Pacific Islanders are more than fire throwing and grass skirts, and Moana is helping to dispel the stereotypes, but there's still a long way to go. Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Moana is about an adventurous teenager who, with help from demigod Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) sails out on a daring mission to prove herself a master wayfinder and save her people. While not connected through language or even tradition sometimes, the peoples of the Pacific Islands were grouped together by English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese expansionists as a single entity, not quite the same as the large subgroups of people on the Asian continent or even the indigenous peoples in Australia. We've discovered in recent decades that there were "undiscovered" tribes and nations, but modern exploration has brought those peoples into a different kind of colonization. Those peoples who weren't wiped out from illness or war were suppressed by either the Bible or the gun. Artifacts you will find in exhibit includes: fine kapa (paper used as clothing and bedding), koi (adze), lei hulu (feather lei), lei. Once explorers and missionaries started colonizing the great mass of islands scattered across the Pacific ocean, the myths became folklore, and priorities were changed. The Kepolani Room is the best exhibit of Hawaiian antiquities to be found anywhere on the island of Maui and includes the best preserved and most rare artifacts from Hawaii’s pre-western contact era. (For a quick overview of the Mythology of the Pacific Islands, see this article in Britannica.).She is also the patron goddess of the Hula.
There are many tales of both triumph and tragedy about her. Pele, opens a new window is the fire goddess of Hawaii, said to live in the Kilauea volcano.In Maori tradition, Tangaroa is also the deity most related to the sea. Tangaroa has many names, opens a new window and origin stories, ranging from being the creator god of all things to being the creator of the islands on which the tellers live.Rangi and Papa, opens a new window/Ao and Po are the world's parents-Mother Earth and Father Sky. While their names are different in different regions of the Pacific (Rangi and Papa in the Maori tradition, Ao and Po in the Hawaiian, etc.), many of the stories are very similar.He is a demigod, who exists somewhere between the mortal and the divine, and is the hero of many stories about his tricks and wit. Maui is a central figure in many Pacific Island traditions, particularly Hawaii and New Zealand.They share a lot of the same central traditions and myths of creation, though the names and stories might have evolved through time.
This includes people from Hawaii and the Maori tribes of New Zealand. The generally accepted term used to encompass these groups is Pacific Islander, though many would prefer being referred to as their tribe or nationality. What we consider “Polynesian Culture” is actually made up of several different nationalities and tribal groups flung across the islands in the South Pacific, opens a new window.
What do you know about the expansive story of “Polynesia”? Maui the demigod embarks on an important journey of self-discovery alongside Moana of Oceania.