"Things have gone wrong here because the Chileans are in charge, not the Rapa Nui.
The rapa leaves were pliable and carried the faint funk of a brussels sprout.
Its official name comes from the Rapa Nui fertility god.
Far Horizons, a tour company in Albuquerque, N.M., is conducting a trip to Easter Island during the Tapati Festival, a weeklong celebration of the Rapa Nui culture.
At home, people spoke the Rapa Nui language, and though they were devoutly Roman Catholic, they respected and tried to follow their own traditions.
The Rapa Nui used trees for boats, fuel and food – some palms yield honey – and transporting the Moai statues that dot the island.
More startling images include the bark cloth effigies known as manu uru, grotesques with grisly, masklike faces painted in colored stripes that represent the tattoos and body painting that once adorned the Rapa Nui people.
A double-ended wooden dance paddle made by the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island represents a human being with an almost purely abstract elegance that Brancusi would have died for.
Unfortunately there is no way to control it," he said, standing next to a pile of buoys and nets – something the Rapa Nui never use – which he believes is evidence of the illegal fleets.
Created in the 1950s by Chile without involving the Rapa Nui, and run by the government, the land park drew around 80,000 people to Easter Island last year.
The Rapa Nui culture, Dr Lipo says, was wiped out after Europeans arrived, bringing epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, TB, dysentery and leprosy.
