Cook Islands cultural festival a 'raging success'

The New Zealand Cook Island community came together over the past weekend to celebrate their culture, with the Te Maeva Nui Festival.

This is the third time the biennial festival has been held in Aotearoa with an extravagant two-day showcase of creative arts, language, song, music, and dance.

Over 1,500 performers graced the stage making up 10 teams representing the various enua (islands), vaka (districts) and oire (villages) of the Cook Islands.

Creative Director Duane Wichman-Evans expressed great pride in this year's festival: "We're celebrating our culture in every way possible. Kai, food, dance, performance, song, language; everything is involved and it brings our community together at all ages, from the mamas right down to the young ones."

Wichman-Evans said it was fantastic that young performers had "stepped up" to the challenge of performing at the festival. He describes the festival as a pathway for Cook Islands youth in Aotearoa to learn more about their identity.

Johnson Raela who danced for Araura Enua explained that: "In New Zealand there's nothing really you can go to after you finish Polyfest unless you join a professional dance group, so for our young people, this has been an amazing opportunity to learn their culture, make new friends and to understand and see what it means to celebrate who you are as a pacific person"

Te Koha Shortland was a lead dancer for Vaka Takitumu, who felt reconnected to her homeland, through performing.

"I recently moved back to New Zealand from Rarotonga and I felt I was missing the culture a little bit too much so I thought I'd give it a try. I think its amazing having such an amazing Pasifika culture festival here in New Zealand."

Benji Tumu of Oire Vaipae agrees. "For me personally, it reconnected me back to my people. Growing up as a disapora of the Pacific; it's quite hard to live in the island way or understand those traditions, so when we have something like Te Maeva Nui it gives us a few months to deep dive down into all the different aspects and items and it's little manifestations of what our people were like back in the day."

The acting secretary of the Cook Islands Ministry of Cultural Development Emile Kairua attended the Festival. He was very impressed by the standard of the performances over the two nights.

"You can see the passion of our children on the stage here. They really embrace what they've been taught and it shows through in their performances. You've just got to take for example the team from Mitiaro, about 60 of these performers have never been to Mitiaro, they're not native speakers of the language, but through the performances, through the songs and chants they've been able to pick up a little bit of Cook Islands Maori."

Reflecting on the performing arts scene in the Cook Islands, Kairua added on "we've taken things for granted back home."

"This is the output that we should all be looking at for events like this, that we can pass on (through a popular media) the language, peu (the traditions) in a format that our children can embrace and carry forward."

The performers' passion and hard work, including long hours and late nights of practice, had the crowd in absolute awe. The audience was treated to an array of talented dancers, singers, drummers and a vibrant display of cultural costume designs.

Over 10,000 people attended the two-day showcase which has been described by Cook Islands community members as a 'raging success'.