Promotional image from Moana 2 ©Disney. Moana is holding a piece of pottery modeled after Lapita pottery from ancient Oceania.
“Moana 2,” Disney’s latest animated blockbuster that smashed Thanksgiving box office records, tells the story of a young Pacific Islander girl empowered to sail the seas and lead her people in exploring far-off islands, accompanied by the demigod Maui and her trusty sidekicks, Heihei the rooster and Pua the pig.
To help make those people and places feel as real as possible, filmmakers consulted with many Pacific Islanders to ensure accurate representation of their culture and traditions — including Patricia Fifita, an assistant professor of ethnic studies at Oregon State University.
Fifita, a Tongan Indigenous anthropologist in the College of Liberal Arts, was able to share both her academic expertise and her lived experience with the film’s storytellers as they worked to show Moana exploring and uniting several island nations in what is now known as Oceania.
Her work on the movie came about through a close friend, Dionne Fonoti, a fellow Pacific Islander anthropologist and filmmaker who is part of the Oceanic Story Trust. Fonoti worked on the first “Moana” movie, which came out in 2016 and portrayed Moana learning to voyage across the ocean to restore the heart of the goddess Te Fiti and save her people.
Fifita, left, and Dionne Fonoti in Samoa.
The first “Moana,” also starring Dwayne Johnson and Auli’i Cravalho, was one of the first times Disney intentionally worked with cultural story trusts and collectives to achieve more accurate representation. The company has since followed that model on movies like “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Encanto.”
The fictional setting for “Moana” is based on the 1,000-year period known as the “Long Pause” after long-distance ocean navigators had first settled the islands of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, Fifita explained. Disney hired her to share her expertise on Tongan culture and history.
“The success of the first film and how it aligned so well with the histories of the Pacific and a lot of the cultural representations through the imagery and music reassured me that this would be a useful conversation to have,” Fifita said. “Being set in this proto-Polynesian time, it’s really clear for folks who are familiar with Pacific Islander history that many aspects of the film are closely centered around Samoan and Tongan culture. The traditional ‘fales,’ or homes, are reminiscent of Tongan and Samoan architectural design; some of the clothing and tapa cloth is also reflective of our cultural aesthetics.”
Even the patterns on the animated pottery were made to resemble Lapita pottery found throughout the Pacific dating back to 1500-500 B.C.
With Fifita’s research focus on medical and environmental anthropology, including ethnobotany, she also advised Disney’s team on the types of plants long-distance navigators would have brought with them to help establish themselves on new islands. In the movie, the grumpy farmer character Kele is in charge of the plants on the boats.
Overall, Fifita said she was encouraged by the accuracy of cultural representation in the film, especially a scene showcasing the unique styles of each different island nation’s “vakas,” or seafaring canoes.
An engraving by W. Watts, based on a drawing from life by William Hodges (1744–1797 CE), showing Tongan Polynesians and their canoes, from Captain James Cook’s (1728–1779 CE) visit to Tonga 1773-4 CE, published in Boats of the Friendly Isles by William Strahan and Thomas Cadell, London, 1777 CE.
“It’s evident in all of those films that they really benefited from an expansive and nuanced representation of people and history,” Fifita said. “I think it really enriches these films.”
In part because of the careful and faithful way Pacific Islander culture is portrayed in the “Moana” movies, Fifita and her family feel a personal connection to the stories. For instance, in the first “Moana,” the music sung over the opening credits is in Tokelauan, a language very similar to Tongan, and they’re singing a ceremonial song essentially asking permission from Tagaloa to tell the story, which is a very Pacific cultural practice, she said. And her Tongan genealogy links her family and village back to the demigod Maui — her 5-year-old son’s favorite character.
“There’s always room for improvement, but I think it is a good sign,” she said. “Especially when we’re talking about different types of people with complex histories that make up their identities — it’s really important that we’re in conversation with people that represent these diverse histories. The critical dialogue is everything. I think that’s the key to moving forward. I think they’re getting that right, and hopefully it’ll just get better.”
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