.

Air Tahiti Magazine 59
in 1987, ua pou hosted the first marquesan arts festival, an event that strongly contributed to the cultural movement and has since become its principal symbol. culture of outsiders, deeply affected their soul. a century later at the beginning of the 1980s, after so many years of being devalued and the guilt associated with that, a true cultural renaissance began to take form throughout french polynesia. but before the movement hit the marquesas, this resurgence was already underway in tahiti. toti teikiehuupoko was shocked: out in the marquesas tahitian culture was making a comeback but what about the marquesan language, songs and dance? out in these far away islands these old traditions had shone for centuries and now they were being replaced by those from tahiti. it was time to take a stand. toti teikiehuupoko didn t know exactly where to begin but he set forth to revive his culture. ironically, it was father le cleac h, bishop to the marquesas at that time, who advised toti teikiehuupoko to start an association for the protection, conservation and promotion of the marquesan culture; and thus te motu haka ote henua enana was born. but the hardest part was still to be done. getting the older peo- ple of the island to talk about stories that had previously been considered to pagan and tabu, was not going to be easy. i realized that the elderly people of our islands held with them huge stores on information about our culture but they didn t want to talk about it, says toti teikiehuupoko. throughout their whole lives they had been witness to the eradication of their culture and here we were asking them to tell us all about it because we wanted to bring back out ancient culture and traditions! you will awaken paganism, the old folks told us. father le cleac h was the honorary president of the association and i have to say that his presence, even if it was only symbolic, was a great help to us when we went to visit around the islands. that really helped un-freeze people s tongues! we were able to tell the old people: if we are pagans then father le cleac h is a pagan too because he is the head of our association. and this is how, in the 1980s, the association was able to infiltrate and win over all the islands of the marquesas. eventually, this led to the first marquesan arts festival in 1987 on ua pou. in 1991 motu haka, satellite associations to te motu haka ote henua enana, were created through the marquesas to give each island some autonomy. these smaller groups continue to study and open up marquesan traditions today and will do sointo the future. but toti s journey doesn t end there: every part of the culture that can be saved should be saved, he says. and the world hopes he succeeds.
Powered by fluidbook tm