After experiencing a prophetic vision in which God instructed her to retake the land and livestock, she led an unsuccessful rebellion on the island against the Williamson-Balfour Company, intending to create a theocracy centered on Roman Catholicism and Rapa Nui spiritual values.

[2] Between 1864 and 1866, the French Picpus missionaries established themselves on Easter Island and converted many of the Rapa Nui people to Christianity during a period of severe population collapse caused by Peruvian slave raiding and the introduction of European diseases.

[3] In 1871, Angata and her first husband, Daniel Manu Heu Roroa, travelled to Mangareva in the Gambier Islands with Father Hippolyte Roussel.

[2][4] When Angata returned to Easter Island in October 1879, she worked as co-catechist and assistant to Nicolás Pakarati and Pakomīo Māʻori Ure Kino (c. 1816/1836–1908/1909), whom she had married on Mangareva.

The children supposedly inherited European Basque features from their father, despite Angata and Pakomio claiming full-blood Rapa Nui descent.

[9][12] Merlet's manager outlawed the native kingship on the island, although Enrique Ika and Moisés Tuʻu Hereveri were briefly elected kings.

[18] The rebellion, which was intended to establish a kingdom of God based on Rapa Nui understandings, had the negative effect of provoking the Chilean government into imposing a stronger administration.

She wore suspended round her neck some sort of religious medallion, a red cross, I think, on a white ground, and her daughter who supported her carried a small picture of the Saviour in an Oxford frame.

[28][29] She was buried at the cemetery of Holy Cross Church, Hanga Roa, next to other early Catholic missionaries: Eugène Eyraud, Nicolás Pakarati, and Sebastian Englert.