This paper was first presented at The People's Ground conference, Melbourne 2016.
Built in the mid-19th century, Rarotonga’s coral stone churches represented a complex interweaving of indigenous and foreign beliefs, cultural practice and architecture. This paper examines how these places continue to function and change, and questions what conservation looks like in a reality of “living” cultural landscapes.
Background and research approach
Rarotonga’s first churches were constructed in the early 1800s through the work of the London Missionary Society (LMS), who extended into the Cook Islands from Tahiti (Breward 2001: 26 – 31; Gunson 1978: 219, 222). Six Christian villages were progressively established on Rarotonga with early wooden churches superseded by coral stone structures from the 1840s (Henry 2002: 93 - 104). These built forms were not merely physical manifestations of foreign encroachment into the islands. They entangled indigenous and foreign beliefs and architecture in a transformation and transposition of cultural practices formerly based in marae (sacred places of ceremony). Society was reshaped, with churchscapes, including church, graveyard, school and ‘orometua (pastor) residence, becoming its ‘new marae’. Now under the Cook Islands Christian Church (CICC), these places remain an intrinsic part of contemporary Rarotongans’ lifescapes.
This paper provides a brief overview of findings from an investigation into the cultural heritage significance of these churchscapes. The qualitative inquiry centred on fieldwork on Rarotonga in August 2014 and was framed by New Zealand Māori and Pasifika scholarship that aims to decolonise and reclaim research approaches (see for example Clery 2014; Fairbairn-Dunlop and Coxon 2014; Ferris-Leary 2013; Smith 2012; Kana and Tamatea 2003; Vaioleti 2003; Hereniko 2000). Research included physical investigation of Rarotonga’s historical churchscapes, focusing on the Matavera church in the Takitumu district as a case study, and twenty semi-structured interviews with local people, including Church members and non-members. These methods enabled findings to be directly shaped by participants and places themselves, grounding them in current realities and centring the churches as living places of relationship and action (Charmaz 2006: 2 - 10).
Shifting permanence
Originally formed in coral rubble stone mortared with coral lime and with an intricately constructed timber roof structure, the Matavera church has been significantly modified over time. Its massive walls remain but have been substantially lowered, causing the loss of a gallery and upper windows. Its interior has been heavily altered and various extensions have been made to the exterior. Ancillary buildings including the Sunday school and ‘orometua residence have been demolished and built anew. The site has been transformed with graves grassed over, trees cut down and boundary walls altered.
These works are reasonably consistent with patterns of change to CICC churches across the Cook Islands, as generations of users have maintained, repaired, altered, adapted and demolished built fabric to accommodate shifting patterns of perceived need. This analysis discusses physical changes that have been undertaken on the Matavera CICC since its initial construction, under three identified themes of pragmatism, beautification and modernisation.
Pragmatism and an improvisatory approach to churchscape modifications and maintenance was repeatedly emphasised in field research discussions. With some exceptions, pragmatism, characterised by minimal design or planning, expedient workmanship, easily-accessible resources and simplicity of ongoing maintenance, was seen as the central framework for decision-making. This is consistent with broader analyses of Polynesian architecture being built by ‘feel’, where construction work is reliant on intensive participation of community members rather than working drawings (Müller 2011; 'Ilaiu 2007: 20; McKay and Walmsley 2005: 64).
Expedient solutions have sometimes been contentious. In the case of the Matavera church, ariki and mata’iapo (tribal leaders) opposed the decision by Church leaders to demolish the top two metres of the church’s walls in c.1944 following hurricane damage, calling instead for repair. Controversies like this highlight relational complexities in the evolved position of the Church in Rarotongan society. As the new marae, churchscapes are not only indigenised but indigenous, their fabric a tangible and inviolable inheritance from ancestors. Simultaneously, practical considerations of on-going use take precedence over debatably ‘deeper’ considerations of heritage value and traditional authority, with churchscapes emerging as living places of occupation and action. It is notable that this position also reflects the Church’s Congregationalist roots, where buildings were deliberately modest and practical (Gunson 1974: 185; Fiddes 1961: 42 - 48, 61, 62). The duality of these aspects has enabled church architecture to continue to recontextualise its foreign origin and reform traditional practices in on-going expressions of pragmatic continuity.
‘Beautification’ was a term commonly applied in field research conversations regarding churchscape modifications, particularly to building surrounds. This was a key reason given for the covering of the Matavera church’s southern graveyard with a raised lawn in 1979.
