Isla de Pascua

I never thought my travels in South America would take me to Polynesia, let alone the most isolated inhabited landmass on Earth, and yet, there I was: Easter Island. The entirety of the tiny South Pacific island is covered in tiny dirt paths, and is tattooed by the Rapa Nui culture. Among the countless tourist boutiques and sightseeing landmarks is buried a bond to the island shared by the native population that I had never witnessed before. I hold ties to my homeland, always (or, almost always) rooting for the Red, White, and Blue in the World Cup or Olympics, but I certainly could live abroad, even indefinitely, and be fine. Though small, the entire population of Easter Island seems to move as a cohesive unit, as a family. I was to find out later, of course, that every single living Rapa Nui is in fact family, literally, all descending from thirty-six original ancestors who re-settled the island after having been extracted years beforehand by European slave traders who had exhausted the island’s population.

The island itself is triangular in shape, and is situated roughly 4,000 miles westward of continental Chile. Pointing like the head of a spear toward the islands of French Polynesia, Easter Island stretches only 60 square miles, yet is littered in rich antiquity not found in hundreds of miles of American pastoral. The nearly 900 moai statues tower above tourists, or sometimes, lie crumbling below them, raising uncertainty about the island's turbulent history, characterized by warfare, disease, overpopulation, and slavery.

Yet, There is something powerful and bonding that occurs through scarcity, through collective suffering, through hardship. The Rapa Nui people don’t simply choose Easter Island as a home, but rather, are drawn spiritually and genetically to the homeland of their ancestors. My time in Polynesia, as I walked among the crumpling ruins of a tattered, ancient people, or overlooked massive volcano craters, raised questions for me that dominated my thinking.

What do we learn from our familial and geographical histories? There is the old cliché that explains, “One cannont navigate his future until he knows his past.” Another asserts, “History always repeats itself.” So, what are we left to think? We cannot correctly respond to future events without knowing past events, which we’re bound to eventually become aquainted with anyway on account of the repetitive nature of the past? What would be the point, then, of knowing the past if it will only reveal the exact storyline that will by played out over the course of one’s own life? Why, then, strive for change or upward mobility or, anything really, if we’re bound watch re-runs for eternity?

My time listening to the Rapa Nui retelling their history made me consider my own. They speak with a latent urgency in their voices, as though desperate to know what they cannot, as though the very meaning of their lives and their fate thereafter depends on uncovering any and all of the mysteries that shroud the island. 

What I came to realize was that I have a very limited knowledge of the stories that shape my own family, the histories that continue to influence the interactions of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, and until now, have had very little interest in them. I don’t know the history of my name, the home countries of great grandparents, the language of my ancestors. The Rapa Nui have so much that modern science has yet to reveal about their predecessors, and still they strive to explain. They look inquisitively at the Moai, trying to explain their creators, their destructors, knowing that, like notes left in the margins of novels, they provide an intimate insight about those who have come before. Truly, they tell themselves stories in order to live. 

All in all, time to start making a family tree.