Independent Lens

dramatic music

Do you want me to tell you a story? Yeah. - This is where I was born. With every wave, we're reminded of just how connected we are to the rest of the world. Outsiders named our island Easter and said our past was a mystery, bringing millions of visitors to our shores. The island has to develop. Like any culture, it is changing. Nothing's static. We are interdependent all around the world.

female announcer

Filmmakers Sergio and Elena Rapu invite us to look our world as an island and consider the impact we all have. Each of us has a place we call home, and each of us has a responsibility to care for it. Having you has made us worry more about the future of this island.

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"Eating Up Easter," now, only on "Independent Lens."

stirring music

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quiet music

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Do you want me to tell you a story? Yeah. Okay. Our little furry monster. We waited and wished for three years before you came into our lives.

machine beeping

indistinct chatter

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We named you Koa, a Rapanui word that means "joy." But it's also the name of a tree that your ancestors used to build canoes and sail across the Pacific.

quiet music

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This is where they landed. This is where I was born. Ever since outsiders first saw our moai, they have tried to write our story. Outsiders named our island Easter and said our past was a mystery, bringing millions of visitors to our shores.

chanting and singing

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Having you has made us worry more about the future of this island and what will be left for you, for all of us.

dramatic chords

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upbeat music

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Whenever we go home, my dad loves to drive us around and show us what's changed. Hola. Look at this Ram, a big truck. Kids here are following the same... same thing as elsewhere. Iorana. Hello. Yeah, want a big truck. Here you got a bunch of cabins. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten cabin, man. Ha ha, very simple. Count the tourists coming every plane. I mean, today, Easter Island, we have the highest per capita income in Chile.

soft music

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There's one woman who works in a place where none of the tour buses go. -

speaking Rapanui

drilling sounds

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My dad has held some important roles on Rapa Nui. He was the first native governor in 1984. Today he's building the first mall on the island. And then in this space here, this is going to be the first elevator on this island, but that's all right. You have to bring something in. I'm sure the little kids will be happy pushing button, going up and down here. That's part of the fun. This mall was not thought for touristic purpose. It was thought to facilitate the life of the people in town. Are there people that criticize this building or the idea that Rapa Nui is becoming not Rapa Nui? Once you bring new things in, there's always--there's a certain degree of uncertainty whether it's good or it's bad, but after all, Easter Island is not isolated just like the past anymore. The island has to develop. Like any culture, it is changing. Nothing's static. Your grandfather has always brought new ideas to the island. When I was a teenager, he built the first floor of this building to house a new kind of grocery store modeled after those he had seen in America where instead of asking for products at the counter, you could freely browse aisles of goods. To him, America was full of opportunity. This is where he graduated from university and became the first Rapanui archaeologist. This is where he fell in love with and married my American mother, and this is where they took my sister and I so that we could be educated to succeed in the outside world. But leaving the island at the age that I did meant that I never learned the Rapanui language, and now I wish I could teach it to you.

mellow guitar chords

singing in Rapanui

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The generation of my parents speak Rapanui as first language. All of our generation, most of it doesn't speak it or speaks it very badly. What will happen if we lose our language? We lose all the meaning of ancient stories which are told in Rapanui, the deep meaning which comes from a word which sometimes cannot be translated.

music, singing continues

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sweeping chords

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After a year, when the teacher was about to leave, my mom said, "Okay, we're moving to Chile, so you have a chance to study."

playing "Fur Elise"

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A very famous Chilean pianist invited me to go many countries with him as a child, but each time I'd come and spend time here, I could see the change from one year to another, and I was thinking, "How can I, with piano, help?"

