“History was made today when the ancestral lands of Easter Island were returned to the native people of this remote South Pacific island.
Up until the end of the 19th century, the inhabitants of Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island) used to live all over the island, where the mighty moai statues are that this island is famous for. In 1888, the island was annexed to Chile, that rented out the island to a sheep shearing business. As a consequence, the rapa nui people were forced away from their homes and moved into what became the island’s only town – Hanga Roa.
Tourism started on a bigger scale in 1986, when NASA extended and improved the airport, thus allowing big passenger planes to visit. To minimize impact on the archaeology, the Chilean national forest corporation CONAF has been controlling the archaeological sites for the last decades. Today, the chilean president Michelle Bachelet has officially given back the control of these archaeolgical sites back to the locals, by passing it on to a local entity called Ma’u Henua.”
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