Myths and Power in Ancient Polynesia (Tahiti, Ra ’iātea, Ha wai‘i, Aotearoa New Zealand)
 
 
This book focuses on a traditional Tahitian account, which sees the island born in the guise of a fish. The scene is said to have been the Leeward Islands group, north of Tahiti. There, in ancient times, a huge eel swallowed a young girl and began to shake the land of the island of Ra’iātea, at a time when it was called Havai’i. A piece of it broke off , sailing away and becoming the Tahitian fish. The final words of this myth, which state a natural anteriority of Ra’iātea-Havai’i over Tahiti, are very depreciatory: Tahiti, a subordinate island, would once have had neither gods nor sacred chiefs (ari’i), unlike the glorious Ra’iātea-Havai’i.
What was the reality? Did the island of Ra’iātea – where is the ‘’international’’ marae (temple) of Taputapuātea, classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2017 – dominate its neighbours? Did its infl uence extend to a vast region, in the interior of the Pacific, as some have claimed and are claiming today?
This book attempts to answer these questions by focusing on the conditions of historical fabrication of a myth that is both highly poetic and political. For that purpose, it explores in details the meaning of the entity Havai’i or Hawaiki, the primordial land of the ancient Polynesians.
Bruno Saura, Professor of Polynesian Civilisation at the Université de la Polynésie française (in Tahiti), is a trained anthropologist and political scientist. His early work focused on contemporary political and religious issues in French Polynesia.
He now specialises in the study of oral traditions, early indigenous manuscripts and Polynesian mythology.