laughter

children repeat in Rapanui

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At the music school, they learn Bach and their traditional songs. That's the beginning of the cultural rescue we want to do. People who have moved into this island from Chile or elsewhere, it's almost 55% of the total population. People just keep coming, coming, coming to live here, and that means a problem to the garbage, the whole archaeological impact. It's just a whole chain of things which can be solved with one law. In 2010, our people proposed a law that would control how long non-residents could stay on the island. Its progress in the Chilean congress was slow, which angered some Rapanui. And they protested using the only power that they had, blocking access to what tourists wanted. You can see our ancient history almost anywhere you look, but since that time, so much more has happened. After Europeans arrived, our people started dying from new diseases. Nearly 1,500 of us were taken to Peru as slaves, and foreigners fought over control of our island. In 1888, the island agreed to give to Chile the sovereignty of the island. In the early 1900s, Chile rented our island to a Scottish sheep company. To protect the sheep, the Rapanui were forced to leave our ancestral lands and corralled into one small area which eventually became the town of Hanga Roa.

lilting music

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When Easter Island was annexed to Chile, personally I think it was good. It was an act of salvation for Rapa Nui's little community. Just to think, in 1877, the population of Rapa Nui was 111 person. It was protected by the Chileans to grow slowly. So around 1966, we were about 1,000 people. Around this time, my uncle led a movement demanding full citizenship for our people. It gave us more rights than ever before, and we started to regain control of our lives by working within this new system.

group singing in Rapanui

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But being part of Chile is complicated. Even though our passport says Chilean, there is a cultural divide that often causes conflict. Today some think that independence would solve this problem, but that, too, is complicated. You become independent as an island, you go below underdevelopment. You have no resource, so what you end up doing? You sell the right to fishing, the right to other things, and you become very dependent on the money of those who pay. We are interdependent all around the world.

baby babbling

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Dada, dada, dada.

bells clatter

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Chh-chh-chh-chh-chh. What is that? Ooh! Oh, my gosh, it's a recycling truck. It's easy to forget that almost everything we own comes from somewhere else, but anything we throw away stays where we live. On our island... That can be a problem.

truck beeping

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For as hard as it is to get waste off the island, the planet seems to want to bring it back to us. Rapa Nui is located in what's called a gyre, where swirling ocean currents gather floating trash. With every wave, we're reminded of just how connected we are to the rest of the world.

quiet music

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soft music, singing in Rapanui

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Sadly, the biggest challenge is--I mean, it's this--it's money.

laughs

playing "Chopsticks"

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laughter

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We have a unique place in the world, which is called Rapa Nui. We need to take care of it, 'cause when this place dies, nobody, no money, nothing will be able to bring it back. For decades, the moai have fed our people by drawing foreign money to our lonely island. To me, the moai represent much more than what our ancestors could do. They show me what impact the past can have on our future.

soft music

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chanting in Rapanui, rhythmic clapping

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When the movie came, my dad, the anthropologist, pulled out his own camera and watched.

singing

percussive music

shouting

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shouts

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Aah! Our people would've changed one way or another because the world was getting smaller. Around this time, the dictator Augusto Pinochet lost power. Chile began to trade more with other countries. Even NASA came to Rapa Nui to expand the runway into an emergency landing site for the U.S. Space Shuttle. The shuttle never showed up, but the new runway brought bigger planes. Now anyone could come. Anything could come. And why would we ever go back? Remember the first time you tasted yogurt? You loved it. But what if, to protect the future of the place that we love, we had to let go of the things that we love? Could we make that choice?

chanting and singing in Rapanui

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speaking in Rapanui

chanting and singing continue

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rooster crows

woman imitates rooster

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Coo-coo-coo-ca-coo!

humming

speaking in Rapanui and French

overlapping speech

quiet music

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You and I come from the Miru clan, who once lived along the north coast. Before I was born, my dad restored our moai here, and many years later, I asked your mom to marry me in the shadow of those same moai. No matter where we live, this place keeps calling us back... And one day, I hope it calls to you.

soft, stirring music

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thunder rumbling

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Well, the construction is still advancing. It's a heavy rain today, so this limits the advancement of the work. Obviously, you'll get quite wet. But your personnel that work, they say, "I'm sorry. I could not come because it was raining." After all, we are in a nice Polynesian environment. Why to rush? But somebody who want to be an entrepreneur and has a deadline of doing the work will have to stay and get nervous or simply take it easy.

