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Wrapping the Cook Islands - Tivaivai
A summary
Tivaivai reflect how Cook Islanders perceive their world and people, their attitude towards belonging and sharing and their connection of past and present spiritual and material values. They can therefore be considered the ideal ambassadors of Cook Islands culture. Tivaivai, on Rarotonga also spelled tivaevae, can be compared technically to the many different patchwork quilts which are part of the textile heritage of most countries around the world. However quilts of similar styles are made only in French Polynesia, where they are called tifaifai, and in the Hawaiian islands. There they are commonly known by their English term Hawaiian quilt, which the indigenous language translates as kapa moe.
It is often difficult to think of tivaivai as individual art works as seen through the lens of European cultures. Tivaivai cannot always be regarded as the creation of one single person and many have remained anonymous works. Rarely do tivaivai makers design, cut and sew their tivaivai exclusively themselves. Many tivaivai emerge from the shared effort of a sewing group. Traditionally, the designing and cutting of tivaivai is commissioned from a ta’unga or expert in tivaivai design. Some believe that the ta’unga’s talent is a God-given gift that must not be charged for. Though the art of tivaivai design and making is not primarily exercised in pursuit of personal fame and financial gains, but to fulfill a traditional and social function, in some cases a ta’unga’s outstanding talent has earned her/him special recognition and high respect, and her/his services are much sought after.
Tivaivai play an important part in the unfolding of a Cook Islander’s life. Even before a baby is conceived, the future mother or grandmother may already have started to plan the sewing of a tivaivai for the newborn. Tivaivai highlight important stages in a Cook Islander’s life. Whether it is the first birthday celebration, a first-born son’s haircutting ceremony, the twenty-first birthday, a wedding or funeral, tivaivai set the stage and accentuate distinction of place, occasion and honoured subject. Perhaps one of tivaivai’s most surprising uses, in the eyes of non-Polynesians, is their use as shroud and their burial with the deceased. Most Cook Islanders’ graves are erected in front of their houses where they remain as visible signs of the family’s close spiritual connection, but also of the deceased’s ties to the land. The ceremonial unveiling of the headstone brings the scattered family back together in celebrating the memory of the dead. The removal of layered lace cloths, blankets and tivaivai one by one from the headstone can be regarded as a final severance of her/his material ties to family and community, converting the soul into an image in the family members’ memory.
Tivaivai form an important part of a family’s taonga (wealth, status) which traditionally denotes their rank and social position. The materiality of this wealth is documented during the regular home inspections or tutaka when women will proudly decorate their homes with their latest creations of precious tivaivai. In out-migration, this ‘treasure’ is shared and forms an important bond between those remaining in the homeland and the migrants.
Just like a tivaivai is patched together of individual fabrics, the Cook Islands nation is a patchwork of islands. Politically independent since 1965, the strong ties to New Zealand remain evident in the citizenship that Cook Islanders and New Zealanders share. The vast majority of Cook Islanders now reside outside their island country, scattered, like their home islands, in clusters across New Zealand, Australia, and to a minor extent also the United States and Europe. Through tivaivai, family members both remain ‘in touch’ with their origin and also maintain their status in the community.
Tivaivai are not just decorative artefacts. They are much more than what meets the eye, as can be deduced from their use. The uses of sheets of beaten bark, generally known as tapa, in religious rites and traditional custom of pre-European time lives on in the use and purpose of tivaivai today. Cloth was associated with mana, divine agency, and its harnessing1. This idea continues in such beliefs as Elizabeth Akana’s observation that “the work and love involved in making the beautiful quilts” invests them with “much mana”, a reason why some tivaivai, especially unfinished ones, follow their makers into the grave.2
Today’s fast pace and the increasing commitments of the individual in a dwindling population are a threat to the survival of such time-intensive art. Women have started to machine sew their tivaivai, especially those that are not destined for family heirlooms and exchange but offered for sale. Tivaivai sewn or printed in low-wage countries can now be bought from shops on Rarotonga. Sheets painted tivaivai-style or dyed are beginning to replace the precious treasures in ceremonial use. Even though in the Cook Islands tivaivai making in strictly traditional ways has diminished, it remains a highly respected art form which will live on in its contemporary variations.
Andrea Eimke 2010 - please respect my intellectual property.
_____________________________________________________________1 Babadzan, A. , 2003. ‘The gods stripped bare’. In C. Colchester (ed.), Clothing the Pacific: 25-51. Oxford: Berg. in Colchester, 2003:25-50)
2 Akana, E., 1986, Hawaiian Quilting: A Fine Art. Honolulu: Hawaiian Children’s Society.
