Tagata Pasifika - Hine Moana: A Journey Home

Television (Full Length Episode) – 2010

In this 2010 Tagata Pasifika story, reporter Adrian Stevanon follows efforts by a group of Pacific Island mariners to preserve the traditions and skills of the great Polynesian voyagers — as an armada of canoes from the Cook Islands, Tahiti, Fiji and Aotearoa takes to the seas of Te Moananui a Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean). Stevanon has zero sailing hours when he joins the Pan-Pacific crew of Hine Moana in the Cook Islands, en route to Samoa. Unsure “if this city boy can handle the high seas”, he takes time to find his sea legs, but eventually gets on the foi (tiller) and into ‘vaka mode’.

Our ancestors travelled to every nook and cranny of Te Moananui a Kiwa. They visited every country. Some never returned, some did. And when they did they left instructions on how to get there.
– Sir Geoffrey Henry, former Cook Islands Prime Minister