A Festive Season Around Polynesian Art of Living
The Island Speaks
Through all living things
Standing at the water’s edge, a pāreu loosely tied at the waist, the breeze shifts.
Above, flocks of terns suddenly take flight, dozens of wings catching the golden light.
The Polynesians have always known this. It’s there in the very word pāreu—not just the cloth itself, but the act of wrapping it around your body. Tying a pāreu is not simply getting dressed, but the need to move freely between land and water. It’s participating in a gesture that once meant respect for the sacred, and still does.
Kahaia grows wild along the shoreline, white flowers unpretentious against glossy leaves. At certain times of day, when the air is still warm but beginning to cool, when the light turns golden and the birds begin their evening flights, its scent becomes part of the island’s breath. You smell the kahaia before you see it, the flower’s perfume mingles with salt air.
This is what Polynesians call mana: more than a mystical abstraction, the tangible energy of a place where everything is connected, the life force that flows through all things when they’re in right relationship with each other. Being in Tetiaroa is understanding that beauty isn’t about isolated perfect moments.
Hermit crabs scutter across the sand to hide in the pandanus tree’s aerial roots, while fairy terns are perched above on a branch. Their guano enriches the coral reef that colorful parrotfish nibble, while above black tip sharks roam in shallow waters.
Beyond the postcard image, we see the wholeness of it. The way everything fits. The way a culture had evolved that understood how to live here without changing what made it worth living in.
When Marlon Brando first came to Tetiaroa, this is what captured him.
The island speaks in perfume and flight and fabric moving against skin. And if you’re quiet enough, present enough, you might find yourself answering back…
