Thomas Wynne: The voice of Tongareva comes first

Cook Islands News columnist Thomas Tarurongo Wynne. Mangarongaro is one of Tongareva's own names for itself. It belongs to the people who live at Omoka and Te Tautua, to their leaders, and to their diaspora scattered across Rarotonga, Aotearoa and beyond. Whatever this project becomes, it is their island, their lagoon and their generations to come who will live with the result. Vaine Wichman, elected as Member of Parliament for Penrhyn in the 2026 general election, has met with Tongareva leaders on the port project since the announcement. Speaking publicly, Wichman has said the need for improved port infrastructure has been raised for nearly two decades, and that her community has been consulted over many years. She has pushed back on commentary that leads with the involvement of the United States and critical minerals, saying that framing is 'not even in the minds of our people'. She has said she wants the project to create opportunities for Penrhyn people to take part in its development, and hopes it encourages those who have left the island to return home. Not every Cook Islands voice on the project has agreed with her emphasis. Te Ipukarea Society has raised concerns about transparency around the port upgrade and the wider critical minerals interest behind it, questioning how much islanders themselves have been told about what the deep sea nodules in the Penrhyn Basin might ultimately be used for. Wichman has rejected that framing as coming from outside the community rather than from within it. The announcement itself came on 1 September, in Palau ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, when Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters and United States Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau signed off on a joint upgrade of the port at Penrhyn. The United States will contribute US$50 million and New Zealand NZ$17.5 million toward the project. Penrhyn itself carries a long layer of foreign strategic interest, running well before this month's announcement. In the 1850s, US Congressman Elisha H. Taylor asserted an American claim over Penrhyn, along with Manihiki, Rakahanga and Pukapuka, under a guano act, a claim that sat largely dormant for decades but was never withdrawn. In 1942, American forces built the runway and port at Penrhyn, alongside a sister airstrip on Aitutaki, and operated from the atoll until 1946. The guano claim itself was not addressed until 1974, when Premier Albert Henry, addressing the United Nations Law of the Sea conference in Caracas, argued that a small island generating a two hundred nautical mile exclusive economic zone could not remain a matter of ambiguous claim. By 1980, the United States formally extinguished it by treaty. This month, Deputy Secretary Landau referred directly to those same wartime ties in announcing the new investment. Laid end to end, that is a paper claim in the 1850s, a built runway and port in the 1940s, a treaty closing the claim in 1980, and a funded return to the same wharf in 2026, a long diplomatic game played out over generations on one atoll. Where, in that long game, has the voice of Tongareva itself carried the most weight, and where has it simply been informed of decisions made elsewhere? That same 1942 wartime effort left Aitutaki with an airstrip that, over the following decades, became the foundation for the Coral Route flying boat stopovers of the 1950s and, eventually, for the tourism industry that today makes up the majority of the Cook Islands economy. According to Cook Islands Statistics Office tax data, the tourism industry's declared national turnover reached a provisional $317 million in the 2025 calendar year. Tourism today and especially for the people of Aitutaki, accounts for the large majority of the country's economy, nationally, and its foundation traces back to the same wartime runway building programme that gave Penrhyn its own airstrip and port. Penrhyn's wartime infrastructure did not follow the same path as Aitutaki's. What, if anything, could give the people of Tongareva a comparable long-term, intergenerational benefit from this port upgrade – similar to the way the wider country eventually drew value from its wartime airstrips – and what conditions must this project meet for that to happen? These are questions I would put first to Mangarongaro itself, to the people of Omoka and Te Tautua, to their diaspora, and to their newly elected MP, and only then to the House of Ariki, our constitutional scholars and the wider country. Their voice, above all else, is the one this story should be measured against. Comments