Skeletal Biology of the Ancient Rapanui (Easter Islanders) ed. by Vincent Stephan and George Gill

Rapa Nui Journal Vol. 30 (2) October 2016 pre-European systems, although there is evidence to suggest that Hawai‘i was an exception. Friedlander et al. describe the development of hybrid marine resource management systems in the contemporary Hawaiian Islands. They suggest that one of the reasons conventional marine management programs have largely failed across the archipelago is that they lack the ability to regulate and enforce prohibitions due to topdown, centralized management strategies far removed from the local communities that use the resources. Therefore, community-based systems integrating ecosystems thinking with Hawaiian Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) are increasingly being implemented with initial indications of their success. For example, comparison of scientific surveys from a number of locations around Hawai‘i demonstrate that community-based management results in fish biomass levels often equal to or greater than conventional no-take marine protected areas. One of the strengths of hybrid management systems is a return to local scale oversight and enforcement rather than a centralized system that produces difficulties for regulation and enforcement. Moreover, local-scale management programs have the potential to develop unique strategies attuned to each individual situation and context. The conflict between centralized management characteristic of most contemporary Pacific Island nations, and the often decentralized, local communitybased systems that once previously existed, is also an important theme explored in Section 2. For example, in her discussion of European contact era systems of governance on Tongareva, in the Northern Cook Islands, Chambers points out that the Tongarevan people modified the pre-exisitng rahui to encompass various economic and social changes put in place by Europeans during the colonization period. However, the local Tongarevan community today has reacted actively by requiring the agreement of the local community in any prohibitive or management decisions made offisland in Rarotonga. While Tongareva is part of a large centralized political system, much decision making is still concentrated at the local level, pointing out that authenticity of enforcement remains an important element of prohibition in contemporary rahui systems. Similarly, Mawyer notes that on Mangareva in the Gambier Islands, there exists a conflict between the actions of the centralized political regime, and the legitimate right to prohibit and manage pearl shell resources, such that the authentic right to rahui today remains ambiguous. In contemporary Aotearoa (New Zealand), Ruru and Wheen also describe an uneasy existence born from the previously existing rahui system and the current New Zealand legislation which is oriented primarily to promote sustainability without regard for traditional concepts. Importantly, the twelve chapters in this collection point out that in order to understand how rahui can be applied to contemporary resource management, it is fundamental to take into consideration how rahui functioned in the past and the socio-political contexts in which they developed and functioned. In preEuropean contact rahui, the ability to prohibit rested firmly within a dynamic systemic relationship between political power, the sacred, and legal pluralism often in the context of decentralized social structures. As a number of authors in this volume have noted, to instate effective prohibition requires the ability to both regulate and enforce, and this can take the form of local scale authority or mediation through a social system that promotes profound sacredness and respect. The immediate concern now for the development of contemporary rahui systems is how to re-build sacredness for the many important resources of these varied islands in the context of the capitalism and centralized political regimes. Can local scale communities enforce prohibitions in contexts with an absence of the legal and authoritarian backing of the centralized political apparatuses in place? A fruitful way forward seems to require development along these two lines and this important book has laid the foundational ground work.