Tapere

The remaining Southern Cook Islands, Manuae, Palmerston and Takutea are atolls and/or uninhabited, and therefore not subject to this type of traditional subdivision.

It is occupied by the matakeinanga, the local group composed of the residential core of a major lineage, plus affines and other permissive members.

[1] Most of the tapere lands are subdivided among the minor lineages, each of which was headed by a rangatira or kōmono, or by the mataiapo himself.

By this type of delineation, any one tapere included every category of soil type and land surface of the island, from the typically mountainous interior, where forest products were collected, through fertile valleys where the major food crops were grown, across the rocky coastal strip of elevated fossil coral (makatea), out to the lagoon and fringing reef.

Rarotonga is subdivided into five Survey Land Districts (not to be confused with the three traditional Vaka districts that served as local government units with Councils and Mayors from 1997 to February 2008), with a total of 54 Tapere (or sub-districts), more than any other Island of the Cooks Islands: