As the 46th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee ends this Wednesday, July 31 in New Delhi, the teams of the Marquesas Islands – Te Henua Enata file are back in Tahiti. On Monday 29, it was with emotion that the six hakaiki (mayors) of the islands celebrated in Papeete the inscription of the archipelago on the World Heritage List, in the presence of the Polynesian President, Moetai Brotherson, and the Minister Delegate for Overseas Territories, Marie Guévénoux.
Initiated in 1996 under the leadership of local leader Lucien Kimitete, the registration process has been a long road. “This is a file that took time, because it was necessary to respond to complex issues, find the right language with local communities, and transcribe this Oceanian thought in a standardized language”explains Anataurii Tamarii, archaeologist coordinating the inscription project.
A three-hour flight from Tahiti, the Marquesas Islands have been honored since July 26 with their inscription on the World Heritage List: a mixed property, both cultural and natural, which also gives central importance to intangible heritage and the role of local communities, the 10,000 or so inhabitants who populate the six main islands of the archipelago. “The distinction between tangible and intangible cultural heritage is very Western,” notes the coordinator of the file. “In Oceania, we cannot talk about heritage without all the stories, the cosmogony that gravitate around it.”
In terms of natural heritage, it is the spectacular landscapes of the volcanic islands, their endemic and fragile biodiversity, which have been distinguished. The cultural aspect of the file is based on the numerous vestiges testifying to the adaptation of the Marquesans to their steep environment, like the paepae, volcanic stone terraces. “The Marquesas Islands are those where the inventory of archaeological heritage is the most complete in Polynesia, and not all the valleys have yet been inventoried”specifies Anataurii Tamarii. The management plan for the UNESCO property sets the objective of an exhaustive inventory by 2030.
Before the World Heritage Committee, the applicants defended the reinstatement of selection criterion 6, which distinguishes a property “associated with events and living traditions (…) having an exceptional universal significance”. The evaluation by ICOMOS, a UNESCO advisory body, had in fact recommended abandoning this criterion in favour of criterion 3, “a unique testimony to a cultural tradition or civilization”. A “frustration” for Anataurii Tamarii: “This link between nature, heritage and communities is the cement of our thinking. We welcome the intervention of the Lebanese delegation which made it possible to reintegrate this criterion.”
Purely cultural when it was launched in the mid-1990s, the registration file was enriched with a natural component when it was relaunched in 2017. In the meantime, the registration project suffered from political instability in Polynesia during the 2000s, then from competition from another Polynesian file, Taputāpuata, registered in 2017 on the UNESCO list. In 2021, the file was given a spotlight, with Emmanuel Macron’s trip to the archipelago, and a declaration of support for this project financed by the Polynesian government. “We owe this registration to the determination of the mayors of the Marquesas Islands; they are the ones who set this course and who agreed on the same vision of development for the archipelago.”traces the coordinator.
“It is also thanks to the beginnings of a perception of heritage where Man is at the center, since 2007 and the involvement of Maori communities in a UNESCO process in New Zealand” adds Anatauarii Tamarii. In the management plan for the Marquesas Islands property, the Enata (the Men in Marquesan) are placed at the centre of the process: “They need to be integrated as key players, it’s not just ‘a consultation and that’s it'”The extension of heritage protection will therefore be done in consultation with residents, some of whom expressed a certain reluctance and reported a lack of information on the registration process in the local press.
For the government of French Polynesia, the registration is also part of a tourism development plan. “It’s not hidden, there is a tourist ambition, and a reflection on the opening of a regional airport in the Marquesas. But it is necessary to contextualize the thing, the insularity makes that everything is expensive, the risk of over-tourism is therefore limited. It will not be Venice!”wants to reassure Anatauarii Tamarii.
