Part 2 - 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!

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

Our community blesses the vessel and sailors, and we learn how to sail in Lata’s arms. We find our way in the open ocean by interacting with patterns of 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 some generations earlier. We reconcile, reaffirm our love for each other, and look to our future together.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: 

Dr. Marianne "Mimi" George is an anthropologist, sailor, and writer specialized in voyaging cultures. Before the Vaka Taumako Project, she documented voyaging traditions of islanders in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Siberian Yupik Eskimos on the Alaskan and USSR sides of the Bering Straits. 

The communties in every place Mimi has visited or worked have requested assistance in educational video documentation of their ancient cultural voyaging knowledge and practices. The Paramount Chief of Taumako requested help to create films in English, and other languages, so that outsiders would learn to value and support ancient voyaging practices.