Excerpt: During the review period, Rapa Nui indigenous politics were principally political ecological in scope; they involved struggles to control cultural and material resources and ancestral territory and to regulate island population growth. This review highlights four major contests: the struggle for the self-determination of Rapa Nui patrimony; the continued fight of the Hito/Hitorangi family to regain their ancestral land from the Hotel Hangaroa Eco Village and Spa; political organization to establish a law to restrict Chilean and international migration to the island; and the battle to resist state and transnational forces seeking to develop the ocean surrounding the island into a marine park.
The political reclamation and occupation in March 2015 of the “sacred places” (vahi tapu) that state and transnational forces had developed into the “Rapa Nui National Park” (Parque Nacional Rapa Nui) for global tourism had become embroiled in complex state strategies of criminalization of Rapa Nui leaders by August 2015 but stabilized in favor of Rapa Nui movements for self-determination as the review period began.
