CULTURAL OUTCOME

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It was this collective work, this group approach to living prosperously on these islands that characterised Polynesian societies. That’s why the first Western explorers spoke of “Eden” when they discovered the Pacific and its cultures…

Christophe Sand – Archaeologist

MOANA NUI Strategic Committee

Sometimes unknown in the West, the cultures of the Pacific are profoundly rich.

Gregory Batson, Margaret Mead, Marcel Mauss and Bronislaw Malinoswski: all these great ethnologists were passionate about the history, societies and cultures of the Pacific.

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The diversity of Pacific cultures and peoples: a contribution in terms of ecological practices of major importance for the safeguarding of our oceans and coastal zones.

.Today even more than yesterday, the remarkable adaptation of these navigating peoples to changes in an isolated oceanic and insular environment shall raise our attention and interest.

What state of mind, what way of thinking and what particular concepts enabled these peoples and cultures to prosper before, where we fail today ?

For these navigating, Oceanian and Polynesian peoples, social organisation and respect for Nature, art and progress were all the same subject.

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Polynesian navigators aboard a Va’a Motu, a single-decker outrigger canoe: designed for coastal and inter-island navigation, these Vaka made it possible, among other things, to inspect the state of the fishing zones and Rahui (marine reserves).

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REVIVE THE NAVAL HERITAGE OF ANCIENT PACIFIC

HIGHLIGHT POLYNESIAN/OCEANIAN CULTURES AND ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGES

The reconstruction, the rebirth of these MOANA NUI ancestral catamarans, these “marvels of art, and ecology”, as Stéphane Martin, former President of the  Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, calls them, will be the first challenge that will enable the cultures of the Pacific, their techniques and their precious knowledges to be honoured worldwide.

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Interview with Stéphane MARTIN, former President of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum in Paris : MOANA NUI and the cultures of the Pacific.

AN INSPIRING PARTICIPATION IN MAJOR CULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL EVENTS

Partnerships with the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum, of course, but also with the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre (New Caledonia), the Tahiti and Islands Museum, the Australian National Maritime Museum, the War Museum in Auckland, the Musée de la Marine and the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, will enable various exhibitions and events to be organised around the cultures of the Pacific and their promotion in the context of oceans’ protection.

While the VAKA of the MOANA NUI fleet will be present at the next Festival of Pacific Arts, a navigation towards metropolitan France will lead our fleet of ancestral catamarans on the Seine, to the Quai Branly Museum in Paris where they will be the central point of a large exhibition and numerous events on the cultures of the Pacific and their interests for sustainable development.

These international events, involving many Oceanian, Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian actors, will be a vehicle for promoting the different cultures of the Pacific on a global scale.

ECOTOURISM, CULTURAL TOURISM, EVENTS

Beyond the expedition – and always at the service of Pacific cultures – MOANA NUI will make its VAKA available to local tourism entities, in order to introduce visitors to the Great Ocean, its cultures and its ecological diversity.

These ecotourism programmes will be strongly linked to the anchor points that will be the MOANA NUI eco-sites in New Caledonia, Fiji and French Polynesia.

In the same spirit of discovery, during the expedition, and beyond, event programmes will be offered to MOANA NUI’s partners, so that they can be inspired by its VALUES :