Polynesia

Polynesia is the triangle from Hawaii to Aotearoa to Rapa Nui, and its societies share an inheritance clear enough that a Tahitian and a Maori tradition can be compared line by line.

The gods recur under related names: Tangaroa or Kanaloa of the sea, Tane or Kane of forests and of the making of the first woman, Tu of war, Rongo or Lono of agriculture and peace. Genealogy is the organising form of the sacred: chants trace descent from the gods through named generations to the living, so that a person's rank, land rights and religious standing are one continuous claim rather than three separate ones. The Kumulipo, a Hawaiian chant of over two thousand lines, runs from the origin of the world to the birth of a chief in this form.

Two linked concepts govern practice. Mana is effective power, held by people, places and objects, increased or lost by what one does. Tapu is restriction, the marking off of what is charged and therefore dangerous or forbidden, and the English word taboo comes from it. A chief's head might be tapu, a fishing ground might be placed under tapu to allow it to recover, and breach carried consequences understood as automatic rather than punitive.

Ceremonial ground is open rather than roofed: the marae of the south and east, the heiau of Hawaii, walled or terraced enclosures rather than buildings.

Sources Polynesian ReligionE. S. Craighill Handy with Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand RaceGeorge Grey

Polynesia was settled by deliberate voyaging against prevailing winds over some two thousand years, and Patrick Kirch's synthesis of the archaeology sets out the sequence: west Polynesia first, then a long pause, then rapid expansion east to the Societies, the Marquesas, Hawaii, Rapa Nui and finally Aotearoa around 1250. The marae at Taputapuatea on Raiatea was a ceremonial centre for that eastern network, and canoes carried stones from it to found new marae elsewhere, which is a religious mechanism as much as a navigational one.

Conversion to Christianity was rapid once it began. Missionaries arrived from the 1790s, and in several societies a paramount chief converted and the population followed, since religion and rank were the same structure. In Hawaii the traditional system of tapu was abolished by the ruling family in 1819, before the first missionaries landed, in a decision taken from inside. Suppression followed in most places: sites were dismantled, chants suppressed, dance banned, and languages written down by missionaries in orthographies that are still in use.

Recovery has been substantial and specific. The revival of long-distance voyaging from the 1970s, using traditional navigation learned partly from a Micronesian navigator, reconnected communities to a practice that had lapsed almost everywhere, and Polynesian Christianity now coexists with restored ceremonial and with active claims about land and sacred sites.