Navigation
Wayfinding, stars, swell, wind, birds, voyaging canoes, and the modern revival of oceanic knowledge.
Research desk →
History, language & living culture
Read the islands
beyond scenery.
Explore navigation, language, food, music, dance, tattoo, marae, pearls, colonial history, and contemporary French Polynesian life.
01 / Begin with relationship
Ocean, land,
language, memory.
French Polynesia is not a single undifferentiated culture. Language, artistic practice, foodways, histories, and relationships to land and sea vary across archipelagos and communities.
Our role is to organize careful pathways into those subjects, cite the people and institutions doing the real work, and make room for contemporary life alongside history.
Language
Tahitian and the other Polynesian languages of the territory, place names, pronunciation, and useful context.
Research desk →Marae
Ceremonial landscapes, archaeology, stewardship, visitor etiquette, and site-specific histories.
Research desk →Arts
Dance, percussion, carving, weaving, tattoo, and the artists carrying practice forward today.
Research desk →Food
Fish, taro, breadfruit, coconut, fermentation, roulottes, and French culinary influence.
Research desk →History
Settlement, kingdoms, missionaries, annexation, nuclear testing, autonomy, and modern public memory.
Research desk →
02 / Material knowledge
Read a Tahitian
pearl closely.
Color is only the beginning. A useful buying guide explains luster, surface, shape, size, nacre, treatment, grading language, and why named colors are not a universal quality scale.
Next in the deskPearl farming · Grading · Buying · Care
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A better visitor