A Festive Season Around Polynesian Art of Living
The Bonds That Unite Us
Strands of Heritage
Weaving pandanus in the shade of the fare, the elder’s hands move without looking. She’s been doing this since she was a young girl herself. Her daughter works beside her, fingers nearly as sure. The granddaughter is still learning, counting the strands, occasionally having to start over.
This is how culture moves here—through the ordinary repeated gesture.
The Fara, Pandanus tree, seems to dance along the coastline with elegant aerial roots. Its long ribbon-like leaves sway with the wind, growing along the same shore as thousands of years ago.
Harvested leaves are dipped in the ocean and dried in the sun until they become smooth and supple, then rolled in large coils ready for shipping, dispatched to weavers across the islands.
Before beginning their creation, they use a needle to split the leaf coil, creating several strands. Some go about it as a social affair, with baskets or hats emerging while chatting away. Others, intently focused on their work in progress, perform the same century old patterns as their ancestors in what seems like a silent meditation.
Polynesians navigated by patterns too. Patterns of stars across the skies, patterns of waves against the hull, patterns of the birds’ flight paths… They read the ocean the way their hands now read pandanus: following a certain rhythm, with an intuitive familiarity with how things fit together.