thunder rumbling

somber music

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My dad goes to Santiago every few months because here he can buy supplies and get medical attention that our island can't provide. We're right in the middle of the cement forest. When I was growing up in an almost subsistence economy and we would have one ship a year to visit the island and to have a can of peaches, I mean, you would talk for months about it. My father would have an apple and split it in ten little pieces so we can taste it. So in my case, as you grow up, you're also very insecure as to whether you get the money for what you need. So what you do then? You strive and work harder. What is your drive for? You're talking about money making? Yeah. Or just growth and the idea of it. It's utopian for people to say, "Oh, why do you drive for money?" Everybody drives for that to exist. Money is the means by which you attain other things for improving your life.

string music

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The walls were done with tires. Wait--you made the walls from tires? Yeah, then compacted it. We have seen a lot of nonprofits now around the world, and often, like, nonprofit leaders are doing great work, but they don't think a lot about, like, how-- You could want to do all the good in the world, but you don't have the means... No, you're right. I'm just saying-- Yeah, yeah. Tell him that we want on the island to make-- Oh, personally? I don't know him personally. I know who he is. Not personally, no. No, no, no. We really need to get to him and tell him that this is the perfect island to make it completely self-sustainable. I mean, this is perfect for that. It's too small for him. Imagine-- He can completely... like the whole system here. This is a little planet, you know. Anything that works here will work for the rest of the world. Really? Like, if it works for 5,000 people, it's gonna work for 5 million? 5 billion? Can it scale? Like, where I come from, we come from Bangladesh, right? I mean, the capital city has 15 million people. Like, if we bring people from Bangladesh here, like, if you show them that, they're like, "I can't really use it." But you see, the thing is that I think you're thinking it too, like... maybe specific. I know it might not seem comparable, but I think if you sit down... - Yeah, they're similar. And start finding the root thing, you know.

slow violin music continues

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There's a lot of noise in this world, telling us that we'll fail... Let's walk this way. That we're too idealistic... Let's go see the other one. That what we want is not possible. Yay! But it's just noise. -

whistling

somber music

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buzz saw humming

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Okay, sweetie. Yeah. Ah!

baby laughing

quiet music

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blowing

soft music

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singing in Rapanui

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upbeat music

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During Tapati, we're surrounded by tourists. But it's also one of the few times in the year that we cheer for each other as we celebrate what remains of our past.

chatter, applause

jaunty string instrument

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Ooh ooh Ooh

singing in Rapanui

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speaking in Rapanui

gentle guitar music

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I hope one day you'll participate in the parade. It's beautiful. Everyone is painted in kiea, and the lines between us blur.

blows note

crowd whooping

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With all the shops open, I'm creating over 50 new jobs, but this is my own Rapanui creation, Rapanui expenses, Rapanui work. When I was young, I never really understood why my dad did what he did, and sometimes I still don't. I know that he thinks a lot about our ancestors and what they were able to achieve, and in some ways, he might be striving to match that. Now that I have you, I've realized that what drives his choices is his love for his family, for his people, in wanting them to have a better life. What my dad talks about, you can still feel when you're in front of the moai. Our ancestors, the Polynesians, carved the moai to remember the great leaders who came before them. One of the biggest misconceptions is that our people died out because we destroyed our environment. The trees did disappear, the good soil washed into the ocean, and food could not easily grow, but our people survived. Where are we? There's a lot of documentaries and photographers that come out here. They use this as a visual example of the deforestation on the island, and the famous line is, "What were the natives thinking when they cut down the last tree?" The funny thing is, is that just across the street there's a bunch of manavai and also rock mulch gardens. They learned new and different ways of planting in this environment that no longer had any trees. Wow.

chanting softly in Rapanui

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Let's keep the mind opened to the opportunity that exists all around, so the more we learn about the world, the easier it becomes for us to cope. Each of us has a place we call home, and each of us has a responsibility to care for it. As you grow up, you'll need to pick up where we left off. Reach beyond Rapa Nui to show our global community how we can better care for the only home we've ever known... our kainga, our planet.

stirring music

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end notes

mellow guitar

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rhythm picks up

man humming

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