We, the Voyagers: Our Moana

We are the living crew of Lata, our Polynesian culture-hero who built the first voyaging canoe and navigated across the Pacific. We use only ancient designs, materials, and methods, and we invite everyone to reconnect with ancestors and sustainable lifeways. This is the real Moana!

In our recently isolated Polynesian community, we live the story of our ancestral culture-hero, Lata. To make a voyage Lata needs crew. He welcomes men, women and children, hard workers with skills and applicants of dubious character, including a sailing anthropologist. Our community blesses our vessel, and we learn how to sail the open ocean in Lata’s arms, interacting with winds, waves, stars, and other signs that our ancestors show us when we need them. We arrive at islands and learn what happened to family members since the last voyage, generations earlier. We reconcile, reaffirm our love for each other, and look to our future together