All the UK hype around the Pacific this year is linked to the 250 year celebrations of Cook's first voyage around the Pacific. This includes the series Oceans Apart and Handmade Pacific on BBC4, that has been recently aired and stars members of my talented Rurutu family.Cook left England in late August 1768, arriving in Tahiti on April 13th 1769 ( he then incidentally went on to "discover" Rurutu on August 13th 1769, with just a little help from his Tahitian interpreter-navigator Tupaia!). It seems like an appropriate moment to reflect on where history has taken both societies since then.
While we can know little of really how the Polynesians themselves experienced these first encounters, the accounts being predominantly European, it is fascinating to put yourself in the place of characters like Ahutoru, a Tahitian who returned to France with Bougainville, or Tupaia, Cook's Tahitian interpreter during the first voyage, and Omai (pictured here), a Tahitian who made it to England after Cook's second voyage, and the only one of the three who made it back to his islands - bringing livestock and a coat of armor, among other gifts (pictured right)!
The anniversary has also motivated several interesting exhibitions of Polynesian objects, many of which, much like our own ti'i A'a, are lingering in museum collections outside the Pacific. One such exhibition, called Oceania will be opening at the Royal Academy in London this week, and will be attended by the French Polynesian Minister of Culture among others! An occasion for Polynesians to reclaim their cultural identity, to make sense of all that was lost, forgotten and stolen over the intervening centuries. Today, after the far-reaching effects of introduced diseases, that literally decimated the populations of our islands, and the arrival of Christianity and the cultural upheaval that it brought, it is heart-warming to see the Polynesians rediscovering their roots, and moving forwards. The dynamism and innovation that we are seeing here in the world of contemporary art is simply thrilling. It's an exciting time to live in French Polynesia!
