The beginning of We Know The Way is actually in two different languages – the first verse is Samoan while the chorus is Tokelauan, one of the native languages of composer Opetaia Foa‘i. The English verses were built around the Samoan and Tokelauan lines, which roughly translate to:
We are voyagers called by the great god of the sea, Who puts up a challenge. We take up the good challenge, So get ready. Oh, oh! There is land up ahead. A bird in flight to take us there, Oh, oh! This beautiful land, The place I was looking for, we will make our home.
You have no idea how excited I get seeing stuff like this.
#RepresentationMatters
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: the colonization of Pacific Islands is the greatest human adventure story of all time.
People using Stone Age technology built voyaging canoes capable of traveling thousands of miles, then set forth against the winds and currents to find tiny dots of land in the midst of the largest ocean on Earth. And having found them, they traveled back and forth, again and again, to settle them —all this, 500 to 1,000 years ago.
But one huge mystery, sometimes called “The Long Pause” leaves a gaping hole in this voyaging timeline.
Western Polynesia—the islands closest to Australia and New Guinea—were colonized around 3,500 years ago. But the islands of Central and Eastern Polynesia were not settled until 1,500 to 500 years ago. This means that after arriving in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, Polynesians took a break—for almost 2,000 years—before voyaging forth again.
Then when they did start again, they did so with a vengeance: archaeological evidence suggests that within a century or so after venturing forth, Polynesians discovered and settled nearly every inhabitable island in the central and eastern Pacific.
Nobody knows the reason for The Long Pause, or why the Polynesians started voyaging again.
Several theories have been proposed—from a favorable wind caused by a sustained period of El Niño, to visible supernovas luring the stargazing islanders to travel, to ciguatera poisoning caused by algae blooms.
Enter Moana, the latest Disney movie, set in what appears to be Samoa, even though most American audiences will see it as Hawaii.
Moana—pronounced “moh-AH-nah,” not “MWAH-nah” means “ocean,” and the character is chosen by the sea itself to return the stolen heart of [the island goddess] Te Fiti. An environmental catastrophe spreading across the island makes the mission urgent. And despite admonitions from her father against anyone going beyond the protective reef, Moana steals a canoe and embarks on her quest.
Moana’s struggle to learn to sail and get past the reef of her home island sets the stage for her learning of true wayfinding. It also shows traces of Armstrong Sperry’s stirring, classic book Call It Courage, and Tom Hanks’s Castaway.
But it is at the end of the film that a different and powerful angle of the story is revealed: Moana’s people had stopped voyaging long ago, and had placed a taboo—another Polynesian world—on going beyond the reef.
With the success of Moana’s mission and her having learned the art of wayfinding, her people start voyaging again.
And so the Long Pause comes to an end, Disney style, with a great fleet of canoes setting forth across the ocean to accomplish the greatest human adventure of all time. I admit to being moved by this scene.
As someone who lectures on traditional oceanic navigation and migration, I can say resoundingly that it is high time the rest of the world learned this amazing story.
Steel Phoenix Studios 