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At the navel of the world

Young traveller flies Nunavut flag on Easter Island

JANE GEORGE

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Jesse Tungilik stands under one of Easter Island's "Moai" - mysterious stone statues erected there hundreds of years ago by Rapa Nui's first Polynesian inhabitants. (PHOTO COURTESY OF JESSE TUNGILIK)

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Jesse Tungilik still has travel bug.

Recently it brought this well-traveled 19 year-old from Nunavut all the way to Easter Island, a small triangle of volcanic rock in the Pacific Ocean.

Tungilik, whose father, Marius, lives in Rankin Inlet, has already visited Antarctica, northern Finland and Norway as well as many places in Canada.

Last month, Tungilik, accompanied by his girlfriend, visited Chile and Easter Island.

"It was an amazing trip," Tungilik said from Montreal. "I'd gone to Chile on my way to the Antarctic, and it looked very interesting."

Easter Island, which is linked to Chile by weekly flights, is considered to be one of the world's most mysterious places, because of its giant stone figures. It's also one of the most remote spots around, lying 2,000 kilometers west of Chile in the Pacific Ocean.

"It took five hours flying in a 767. It's along way away from anything - it's one of the isolated places in the world," Tungilik said.

Early Polynesian settlers called the island "Te Pito O Te Henua" (the navel of the world), but the Dutch admiral, Jacob Roggeveen, who came upon the island on Easter Sunday in 1722, renamed it Easter Island.

The land, people and language are all referred to locally as Rapa Nui.

Tungilik and his girlfriend camped on the island — where, due to the reversal of the seasons south of the equator, it was the end of summer — and spent a week hiking around, looking at hundreds of huge stone monoliths, called "Moai," that dot the coastline.

Controversy and confusion surrounds the origin of these figures as well as the origin of the Easter Islanders.

The late Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl proposed the people who built the statues came from South America, due to the similarities between the Rapa Nui and Inca stonework. Now, archeologists believe Polynesians settled the island about 400 AD and erected the moai.

The tiny island's history has been tumultuous — it was deforested and then rocked by a bloody civil war. The islanders knocked over the moai, and later, a series of epidemics almost wiped out the entire population.

Tungilik said Easter Island now has some trees and many of the moai have been brought to an upright position again.

The island is still thinly populated, with only about 3,000 residents.

And Tungilik discovered few residents of this Chilean-governed island speak English.

"It's basically the most isolated place on earth — a lot of them have barely heard of Canada, less Nunavut," Tungilik said.

But Tungilik had a paper flag of Nunavut with him, and was able to pose in front of one of the moai — although he's not sure if he's the first person from Nunavut to visit Easter Island. For his next trip, Tungilik is eyeing the South of France.

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