Cook Island haircutting ceremony

Tu Tangata, Issue 22, 1 February 1985, Page 17

Cook Island haircutting ceremony

by Alan Ah Mu

To Cook Islanders, the occasion of a first ever hair cut warrants a fullscale ceremony... provided the hair concerned belongs to the eldest son.

And provided his hair is allowed to grow uncut from birth. “You must not cut that child’s hair,” stresses Cook Islander Mrs Chasman Underhill.

Her eldest son never had a haircutting ceremony because her husband, a European, unknowingly took him to a barber. Chasman’s mother and grandmother got rather upset and reacted with words like, “How dare you Papa’s (European) cutting our grandson’s hair without asking why not.” Then the Underhill’s first grandson, three year old Ben, had his hair snipped by a Maori uncle before taking him to a Christmas party. That was it no ceremony for Ben too.

But if Cook Island custom is given it’s head, a formal snipping takes place often on a child’s fifth birthday before he attends school, says Chasman, though some haircutting ceremonies are held when the child is as old as seven.

There is no doubt that a formal haircutting is a big occasion. Beforehand, the family does it's homework: ranking the guests according to their genealogical and social status, then

sending out invitations which are numbered to indicate who follows who in cutting the child’s hair; calculating the amount of food needed to feed the guests generously; booking a suitable hall and much else besides.

Preparations may cost thousands of dollars, says Chasman.

You take a gift as if you’re going to a wedding, says she. In New Zealand, the gifts are more “expensive” things tablecloths, appliances; in the Cook Islands, you give mats, baskets, handmade shirts. Toys are inappropriate the idea is to give things that will be useful to the child when he grows up.

The child appears in the hall, in some cases with a veil which when removed, reveals “long long hair" tied into ringlets by white or blue ribbons. Up on the stage throne-like, says Chasman of a Porirua haircutting she recently attended, stood an elevated chair colourfully draped by the best of handmade finery like bed-quilts and chrochets. “It’s all made up so that everybody is looking up to the child.”

A master of ceremonies welcomes the gathering and the ancestors, followed by a blessing by a church minister. Together they offer words of wisdom to the child e.g. “Be a good citizen of New Zealand and the Cook Islands” and to the gathering. Which

in one dual haircutting in Auckland, numbered 600 people.

Elders from each tribe and family, recite their genealogical link to the child. And things can get a bit tense when someone gets indignant because his rank or his genealogical link goes unrecognised. “You’ve got to be careful,” says Chasman.

Whoever is announced as the first to cut a ringlet of hair, will be someone important in the community and to the family. “Special” guests and others follow in the order printed on their invitations. Chasman was number 29 in cutting 150 ringlets in the ceremony she attended, so she says, “I class myself as direct family.”

People who take their turn at the scissors, go up to the child with an envelope containing anything from $lO to SSO, which is a separate gift from theone given before. Money, says Chasman, has replaced food items like pigs, chickens, taro and kumara.

The guests take home the ringlets they have cut to remind them of the occasion.

As for the child, he has had his first hair cut and the dancing that follows, celebrates the fact that he is no longer a baby, or as it has been put, he is no longer a “girl” but a boy about to go out into the world.