Missionization and the Suppression of Ma'ohi Religion

French Polynesia's Christianization proceeded through an unusually rapid and thorough suppression of indigenous Ma'ohi religious practice, with early nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries and their Tahitian royal converts actively dismantling marae ceremonial sites, banning traditional dance forms such as the 'ori tahiti considered too closely tied to pre-Christian ritual and fertility symbolism, and criminalizing tattooing, itself bound up with religious and social status marking, under legal codes adopted by the newly Christianized Pomare monarchy in the 1820s and 1830s. This suppression was significant enough that much of pre-Christian Ma'ohi religious knowledge, including specific ritual practice and priestly lineages, was lost within a generation or two of missionization, though a cultural and religious revival movement from the late twentieth century onward has worked to reconstruct and reclaim elements of this heritage, including the restoration of marae sites for cultural, if not fully religious, ceremonial use, and a renewed public celebration of traditional dance, tattooing and navigation practices tied to the wider Pacific-region Ma'ohi cultural revival. French Polynesia's political status as a French overseas collectivity has meant its religious and cultural policy operates within the framework of French secularism, even as calls for greater autonomy periodically raise questions about the territory's cultural and religious self-determination going forward.