Beautification objectives resonate with long-standing Western visions of the Pacific as islands of paradise, the garden of Eden (Austin 2001: 15) and were woven into the early LMS emphasis on the Church as a civilising, as well as redemptive, force (Thomas 1991: 152; Gunson 1978: 36). Missionaries stationed in Rarotonga reported regularly on the state of construction and landscaping as evidence of a community’s level of sincerity regarding Christian conversion (Buzacott 1836; Williams 1830). As well as highlighting the existence of these manifestations, there was a strong emphasis on their picturesque qualities, as Europeans far from their birthplace sought to form idealised recreations of home (Brook 2003).
While European nostalgia was one influence of churchscape appearance, culturally-defined notions of beautification were deeply established in pre-Christian Cook Islands. Indigenous precedents of landscape design would have been relatively straightforward for local people to translate into Christian spaces due to material parallels in perceptions of beauty and spatial hierarchy, meaning that multiple strands of foreign and indigenous purpose conceived the aesthetic of churchscapes and their surrounding villages. These meanings have been re-woven in each successive generation of Cook Islanders such that beauty continues to equate to smooth, clean and tidy – a white building against a green lawn.
The need for ‘modernisation’ was a third key driver of change noted in field research. This is evident in the Matavera church’s regularly whitewashed exterior and heavily modified interior, which now features a white-tiled floor, white aluminium joinery and flat white ceiling with fluorescent tube lighting. Internal walls have been progressively straightened, smoothed and painted with white acrylic paint, concealing original detail. While interviewees confirmed that the ‘white look’ was a missionary introduction, it was also acknowledged that this is a locally sustained approach. Some suggested that ready adoption of the new was a central characteristic of Cook Islanders’ approach to life, and others that overseas influences were a strong director of change.
The architectural academic Jeanette Budgett made similar observations regarding modifications to church buildings on the island of Mangaia. While the original whitewash of churches can be conceptually linked with Christian purification theology and Cook Islands sacred white bark cloth (S. Treadwell 2016; George 2012; Budgett 2004), Budgett suggests that the ‘blanking out’ of detail and colour is a contemporary ‘aesthetic preoccupation with the white surfaces of minimalism’ (Budgett 2006: 47 - 49).
Budgett’s analysis aligns with other scholarship that suggests that Cook Islanders continue to look to their former colonisers for architectural representation as part of broader global patterns of Western cultural export to the developing world (J. Treadwell 2006: 562; Lockwood 2004: 6). It is notable that material loss in CICC churchscapes has concentrated in those elements most rich in pre-European traditions of architectural form (Budgett 2006: 48). The white walls remain, but intricately carved, patterned, coloured and weathered wood, fibres and thatching have been lost to flat ceilings, white tiles and prefabricated metal. Does this threaten to destabilise the bicultural origin of these spaces, reshaping them into a form of acculturation?
The Master of Architecture thesis of Charmaine ‘Ilaiu provides insight here. In examining contemporary adaptations of Tongan fale (houses), ‘Ilaiu suggests that contemporary change emanates from within indigenous cultural paradigms. This occurs through the Tongan practice of ‘inasi (architectural appropriation) that affirms individual and collective prestige ('Ilaiu 2009; 'Ilaiu 2007: 89 - 105). Following ‘Ilaiu’s discussion, I suggest that Western imports have not resulted in architectural acculturation in Cook Islands churchscapes. Rather, forms and materials are variously appropriated, customised and creolised in new expressions of mana (authority, prestige) (Lockwood 2004: 7).
This analysis highlights the current reality of CICC churches as heavily modified places, with each being ‘a series of incarnations rather than one building’ (McKay and Walmsley 2003: 95). It demonstrates how changes made have been variously influenced by aspects of pre-Christian, foreign and indigenised fusions of cultural expression, enabling meanings and values to be contested, contextualised and renewed through continued everyday use.
Enduring ephemeral
When asked to share their views on physical modifications to CICC churchscapes, it was notable that interviewees, particularly church members, often did not recall any changes or did not consider them worth mentioning. An interpretation of this can be that built form is mere backdrop for human actions and interactions (Kecskemeti 2012: 10, 11, 86; Jackson 1995: 24, 25; Hummon 1992: 268). However, perceptions of a churchscape as ‘unchanged’ may also link to deeper Polynesian understandings of ancestry and time (Refiti 2009; Campbell 2006). Past, present and future are not separate moments but are dynamically enmeshed, such that a person is their ancestors, a place is its past. This blurs artificial distinctions between social, historical and architectural significance by compressing and enfolding the past into the present, perpetually embodying both in physical place.
