Mana Tiaki: what guardianship looks like at Kia Orana Villas
On the exterior fences of our villas, made with laser-engraved corten steel, is Tangaroa paddling his vaka (canoe). Historically, Tangaroa was the supreme god in the Southern Cook Islands, where he was revered as the progenitor of fish and master of the ocean. Other panels carry to’ora, the whale, and ono, the turtle: whales and turtles hold profound cultural, ecological, and economic significance in the Southern Cook Islands, acting as both spiritual ancestors and critical components of the marine ecosystem. They are central to local identity, traditionally considered “ocean ambassadors” and “guardians” of the sea. I wear a Tangaroa pendant handcrafted by Bergman’s jewellers in Rarotonga.
We installed those panels progressively after 2018. In 2025, we installed laser-engraved security gates and privacy panels that now stand at each villa. They weren’t an aesthetic choice. They were the most direct way I could think of to make a quiet declaration on arrival: this place belongs to a culture, and so do we while we’re inside it.
That idea has a name in the Southern Cook Islands. Mana Tiaki, guardianship. The understanding that we don’t own the land or the reef or the air; we hold them in trust, and we pass them on. It’s an old idea, and it sits behind almost every decision we’ve made about how this property is run.
For us, it comes down to three things.
Respect: for our people, traditions, and sacred places
This is the easiest of the three to say and the hardest to live, because it asks you to defer. To let the place set the pace. To recognise that not every patch of ground is yours to walk on, not every story is yours to tell, and not every photograph is yours to take.
In every villa, we leave a copy of Southern Cook Islands Customary Law, History and Society: three volumes, 1,280 pages, the result of years of work I undertook, which incorporates the work of the late Ron Crocombe. I don’t leave it there to sell books. I leave it there because if a guest stays long enough to open it, they’ll arrive at the reef with a different set of eyes, and they’ll leave the island understanding something about the Cook Islands that no resort brochure can give them. The traditional designs on the panels, the artists whose work hangs on the walls, the welcome our team offers in te reo Māori Kūki ’Āirani: these aren’t decoration. They’re the place itself, asking to be met properly.
Responsibility: to conserve what we use and protect what we have
This one is operational. It shows up in choices we made in 2016, when we put solar hot water on every villa and built the underground rainwater tanks that still supply us today. It shows up in the ceiling fans we use instead of running the air-conditioning all day, and in the key card system we installed in 2025, so that when a guest leaves the villa, the cooling switches itself off behind them. We use only eco-friendly laundry and cleaning products, buy toiletries in bulk to fill soap, shampoo and conditioner dispensers, and do not use single-serve plastic. None of these is a heroic decision. Each of them, repeated across 13 villas over a decade, adds up to something that matters.
We are Gold Members of Te Ipukarea Society, the Cook Islands’ leading environmental organisation. I joined because of my respect for their hard-working team and their genuine concern for the environment they live in, and the practical actions they take to enhance it. They are doing what guardianship requires. Quiet, persistent work. The right kind of company to keep.
The plantings around the villas, frangipani, banana, pawpaw, lime, mango, breadfruit, are part of the same idea. They cool the air, hold the soil, feed our guests at breakfast, and ask very little in return. The island has been growing these things for centuries. We’re just keeping a few of them alive on our patch.
Connection: to immerse, with curiosity and care
Guardianship isn’t only what we do. It’s also what we invite our guests to do.
We ask that when you stay with us, you arrive curious. Walk slowly. Ask questions of our team. Sane and the others have grown up here and will tell you things you won’t find in any guidebook. Eat what’s in season. Snorkel gently and from a distance, especially around the turtles. Learn one phrase in te reo Māori Kūki ’Āirani before you leave; meitaki ma’ata is a good place to start.
If the laser-engraved Tangaroa on the fence is the first thing you see when you arrive, I’d like the last thing you take with you to be a sense that you’ve been somewhere, not just on a holiday, but in a place with a history, a language, and a future it is actively defending.
That’s what Mana Tiaki means here. It’s the reason we built the property the way we did, the reason the book is in every villa, the reason the panels carry the gods and not just patterns. It’s also, I think, the reason guests come back.
We’re grateful to share it with you while you’re with us, and to carry it forward when you’re gone.
Ross Holmes
Director, Kia Orana Villas & Spa
