Aloha Nūhou Monday!

This week’s post honors the Cook Islands which, in 1992, became the 6th nation to host the Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture. This festival was held in Rarotonga and celebrated the ocean-voyaging heritage of Oceania. FestPAC is the world’s largest celebration of Indigenous Pacific Islanders, bringing together artists, cultural practitioners, scholars, and officials from member nations of the Pacific Community (SPC).

This traveling festival is held every four years and was first launched by the South Pacific Commission in 1972 to halt the erosion of traditional practices through ongoing cultural exchange. In June of 2024, Hawaiʻi will host the 13th festival on Oʻahu.

Over the coming months, we will honor each of the previous FestPAC hosts with posts featuring those island nations and their connections to Hawaiʻi’s own history.

In Maui’s local news section of Ka Nupepa Kuokoa in 1868, G.M. Keone of Wailuku wrote about a student of “Aubert” who was teaching Hawaiian students with a Rarotongan Bible. This was Father Aubert Bouillon who founded Maria Lanakila Church, which recently circulated in the news during the 2023 Lahaina fires for remaining miraculously untouched by the destruction, standing tall in the midst of the ashes. Utilizing a Rarotongan Bible to teach Hawaiian students was not entirely unusual considering that the two languages have some of the most similarities within the Polynesian languages.

The word “Rarotonga” in the Hawaiian language is one of several that come through loan from Tahitian language. It is trans-literated from the Tahitian by replacing the “R” with “L,” and the “ng” with an ʻokina. Thus, resulting with the word Lalotoʻa, or Lalokoʻa.¹ It is very common in languages, even Hawaiian, that words are borrowed and trans-literated from other languages. While most recognize the English-turned Hawaiian words, many other words in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi derive from other languages such as Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, and other global languages beyond Oceania.