Santa Barbara Maritime Museum Logbook

We the Voyagers: Our Moana
Film Screening and Q & A with Mimi George, PhD, a cultural anthropologist and sailor

Where: Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, 113 Harbor Way, Santa Barbara
When: Monday, March 30, 2020 at 7:00pm
Doors open at 6:00pm; Docent on Deck 6:00-7:00 pm
Cost:    Free to members and students; $10 to all others
Register: www.sbmm.org or (805) 456-8747

Made possible by a collaborative effort between SBMM, the Tribal Trust Foundation, and Pacific Traditions Society

We are the living crew of Lata, the Polynesian culture-hero who built the first voyaging canoe and navigated across the Pacific. We are the only Polynesians left who still use only ancient designs, materials, and methods. In our films we share our history, motivations, and skills through story-telling, canoe building, and wayfinding, and we invite everyone to reconnect with ancestors and sustainable lifeways.

Our most experienced navigator taught us the ancient arts, and enlisted an anthropologist to help us make a film showing how we do it. When he passed away in 2009, we built a new vessel, and prepared to make a voyage. Like our culture hero Lata, we welcome men, women and children as crew, including hard workers with skills, and applicants of dubious character. Our community blesses the vessel and sailors, and we learn how to set the sails and deal with problems. We find our way in the open ocean by interacting with patterns of winds, waves, stars, and other signs that our ancestors show us when we need them. We arrive at islands and learn what happened to family members since the last voyage some generations earlier. We reconcile, reaffirm our love for each other, and look to our future together.

Full Press Release PDF