We were standing ankle-deep in a lagoon off the island of Raiatea when my guide, Tahiarii Yoram Pariente, spotted a pod of dolphins playing about 300 feet offshore.
“That’s mana,” he said.
The sky had spat rain for the 45 minutes since we’d arrived at Taputapuatea, a complex of seaside marae—massive, rectangular platforms hewn from stone a thousand years ago—and we had the place largely to ourselves. The whole time, Pariente, one of French Polynesia’s last traditional navigators, kept circling back to the concept of mana. He was mid-soliloquy when the frolicking dolphins appeared. He smiled in satisfaction, as if the creatures had confirmed the sacred power of this spot.
In ancient times, Taputapuatea, Pariente said, “was like the Jerusalem of Polynesia.” For centuries, chiefs, priests, shamans, and students gathered there for religious ceremonies, political negotiations, and master classes in navigation. Canoe after canoe had pulled into the shallows where we stood after journeying across the ocean—from Hawaii to the north, New Zealand to the south, Easter Island to the east—all returning, like so many sea turtles, to their ancestral home.
In the 1770s, warriors from Bora-Bora, 34 miles to the northwest, sacked Taputapuatea. The marae sat in disarray until the 1990s, when archaeologists began reassembling the stones. In 2017, Taputapuatea was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and restoration continues to this day. “You could look at all this and say, ‘It’s just stones, sand, and a good story,'” Pariente said. “But you have to admit that it’s a great story.”
As we skirted a low stone wall marking the edge of one reconstructed marae, Pariente invited me to imagine clusters of wise men, some sharing tales in the shade of fig trees, others making offerings. “There was no ceiling,” he said. “The sky is the ceiling.” Though Taputapuatea had lain ruined for so many years, Pariente believed the site had never lost its mana.
Chefs, artists, farmers, and storytellers are reinvigorating a culture once threatened. They’re wrestling with what it means to be Polynesian. And they’re reminding visitors that this is more than a one-dimensional postcard paradise dotted with overwater villas. It’s somebody’s home.
There was that word again: mana. Everywhere I went in French Polynesia, people kept mentioning mana. Watch for it, they said. Wait for it. But what was it?
“It’s difficult to explain,” they said.
A steadying essence.
A spiritual force.
A presence.
