Those whose islands fall within the formal definition of Polynesia have every reason to celebrate the film Moana with pride. Hawaiians, Samoans and others represented most directly in it should celebrate this historic achievement, and the rest of us across the Pacific should celebrate with them.
For those of us outside Polynesia, however, the relationship can feel more complicated. We may wonder whether this is also our story and whether we should be grateful to Seiuli Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and the team behind it. My answer is yes. The reflections that follow are not a critique of Moana, but opinions and stories that may help clarify why we should celebrate the live-action film and how public figures like The Rock can help advance the broader work of decolonising the Pacific.
In the weeks leading up to the Los Angeles premiere in early July which prominently featured Samoan culture with the Taualuga ceremonial dance, I watched almost every interview from the Moana world tour. And, if I am honest, hearing the interviews repeatedly framed only in terms of “Polynesia” sometimes made me feel increasingly invisible.
Only those who truly grew up in villages like the one portrayed in Moana can fully understand why it matters deeply. When I watch the film, I do not simply see Hollywood. I see my childhood. I see Muribenua on Nikunau Island in Kiribati. I see the ocean that raised us, the way we lived, the values we learned and the stories that shaped us.
The line that hit me the most was when Moana screamed, “we were voyagers”. I became emotional. I was seeing part of my father’s story, my village’s story and the ocean heritage of Pacific Islanders reflected on screen.
Part of the reason I feel strongly about words such as Polynesia and Micronesia being used so freely is the history of Pius “Mau” Piailug from the Federated States of Micronesia, together with my own memories of watching my father and other men from my village struggle to preserve the knowledge of celestial wayfinding.
Back in Muribenua, my father and a group of men would regularly gather in the maneaba, our community meeting house, with a man named Uriam from Onotoa. For weeks, they discussed and carefully recorded knowledge about the stars, ocean currents, winds, waves and other principles of traditional navigation.
The story passed down to us was that this particular body of wayfinding knowledge had originally travelled from the ancestors of Muribenua to Onotoa. Generations later, Uriam came to Muribenua to return that knowledge to the place from which it had come.
After those weeks of theoretical discussion, the men would gather outside at night. I remember them standing together in the darkness, pointing toward particular stars with a six-battery torch that we called te bwa onoua.
Then they would begin the actual voyage from Muribenua to Beru and Onotoa, islands southwest of us. They travelled there and returned without GPS or modern navigational technology.
These journeys involved real danger. During one of those voyages, a boat did not make it back. I remember the names Teun Otineru and Teawaki Tebania, my close neighbours, as being among the three or four people connected to that tragedy.
People from my village sacrificed their lives while trying to practise and preserve these ancient skills.
My father also kept three thick notebooks filled with handwritten notes from those meetings and workshops. Those books showed that Indigenous navigation was not simply instinct, mythology or folklore. It was a complex body of knowledge that people worked seriously to study, test, understand and preserve.
This is also why the story of Pius “Mau” Piailug matters.
Mau came from the tiny coral island of Satawal in Yap State — an island that outsiders would place under the label “Micronesia”. Yet without his knowledge, courage and willingness to share the ancient art of traditional navigation, Hokuleʻa — the canoe now so often presented as a symbol of “Polynesian navigation” — might never have completed the voyages that helped revive traditional wayfinding in Hawaiʻi.
Mau’s story demonstrates something important. Knowledge did not remain confined within the colonial categories that now divide our region. It travelled between islands. Navigators taught other navigators. Pacific peoples learned from one another.
Our ocean connected us long before outsiders divided us into Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.
This is not a competition between Pacific peoples. It is about dismantling foreign labels that have encouraged unnecessary divisions, tensions and competition among people who have always been connected by the same ocean.
When stories, documentaries, academic studies and social-media posts discuss traditional wayfinding without GPS but automatically place the entire history under the title of “Polynesia”, they have already failed to tell the full story.
They overlook Mau. They overlook Satawal in Yap. They overlook Tungaru navigators. They overlook Uriam, my father and the people of Muribenua.
My message to The Rock, his co-star Australian actor Catherine Lagaʻaia and the Moana team is a plea to do one seemingly small thing: just for that moment, speak about us simply as Pacific Islanders.
The Rock deserves enormous credit for helping place Pacific Islanders on the map. But representation is not only about seeing a brown Pacific face on the screen. It is also about whose history is named, whose knowledge is recognised, whose islands are included and whose identities disappear when one regional label is repeatedly used to represent everyone.
I propose that he lead the way in slowly moving beyond labels such as Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. I encourage him and his team to consider using broader terms like Pacific cultures, Pacific peoples, Pacific Islanders. Michael Alisa, who played Chief Tautai Vasa in Moana, made this effort in his social media content.
My point here is that traditional ocean navigation is a shared Pacific inheritance.
Hokuleʻa itself should teach us this lesson. Its modern voyages became possible because Pacific knowledge crossed the very boundaries that outsiders had imposed. A navigator from Satawal helped restore knowledge in Hawaiʻi that led to the success of the first voyage of Hokule’a in 1976.
My father’s notebooks, Uriam’s return to Muribenua, Mau’s teaching in Hawaiʻi and the voyages of Hokuleʻa all tell the same deeper story: we were voyagers long before anyone divided us with these labels.
So my respectful appeal to The Rock is that you have already helped make Pacific people visible to the world. Now please help us take the next step. Every Pacific child deserves to see themselves inside the story.
Faafetai lava and ko rabwa — thank you, in Samoan and Tungaru (Kiribati).
