Men want to leave something behind, they think having children means leaving a legacy, instead they are often an extension of their ego,” writes Ruta Mave.

Your name can live on and mean nothing. Anyone can make a child but not many make a mark. Legacy is about accountability, lineage takes biology.

Legacy is not about who comes from you but who comes through you. A legacy is the long-lasting impact of particular events or actions that took place in the past of a person’s life. It can also mean anything passed down like cultural traditions or even negative consequences. Essentially a legacy is a lasting impact or influence that an individual or event has on shaping the present and future generations. Politicians should be concerned with their legacy of the lasting impact of their actions and decisions like electoral fraud or charging residents for their water.

Lineage is a person’s ancestry, the line of descent, their family history. It encompasses the individuals from whom someone is descended as well as the descendants who come after them, forming a family tree or genealogy.

Lineage highlights the direct line of descent showing how individuals are related through parents and grandparents connecting them across time. It’s the study of family stories and the relationships between people across generations. In some societies, lineage plays a significant role in social structures and inheritance patterns determining who inherits property status or power. It is determining the lineage of deep cultural significance within a community that is being challenged as seen at the last two investitures.

Immigration asks you to prove you are a Cook Islander through your genealogy that ensures you have the blood of Cook Islands descent to get your stamp. It is not the blood line of the colonial surname you carry that determines the stamp unless you are listed as a permanent resident.

So why do Cook Islanders carry ‘his’ name? If your name is John Smith, somewhere along the way one of your grandmothers met a European man and had relations with him that produced a son who was given the European name and every other thereafter became his name. The daughter never keeps her maiden name cultural or European. The reality is the cultural matriarchal names are lost unless she had brothers and they had sons.

Brown is a derivative surname referring to someone with brown hair complexion or clothing. It can be traced to old English burn, norse brunn and French brun as well as German braun or bruno from Italy. Brown is the second most common surname in Canada, third in UK and fourth in Australia and prevalent in southern Scotland with the Brown clan. 49.6 per cent of all ancestry around the world of people with Brown surnames is British and Irish. In the Bible it has a rich earth toned symbolism of humility, earthliness and humanity. Can we dare to suppose this is why the Prime Minister is so keen to hold onto it?

During his passport debacle, Prime Minister Mark Brown was very keen for us to have a Cook Islands passport to show our independence and our cultural identity.  However, many reacted in panic to losing access to the NZ passport due to all the benefits that come with it. We will easily identify as a Kuki and promote our culture and language but with the assurance of New Zealand’s support.

There are many Browns in Parliament who talk about cultural identity and sovereignty who are not willing to give it up their colonial surname for their matriarchal family name. The most astounding example of this are the families of Marsters from Palmerston.

If one of the requirements to be a Parliamentarian is to speak Maori, then there should be one to carry specifically Cook Islands surnames, the minimum a Polynesian surname, acknowledging the arrival of Samoan and Tahitian descendants on Rarotonga.

Mark Brown is trying to leave his legacy by putting his photo on billboards alongside past prime ministers trying to usurp their legacy where a building is named after them at the airport or the cultural auditorium. The irony is both of the Henry’s ended their reign with a not so shiny light over their heads. Albert lost his knighthood because of electoral fraud, he flew in a whole airplane of voters from New Zealand, nothing subtle there. And Geoff was taken to task over his running of CISNOC. But naturally, in good Cook Islands fashion, most choose to ignore their corrupt side and promote a legacy even if tarnished. Added to this again in good cultural fashion, the lineage that has followed via nephews and the like descendants. Legacy lives on positively or notoriously if lineage is also corrupt and negative.