Cook Islands

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Cook Islands sits in the South Pacific Ocean, 15 specks of land whose total area barely reaches 236.7 square kilometres, yet whose ocean territory, the Exclusive Economic Zone, stretches across nearly two million square kilometres of sea. That contrast, a tiny land mass commanding a vast maritime domain, captures something essential about this place. How did a scattered chain of Polynesian islands come to run its own foreign policy, manage its own customs, maintain diplomatic relations with dozens of countries, and even turn down United Nations membership on its own terms? And how did it do all this while remaining, in a legal and formal sense, part of the Realm of New Zealand? Those questions sit at the heart of what the Cook Islands actually is.

• 2. First Peoples and First Contact

  ›

  Around AD 1000, Polynesian migrants crossed roughly 1,154 kilometres of open ocean from Tahiti to reach the main island of Rarotonga. Their navigation was not accidental. These were deliberate ocean voyagers who carried their language and culture with them, establishing the foundations of Cook Islands Maori society that persist today.

  The first European eyes on any of the islands belonged to the Spanish navigator Alvaro de Mendana de Neira, who sighted Pukapuka in 1595 and named it San Bernardo. A decade later, in 1606, the Portuguese captain Pedro Fernandes de Queiros became the first European to actually set foot in the islands, landing on Rakahanga and calling it Gente Hermosa, meaning Beautiful People.

  British naval officer James Cook arrived in 1773 and returned in 1777, leaving his name attached to the southern island group, though indirectly. He named the island of Manuae "Hervey Island" after Augustus Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol. The Hervey Islands label eventually spread to the entire southern group. The name "Cook Islands" itself first appeared on a Russian naval chart compiled by Admiral Adam Johann von Krusenstern in the 1820s. The name did not apply to all the islands at once. As late as 1901, a New Zealand parliamentary act used "Cook Islands" to refer only to some of them. Only with the Cook Islands Act 1915 were the full boundaries formally defined.

  The first recorded European sighting of Rarotonga came in 1813, when missionary John Williams spotted it from the colonial brig Endeavour, a different vessel entirely from Cook's famous ship. A landing party from the Cumberland arrived in 1814, but violence broke out between sailors and islanders, leaving casualties on both sides. Europeans would not return until 1821, when English missionaries came ashore. Christianity spread quickly, and the majority of Cook Islanders remain Christian today.

• 3. Colonialism and the Road to Self-Rule

  ›

  By 1888 the islands had become a British protectorate, largely driven by a petition from Queen Makea Takau Ariki. The fear motivating that petition was France, which had already absorbed Tahiti and seemed poised to expand further. On the 6th of September 1900, island leaders submitted another petition, this time asking outright for annexation as British territory. In October of that year, seven instruments of cession were signed by chiefs across Rarotonga and several other islands, and a British Proclamation formally accepted them.

  The arrangement did not last long in British hands. In 1901 an Order in Council folded the islands into the Colony of New Zealand, a boundary change that took effect on the 11th of June 1901. When Britain's Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948 came into force on the 1st of January 1949, Cook Islanders who had been British subjects automatically became New Zealand citizens.

  The shift to self-governance arrived on the 4th of August 1965, when a constitution was promulgated. Albert Henry of the Cook Islands Party became the first Premier and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Henry led the islands until 1978, when accusations of vote-rigging forced his resignation. He was stripped of his knighthood in 1979. His successor, Tom Davis of the Democratic Party, held the premiership until March 1983.

  The relationship with New Zealand remains distinctive and contested to this day. A spokesperson for New Zealand's foreign minister stated as recently as 2025 that the Cook Islands is not a fully independent and sovereign state. Prime Minister Mark Brown acknowledged that year that the islands do not meet the requirements for UN membership, and that any change to the relationship with New Zealand would require a referendum.

• 4. War, Service, and Epidemic

  ›

  When World War I broke out, the Cook Islands sent close to 500 men in five contingents, volunteering to reinforce the Maori Contingents and the Australian and New Zealand Mounted Rifles. Recruits trained at Narrow Neck Camp in Devonport. The first group departed on the 13th of October 1915 aboard the SS Te Anau, arriving in Egypt just as New Zealand units were being transferred to the Western Front.

  In September 1916, the Pioneer Battalion, a combined force of Cook Islanders, Maori, and Pakeha soldiers, saw heavy action during the Allied attack on Flers, one of the opening engagements of the Somme. Three Cook Islanders from that first contingent were killed in combat. At least ten others died of disease, their bodies unable to adapt to the conditions of Europe.

  Later contingents served in the Sinai-Palestine campaign. At their Moascar base they supported the Australian and New Zealand Mounted Rifles in a logistical role before taking on ammunition supply work for the Royal Artillery.

  The ordeal did not end with the Armistice. Returning soldiers encountered the influenza epidemic that was sweeping New Zealand, and the combination of that illness and other European diseases meant that a significant number who had survived the war did not survive the journey home or the months that followed.

• 5. A Sovereign-Shaped Association

  ›

  The Cook Islands occupies a constitutional category that has very few equivalents anywhere in the world. It is self-governing in free association with New Zealand, which means New Zealand cannot pass laws for the Cook Islands. Rarotonga maintains its own foreign service and diplomatic network. Cook Islanders hold New Zealand citizenship, but New Zealand citizens are not Cook Islands nationals, a one-way arrangement that is unusual in international law.

  Despite not being a United Nations member state, the Cook Islands has had its full treaty-making capacity recognised by the UN Secretariat. It holds full membership in the World Health Organization, UNESCO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Maritime Organization, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. It is an associate member of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and a member of the Assembly of States of the International Criminal Court.

  The islands have pursued specific foreign policy milestones on their own terms. On the 11th of June 1980, the United States signed a treaty with the Cook Islands fixing the maritime boundary between the Cook Islands and American Samoa and relinquishing any American claims to Penrhyn, Pukapuka, Manihiki, and Rakahanga. In 1990 the Cook Islands and France delimited their shared boundary. In 2017 the Cook Islands signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. On the 25th of September 2023, formal diplomatic relations between the Cook Islands and the United States were established at a ceremony in Washington, DC, under Prime Minister Mark Brown.

  A Cook Islander, Henry Puna, served as Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum from 2021 to 2024, signalling the islands' growing weight in regional affairs.

• 6. Economy, Seabed Minerals, and Asset Shelters

  ›

  Tourism generates approximately 67.5 percent of GDP and drew over 168,000 visitors to the islands in 2018. Foreign aid, largely from New Zealand, supplements that base, though China has also contributed, financing projects including the Police Headquarters building.

  Since about 1989, the Cook Islands has developed a specialised financial services sector built around asset protection trusts, established through its International Trusts Act. The arrangement allows investors to shield assets from creditors and foreign courts. According to The New York Times, the laws were apparently crafted to thwart American legal claims. Creditors must travel to the Cook Islands and argue cases under local law, an expense that deters many claimants. Unlike other offshore jurisdictions, the Cook Islands generally disregards foreign court orders and does not require that sheltered assets be physically located within the archipelago. Taxes on trusts and trust employees account for roughly 8 percent of the economy, placing the sector behind tourism but ahead of fishing.

  In 2019 the Cook Islands passed the Sea Bed Minerals Act to manage mineral resources in its Exclusive Economic Zone. By 2022 the Seabed Minerals Authority had issued three exploration licences for polymetallic nodules, including one to a company partly owned by the government. In 2025 the Cook Islands signed seabed mineral exploration agreements with both the United States and China, a detail that carries obvious geopolitical weight given the ongoing rivalry between those two powers in the Pacific.

• 7. Art, Language, and Living Culture

  ›

  Woodcarving runs deep in Cook Islands culture, though the form it takes varies sharply from island to island. Rarotonga is known for fisherman's gods and staff-gods. Atiu produces distinctive wooden seats. Mangaia, shaped by its extensive limestone caves, is the source of food pounders carved from heavy calcite and ceremonial adzes in what is called the double-k design. Missionaries burned large numbers of original carvings, and early European collectors carried away many others, leaving gaps that communities are still working to fill through programs that engage young carvers under the guidance of older masters.

  The outer islands produce rito hats, woven from the uncurled immature fibre of the coconut palm. Considered the Polynesian equivalent of Panama hats, they are keenly sought by Polynesian visitors from Tahiti. The hatbands are often decorated with minuscule pupu shells, painted and stitched on by hand. The weaving of rito is concentrated on the northern islands of Manihiki, Rakahanga, and Penrhyn.

  Tivaevae, the art of handmade patchwork quilts depicting island scenery, began as an introduction by missionary wives in the 19th century and grew into a communal practice that now sits at the centre of Cook Islands artistic identity.

  The contemporary art scene is anchored on Rarotonga and has produced internationally recognised figures including painter and photographer Mahiriki Tangaroa, master carver Mike Tavioni, and multi-media installation artist Ani O'Neill. New Zealand-based Cook Islander Michel Tuffery has also achieved international recognition. Bergman Gallery, the main commercial dealer in Rarotonga, represents artists across both islands.

  The islands' languages reflect both their Polynesian roots and the diversity of the island groups. Cook Islands Maori and English are the official languages under the Te Reo Maori Act. Pukapukan, closely related to Samoan, is also spoken. The Cook Islands News, the national newspaper, has been published since 1945.

• 8. Wildlife, Protected Waters, and Name

  ›

  In April 2007-27 Kuhl's lorikeets were re-introduced to Atiu, brought from Rimatara. Fossil evidence and oral tradition indicate the species once lived on at least five islands of the southern group before excessive hunting for its red feathers wiped it out locally. The re-introduction is one of the more concrete conservation efforts in the islands' recent history.

  The waters around the islands are home to the peppermint angelfish. Despite being common in those waters, the difficulty of capturing the species alive makes it one of the most expensive marine aquarium fish anywhere, fetching around US$30,000.

  On the 13th of July 2017, the Cook Islands established Marae Moana, which became the world's largest protected area by size at the time of its creation.

  In March 2019 it was reported that the government was exploring a name change to remove the reference to James Cook in favour of a title reflecting the islands' Polynesian character. The proposal was poorly received by the Cook Islands diaspora when it circulated in May 2019. The compromise reached was that the English name would remain, but a new Cook Islands Maori name would be adopted alongside it. Discussions continued through 2020, leaving the question unresolved. The name question points directly to a deeper one the islands have been navigating for decades: what kind of entity the Cook Islands actually wants to be, and on whose terms it defines itself.