Interviewees instead emphasised the temporal and intangible aspects of churchscapes in discussions of memories, place change and cultural identity. These aspects are now explored, including cloth coverings and floral decorations, and the perpetuation of oral traditions.
Cloth coverings are neither indigenously originated nor unique to Cook Islands expressions of Christianity. However, in the context of the CICC, it is suggested that material layering entwines broader theological symbolism of holiness with pre-Christian manifestations of mana. The anthropologist Jeffrey Sissons describes how, during Christianity’s earliest years on Rarotonga, elaborate and ritually-defined processes of constructing ‘are atua (god houses) were translated to new ‘are pure, the churches, as tribal allegiances shifted to the new religion. Church posts and rafters were symbolically wrapped with bark cloth in accordance with pre-Christian wrapping of ki’iki’i (wooden god figures) in a process that Sissons argues symbolically imbued churches with mana (Sissons 2007: 51 - 57; see also Kaeppler 2008: 33, 93, 94).
Early traditions of bark cloth wrapping are no longer apparent in Rarotonga’s CICCs. However, Christian and pre-Christian heritages continue to be blended and recontested through practices of covering, layering and wrapping. This is apparent in the overlay of pulpits, sacrament tables, reading daises and ‘orometua seats with mass-manufactured foreign linenry, and in grave headstone unveiling ceremonies, where multiple layers of white cloths and tīvaevae (hand-made applique quilts) are ritually lain and removed.
Floral decorations are also not unique to Cook Islands Christian tradition. However, their vibrant colour and scent and use as personal adornment in the form of ‘ei (floral garlands and headdresses) suggest indigenous meanings evolved within an otherwise whitened built form. The use of white was deeply entrenched in the LMS’s Protestant Reformation heritage, its non-colour physically manifesting a transformative Christian presence on a brightly coloured ‘heathen’ state (S. Treadwell 2016; George 2012; S. Treadwell 2000). White was liberally applied to buildings and people alike in a clear delineation of good from evil (S. Treadwell 2016: 374). While this remains evident in persistent cleaning, weeding and re-whitening of built forms, temporal fabric has allowed for a different shaping of religious expression. White cloth coverings remain, but white apparel is now a matter of choice largely relegated to specific festive days. Simultaneously, the island’s vivid colours and odours infiltrate church interiors in an evolving cultural reconstruction, expressed in pots of live vegetation, floral prints and ‘ei adornments (Fiti-Sinclair 2001: 13 - 17; Underhill-Sem 2001: 39, 30).
The explicit impermanence of cloth coverings and floral decorations also implies significance in cyclical practices of renewal rather than in the items themselves. Mutability is an intrinsic part of the architecture of the Pacific, where processes of manufacture or performance teach younger generations and cement community relationships (Kaeppler 2008: 33; McKay and Walmsley 2005: 64). I suggest that these same factors pervade the recurring preparation and presentation of church decoration. The tasks of removing, washing and re-laying coverings and replacing floral arrangements are embedded both in Christian doctrines of continued spiritual renewal and in pre-Christian rituals of re-dressing the sacred, and act to ceremonially bind community hierarchies and relationships.
Oral traditions sustained by the Church were commonly cited by interviewees as an important aspect of their sense of place and cultural identity. These focus around the singing of imene tuki and the use of Māori in Church contexts.
Imene tuki (Cook Islands hymns) were composed from Christianity’s earliest days in the Cook Islands, with imported Tahitian Christian worship and local pe’e (chants) fusing to establish a grounding for subsequent English litany (Gilson and Crocombe 1980: 21; Rere 1976: 9). While LMS missionaries had a strong hand in early lyrics, vocal expression largely evolved locally, with imene tuki becoming an important part of Christianity’s indigenisation. They remain a contemporary living heritage as a mode of worship and an oral learning tradition, with the CICC forming the hub of their perpetuation (Breward 2001: 53, 54; confirmed by interviewees).
Another significant teaching role maintained by the Church is continued speaking of Māori, with the CICC being the only religious institution using Māori as its main language. Unlike imene tuki, which were largely seen as a positive and crucial cultural heritage by interviewees, attitudes regarding the use of Māori in preaching and teaching were more ambivalent, with tension between retaining tradition and remaining relevant. Some interviewees expressed both views, alluding to the complexity of nurturing cultural constancy while allowing for contemporary change.
Regardless of perceptions of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it has been through the shifting performance and practice of imene tuki and Māori language over almost two centuries that CICC churchscapes have acted as repositories for and conduits of language and cultural narratives, thus playing a part in individual and corporate identity.
