Ecologies of Resilience: The Many Colonizations of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), c. 1200–present.

This article focuses on the history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) from a Native Rapanui perspective, challenging dominant narratives of environmental collapse and cultural extinction. Using interdisciplinary methods—including oral histories from early 20th-century Rapanui elders, a Rapanui-language manuscript recounting original settlement, a reconstructed Rapanui Chronology of Years, and recent environmental and agroecological data—the study reveals the Rapanui’s sophisticated navigation, agricultural innovation, and resilience amid severe droughts, climate change, and waves of colonization. It highlights the catastrophic impacts of 19th-century events such as La Niña droughts, Peruvian slave raids, introduced diseases, and missionary colonization, while emphasizing the Rapanui’s persistent cultural memory, social adaptation, and survival. The research reframes Rapa Nui’s history as a parable of Indigenous endurance and adaptation rather than ecological self-destruction or cultural disappearance.