A psychology of islanders?

Abstract

Is it all at possible to conjecture or establish one or more traits that define islanders? The temptation is strong: as strong as it is naïve and simplistic to define an island simply as a piece of land, smaller than a continent, surrounded by water at high tide. Eating up Easter is a 2018 documentary by native Rapanui filmmaker Sergio Mata'u Rapu about Easter Island (or Rapa Nui, in its indigenous Polynesian language). Eating up Easter candidly portrays the beauty of Rapa Nui’s culture; but also the garbage, all of which is imported, that threatens to smother it. The documentary tells parallel stories, including the dream of a musician couple, Mahani and Enrique, to build the Toki Rapa Nui School of Music and the Arts, made from recycled material, so as to preserve the threatened cultural practices and oral traditions of their people, while reuniting a fractured community, overwhelmed by globalisation.