Paiore and the Pa'umotu Conception of the Heavens

Rereading the article, "The Tuamotuan Creation Charts by Paiore," published by Kenneth Emory in the Journal of the Polynesian Society (link below) recently, has reminded me of the vibrant traditions of orality, genealogy, and the many other deeply honored practices of maintaining history in Polynesian cultures, especially for ta'ata Pa'umotu. Paiore was a tuhunga originally from Ana'a but living on the island of Takaroa, my mother's home island, when he produced this image in 1869. The article outlines the discourse of the image; its production, and how other historians have contextualized it in various texts. The image itself is still highly regarded in Polynesian cosmology, as an important early text that provides valuable insight to the worldview of Pa'umotu in the late nineteenth-century.

To me, the image Paiore produced as well as the reproduction of that image over time and space, is more than just about discourse on the changing beliefs of Polynesians and the influence of Christianity on those beliefs. It makes genealogy visible, as a living, tangible history that has contours and textures. The elements that make up those contours and textures are the cosmogonic beliefs our ancestors held, the language(s) they spoke, their roles in society they participated in, the society at large that shaped their life and how they moved about in the world. We live in the same world as our ancestors and ancestresses, but we don't have the same worldview, a fact made painfully obvious by the 'present' we find ourselves in since they've lived.

Still, I find something so comforting and beautiful in this complex image of a worldview materialized in sand. It's an imprint of ancestral beliefs that hold within it a promise of a full and complete sense of belonging in the world, even if some of the knowledge that has been passed down is incomplete. Paiore and the beliefs surrounding this image (both then and now), are not a complete story. We are not asking nearly enough questions about his education and the cultural context under which this image was produced, nor are we thinking enough about the role of Tuamotuan intellectuals and their influence on how they curated Pa'umotu history, language and culture...questions that in my mind give us so much more to think about than whether or not this image (and Paiore himself?) was already tainted by the heavy influence of Christianity. The textures and contours of history are rich indeed.

http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_48_1939/Volume_48%2C_No._189/The_Tuamotuan_creation_charts_by_Paiore%2C_by_Kenneth_P._Emory%2C_p_1-29/p1?page=0&action=searchresult&target=