Tokelau

Polynesians settled Tokelau perhaps a thousand years ago, with links to Samoa, Tuvalu, and the Cook Islands, and each atoll — Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo — developed its own village governed by a council of elders, the Taupulega. Commodore Byron sighted Atafu in 1765. Missionaries — Samoan London Missionary Society preachers on Atafu and Fakaofo, French Catholics on Nukunonu — converted the atolls in the 1860s. In 1863 Peruvian slave raiders devastated the population, carrying off most of the able-bodied men, and disease followed.

Tokelau was declared a British protectorate in 1889 and annexed in 1916, administered with the Gilbert and Ellice Islands before being transferred to New Zealand administration in 1926 and formally to New Zealand in the late 1940s. Tokelauans are New Zealand citizens. Referendums on self-government in free association with New Zealand in 2006 and 2007 both fell just short of the two-thirds majority required, so Tokelau remains a non-self-governing territory and stays on the United Nations decolonisation list. Since 2012 the atolls have been powered almost entirely by solar. Sea-level rise is an existential threat.

Tokelau is strongly communal and Christian. The inati system shares the catch and the produce out equally among all families. The Taupulega, the council of elders, governs each village, and the "Ulu-o-Tokelau", the head of government, rotates each year between the three atoll leaders. The Tokelauan language and the fatele — a fast, percussive sitting dance and song, performed as a competition between villages — are central to identity.

Extended families live together, Sunday is for church, and communal work days organise much of village life. A large Tokelauan community in New Zealand, many times the island population, keeps close ties and sends support home.

About 1,500 people live across the three atolls, one village to each. The economy is almost entirely New Zealand budget support and the public service, plus subsistence fishing and coconut, some income from foreign fishing licences and from the ".tk" internet domain and postage stamps. There are no hotels; visitors stay with families by arrangement. Each atoll has a school, a health clinic, a store, and a small administration.

The ring of islets around each lagoon is low, narrow, and crowded, and king tides regularly wash across the land — the reason climate change is not an abstract issue here.

Fish is the mainstay — tuna and reef fish, shared through the inati — along with coconut in every form, and swamp taro (pulaka) and breadfruit where they grow. Pork and chicken are feast food. Imported rice, flour, and tinned goods from the supply ship fill out the diet. Local dishes include faikai, cooked in coconut cream, and takihi, pawpaw and pulaka baked in coconut cream.

There is essentially no tourism — Tokelau receives only a handful of visitors a year, most with family or official connections. The experience is the atoll itself: the lagoon and its reef for snorkelling and fishing, the fatele evenings, the historic churches including the coral-stone church on Nukunonu, the islet of Fenua Fala off Fakaofo, and the sheer remoteness of the place. Any visit must be arranged in advance through the Tokelau administration in Apia, including transport, a host family, and permission from the Taupulega.