Online: We, the Voyagers: Our Vaka & Our Moana

Bowers Museum presents an online two-part documentary screening of We, the Voyagers:  Our Vaka & Our Moana with an exclusive introductory video by director Mimi George.

We are the living crew of Lata, the 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!

We, the Voyagers: Our Vaka
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 only the designs, materials, and methods of our culture-hero, Lata, who built the first voyaging canoe (vaka) and navigated to distant islands. We were colonized and became isolated.

We, the Voyagers: Our Moana
In our isolated Polynesian community, we live the story of our ancestral culture-hero, Lata. To make a voyage our Lata welcomes men, women and children as crew, including hard workers with skills and applicants of dubious character, including an anthropologist.