific Ties
The Squamish Nation Connection
Kānaka in Salish Territory — The Nineteenth-Century Record
Between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, a thousand or more Native Hawaiians — known in the Pacific Northwest as Kanaka — travelled to the west coast of North America as seamen, fur-trade labourers, and independent voyagers. While most returned home, a number remained and formed families in what became British Columbia, on the territories of Coast Salish peoples including the Squamish Nation.
Hawaiian settlement there was distinctive: rather than remaining apart, Hawaiian men married Indigenous women of the coast, and their descendants were absorbed into local Indigenous families and communities. Hawaiian households at Coal Harbour and along the inlet — the settlement remembered as Kanaka Ranch — sit in the documented record of this intermarriage, producing kinship lines that join Kānaka Maoli and Squamish families to the present day.
These kinship ties belong to the historical record of the Pacific, and they are the ground on which the Kingdom's coastal relationships rest today.
Primary Reference
Jean Barman, “New Land, New Lives: Hawaiian Settlement in British Columbia,” The Hawaiian Journal of History (1995) — University of Hawaiʻi, eVolsMeeting with Squamish Chiefs and a Proposed Solidarity Action
Oral account held by the KingdomThe following is the Kingdom's account of the meeting, held in the archive as oral history.
It is recounted that, drawing on the historical kinship between Kānaka Maoli and the Salish coast, the Aliʻi Nui met with Squamish chiefs to discuss the situation on Rapa Nui and what Pacific and coastal Indigenous nations might do in support of the Rapa Nui land claim.
In the account, the discussion turned to a trade-based act of solidarity — a proposed withholding or restriction of commercial dealings as a peaceful means of registering objection to the treatment of the Rapa Nui. The proposal is remembered as a matter raised and discussed among those present.
It is held in the archive as the Kingdom's account of a meeting and of a proposal raised at it.
Archival Note
The publications linked on this page may be read in full at their sources.