A tapere is a subdivision of a district (the major island subdivision) or puna, which is headed by a district chiefs or Pava (in the case of the Island of Mangaia). A tapere is normally headed by a mataiapo (a chief of a major lineage) or ariki (a High Chief, the titular head of a tribe). 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 rangatiraorkōmono, or by the mataiapo himself.[2]
Below that level, there is the uanga, the extended family, the residential core of which occupied a household.[1]
Historically, taperes were almost always wedge-shaped - the boundaries beginning at defined points on the outer reef and running inland to enclose an ever narrowing strip of land until converging at a point in or near the center of the island. 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.[3]
Aitutaki is subdivided into eight districts with 19 tapere according to the constitution.[4] The 16 minor islands, 12 of them motu, are outside of this subdivision scheme:
Mangaia is subdivided into six Districts (puna), which are further subdivided into 38 tapere.[5]
In the Cook Islands Constitution however, the six districts are called tapere.[4]
Mauke is subdivided into four traditional districts. Vaimutu and Makatea are not further subdivided and correspond to one tapere each. Ngatiarua and Areora districts are subdivided into 6 and 3 tapere, respectively, totalling 11 tapere for the whole island:
[6][7]
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:
