Cultures of Oceania class

I have really enjoyed my cultures of Oceania class, taught by Professor McArthur, where we study the cultures of the Pacific Island, including Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. Our first project was about the legends of Polynesia. Our legend was taken from the Samoan islands. It told of how the traditional Samoan tattoo called the tatau came to Samoa from Fiji. We then elaborated more on the history of the tatau, its meaning in the culture, and even performed a song which tells the story in music. This was my group here on the left. The group dancing is in the photo below.

The second project was about dancing and music. My group did the Maori Ka Mate haka for our presentation. We presented it in the traditional haka war dance as well as a lullaby rendition, yes a lullaby. I found this project harder because we didn't really have any natives in the group to rely on for information, but the presentation went well. I led the haka, as we only had two boys. The other didn't know the haka well enough to do so. It was interesting to me to find out that the haka has recently been copyrighted by one of the tribes in New Zealand, the Ngaati Toa Iwi tribe. This meant a large settlement where those who have used this haka had to pay royalties to the tribe. The All Blacks have had to pay a significant amount for their use of the haka. If they use it in the future, they will have to pay for it. We were fortunate enough to have a member of this tribe teach us, so I think we dont have to pay any royalties. :)

The most recent project was comparing and contrasting the tapa cloth of Hawaii, Tonga (ngatu), Fiji (masi), and Samoa (siapo). The culmination of the project was creating our own tapa and presenting it to the teacher. Tapa cloth is made using the bark of the mulberry tree which is stripped from the trunk into large rolls. The outer bark is cut off, leaving a fiberous material. A mallet made of hard wood is used to beat this bark and spread the fibers. This is combined with other strips of bark. It takes a LONG time! Some tapa is over 30 ft long and 10 ft tall, so you can imagine how long that would take!

The painting is traditionally done with black and brown dies primarily. The black is harvested by burning kukui nuts in a rock oven, and scraping the soot off the rock. The soot is used for black coloring. The brown is bark off another tree which is scaped off, then squeezed/strained similar to how coconut shavings are squeezed to get coconut milk. Crazy long processes!

Well, we used acrylic paints harvested from the BYU Bookstore, but we used coconut husk and nuts from a pandanus tree as brushes, so we were partly authentic :) I think the final product looked okay! You can see designs from the different islands. Samoa is on the outside, then Hawaii, Tonga is in the center flanked by Fijian designs as columns. It was very difficult to make look good, and we gained an appreciation for the true artists who make tapa for their respective islands. Tapa is still made in Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji. Though it was once used for clothing, bedding, etc, it is now mostly used ceremonially or as currency or gifts.