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Showing posts from August, 2020

Moana is not a Disney princess. She's a Polynesian scientist!

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There is a renaissance in Indigenous culture and identity stretching across the Pacific today, and it will only achieve its full potential with an equal renaissance in ocean conservation.  We need more places in the ocean where Nature exists as the Creator intended, a place where fish, birds, and other animals and their connections to Pacific people can thrive free from the damaging effects of modern development and extraction.  It was in a world such as this that the first humans to cross the Pacific became Native Pacific Islanders, and it was in this world that the Disney film 'Moana' takes place. Moana and Maui 'Moana' tells the story about the daughter of the village chief, who is chosen by the ocean herself to cross the sea in search of the demi-god Maui to force him to help her save her village by returning the stolen heart of the goddess Te Fiti.  If that's confusing, just think of it as Lord of the Rings (shoeless young person returns s...