Films

We The Voyagers is a two-part film series created during a 28 year project between Taumako community groups and Pacific Traditions Society. The 2021 versions of both films (linked below) were completed in collaboration with Holau Vaka Taumako Association. But copyright to all the imagery in these films is shared with all of Taumako community, as was agreed in 1996 and in subsequent MOUs. These films were made in answer to the request of Te Aliki Kaveia that Mimi George and Pacific Traditions Society help him start the Vaka Taumako Project. The intellectual property belongs solely to Nga Taumako. The following is summary of the stories told in the films: "We are the crew of Lata, the Polynesian culture-hero who built the first voyaging canoe and navigated across the Pacific. We use ancient designs, materials, and methods that have been forgotten by others, and we invite everyone to reconnect with ancestors and sustainable lifeways. Join us in the real Moana! We, the Polynesian voyagers of Taumako, Solomon Islands, share our history, motivations, and skills, through story-telling, canoe building, and wayfinding. We recall our ancestors, who made the greatest of human migrations. We use the designs, materials, and methods of our culture-hero, Lata, who built the first voyaging canoe (vaka) and navigated to distant islands. When Europeans took over we became isolated. To help us regain sustainability, Chief Kaveia, our most experienced navigator, led us in training new generations to plant gardens, feed workers, make rope from plants, weave and sew sails, protect our trees, adze parts for voyaging canoes, and lash them together. Kaveia also enlisted an anthropologist to help us make this film. After Kaveia died in 2009, we built a vaka under the leadership of Chief Holani, who had served as Kaveia’s crew, Holani our new Lata. prepared us for the test of an open ocean voyage. The story of Lata teaches that everyone is welcome in Lata’s crew, and we can avoid making certain mistakes as we strive to connect with long-lost family and new friends on faraway shores. We still live the story of Lata. To make a voyage our living Lata welcomes men, women and children as crew, including hard workers with skills, persons of bad character, and a tame anthropologist. We bless the vessel and sailors, learn how to set the sails, and navigate into challenging seas and weather. We find our way in the open ocean by interacting with patterns of winds, waves, stars, and other signs that ancestors show us when we need them. We arrive at islands and learn what happened to family members since the last voyage some generations earlier. We reconcile, reaffirm our love for each other, and look to our future together."