Field research findings suggest that it is the temporal and intangible heritage of CICC churchscapes that hold the most enduring meaning and significance to people associated with them. However, it is also suggested that these ephemeral aspects are intimately linked with physical form and place, with both essential to, and reliant on, the other.
Conservation thinking
How then to consider conservation in this context? Contemporary conservation theory, conscious of its Eurocentric past, has sought to centralise multivocality and human rights in the international arena (Winter 2014; Chirikure and Pwiti 2008: 481). ‘Negotiatory conservation’ is called for (Viñas 2005: 209, original emphasis), an adaptive approach that seeks to balance interests and respond sensitively to specific needs and circumstances (González-Longo 2012: 76; Orbaşli 2008: 64; Sully 2007: 41; Viñas 2005: 203, 212).
Regardless of their case-specific flexibility, these discussions are still framed by a Western model of conservation that takes for granted the involvement of heritage practitioners, who play a key role in directing, facilitating and negotiating good heritage outcomes. This can overlook the reality that this role does not exist in the overwhelming majority of historic place projects in the Cook Islands. Questions of whether locals are being genuinely engaged in conservation works are beside the point in this context. Locals themselves are the instigators, decision-makers, undertakers and recipients of all processes of change.
This is obviously not unique to the Cook Islands. It is in fact a continuation of ways in which humanity has addressed its cultural fabric for millennia, contrasting markedly with the professionalisation of conservation emerging from Renaissance Europe. Resource management occurs in the Pacific through customary land tenure and decision-making systems that prioritise processes of consensus over end product. This approach is reflected in modification to CICC churchscapes that have occurred in Rarotonga over time.
However, field research findings suggest that alterations made by Church congregations can be controversial in Rarotonga. Eschewal of ‘foreign’ conservation mechanisms on one hand, and local people’s frustrations in the face of unsupported change on the other, bring into sharp relief fundamental questions of custodianship: to whom are historic churchscapes significant, and who should have a say in their management?
The importance of individual congregations retaining fundamental decision-making authority as the fund-providers and land owners was emphasised by most interviewees regardless of personal membership. However, enabling other groups to have a voice was also variously raised, including tribal leaders who originally gifted the Church its land, the government, local Rarotongans who are not CICC members, and expatriate Cook Islanders. These discussions allude to the ways in which CICC churchscapes, like marae, are entangled with understandings of ancestry, mana and cultural identity, one of many strands of indigenous heritage embedded on the land. This may mean that they continue to have cultural value for increasingly diasporic Cook Islands communities.
This is particularly relevant in light of Rarotonga’s diminishing CICC congregations. Migration exacerbates increasing religious heterogeneity, with some 85% of Cook Islanders now living permanently overseas (Crocombe and Crocombe 2003: 334). A significant proportion of financial provision for CICC building projects comes from these expatriates, as pre-Christian understandings of reciprocity have been translated into remittances (Budgett 2006: 49; Crocombe 1990: 56). However, views regarding the rights and responsibilities of foreign-based Cook Islanders to their island homeland are diverging as new generations, largely born and raised in separate nations, reweigh these relationships (Triandis 2001: 908 - 912; Altrocchi and Altrocchi 1995: 237 - 238; confirmed by interviewees). How these people variously participate in tribal, Church and other community decision-making may potentially be a significant shaper of historic churchscapes’ conservation and sustainment.
Heritage practitioners celebrate living heritage in theory, recognising that it is in ongoing active use that historical buildings are best conserved. However, when uses and users themselves threaten architectural fabric, it is easy to revert to Western precepts of ‘authentic’ preservation, prioritising product over process, physicality over intangibility. Collaborative approaches grounded in cultural landscape perspectives may help to bridge the gap between Western and Polynesian epistemologies outworked in church places. This perspective explores strands of transitory and permanent heritage as entwined rather than dichotomous, as dynamic processes rather than static products, constructions in time as well as space. It may be these very tensions that reinforce the churches’ cultural meaning, contested and renewable; an ever-evolving, and unchanged, lifescape.
Glossary and notes
Imene tuki A uniquely Cook Islands form of hymn-singing
‘Orometua Church pastor
Mana Authority, power, prestige; can be supernatural
Marae A dedicated area of ground, delineated by stones, used in the pre- Christian era for religious purposes and now for title investiture ceremonies and other rituals.
‘Church’: A lowercase ‘c’ is used when a physical place is being referred to. When referring to the CICC as an institution, a capital ‘C’ is used.
‘Māori’: This refers to Cook Islands Māori rather than New Zealand Māori.
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