Guest Editors
Kareva Mateata-Allain is of Tuamotu and British ancestry and grew up on Tahiti. She holds a doctorate from the University of New Mexico in Oceanic literature with an emphasis on French Polynesian literature in translation. She is also a writer and translator; her essay in this volume is from a book-length work.
Alexander Dale Mawyer is a recipient of Fulbright-Hays and Wenner-Gren grants for the study of language, culture, and new media in French Polynesia. Fluent in Mangarevan and French, he is a candidate for a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Chicago.
Artists
Michel Chansin is a self-taught photographer and author who was born in Tahiti. His most recent book of photographs is Te ata mau: c’est une terre mä‘ohi (Au Vent des Îles, 2001). He is the subject of a 2004 film, Un chinois de Pape‘ete, which was selected for the 2006 International Oceania Festival of Documentary Films.
Bobby Holcomb was born in Hawai‘i in 1947. Of Hawaiian, African American, Native American, and Portuguese ancestry, he became interested in art and the legends of Polynesia at a young age. He traveled to Tahiti in 1976 and settled in Maeva, a village on Huahine, where he immersed himself in Polynesian culture and became a celebrated painter and musician. His house became a gathering place for young and old, who were drawn by his generosity, good humor, and zest for life. He died of cancer in 1991.

For information on his paintings and drawings, please contact Dorothy Levy at dorotea7@mail.pf.
Michel Ko lives and works on Tahiti.
Claire Leimbach is a photographer, filmmaker, and publisher. For the past twenty years, she has been involved with Polynesian culture, particularly in Tahiti. The founder of the publishing company Pacific Bridge, she published Bobby: Polynesian Visions in 1992; this book was a homage to the paintings by Bobby Holcomb that were inspired by Polynesian mythology. This was followed by Tahiti: Celebration of Life, which renders the beauty of the culture through photographs of men’s activities. Leimbach lives in Australia but travels widely.
Marie-Hélène Villierme was born in 1966 in France. She had a Polynesian father and Italian mother and grew up in Tahiti, traveling to France at age eighteen to study at the school of Beaux Arts in Nice and Toulon. She went to Brussels for three more years of study, then returned to Tahiti. She now teaches photography at the Institut Supérieur de l’Enseignement Privé de Polynésie Française. Her books include Tata‘u, published in 1992, and Visages de Polynésie, published in 1996. Works from Visages were exhibited between 1997 and 2001 in Tahiti, France, Germany, Austria, and Hawai‘i.
Writers and Translators
Nola Accili teaches French at the University College of the Fraser Valley in Canada. Recently, she appeared in the anthology Down in the Valley and the journals Room of One’s Own and Jones Av.
Patrick Araia Amaru is a poet and scholar. He received the first Prix Littéraire du Président from Te Fare Tauhiti Nui/Maison de la Culture in 2000.
Anne-Marie Coéroli-Green has played an important role in the repatriation of ivi tupuna, the skeletal remains of ancestral Ma‘ohi, from American museums. Her writing has appeared in the journal Littérama‘ohi: Ramées de Littérature Polynésienne/Te Hotu Ma'ohi.
Flora Devatine was born in Tautira, Tahiti. She is a retired professor of Spanish and Tahitian at the Lycée-Collège Pomare IV in Pape‘ete and a member of l’Académie Tahitienne/Te Fare Väna'a. For many years, she has been interested in all aspects of Polynesian culture and has participated in numerous colloquia and publications addressing the preservation of culture, memory, Tahitian poetry, written language, and oral and written literature. With five other Polynesian writers, she founded the first Polynesian literary journal, Littérama‘ohi. She has published Humeurs (Polytram, 1980) under the name Vaitiare and Tergiversations et rêveries de l’écriture orale/Te Pahu a Hono‘ura (Au Vent des Îles, 1998).
Henri Hiro was a poet, teacher, filmmaker, pastor, and activist and the founder of l’Office Territorial d’Action Culturelle. Born on Mo‘orea in 1944, he was raised in Punaauia by parents who spoke only Tahitian. He traveled to France to study, then returned to the Islands and became one of the first Mä‘ohi artists and intellectuals to inspire a renaissance of Polynesian cultural identity. As part of his mission to revive that identity, he declared that Polynesians must write, and to address them directly, he wrote poetry in the Tahitian language. Many of his poems are collected in Pehepehe i ta‘u nüna‘a/Message poétique (Tupuna Productions, 1990). In March 1990, he died at the age of forty-six, after a long illness.
John Lind is a writer and filmmaker who was born in Calcutta, India, of Anglo-Russian parentage. A dramatist and script editor, he is most interested in the ancient wisdom of pre- Christian cultures. Beyond the Dreamtime, his documentary about artist Ainsle Roberts and Australian Aboriginal spirituality, received international awards. His current project is developing a Viking movie epic. About his photo, he says: “A shoot on Huahine—where Bobby Holcomb lived—during one of Doctor Sinoto’s Tahitian digs. I am wading through Maeva Lagoon, in front of the Fare Potei, and pushing a boat ever so smoothly so that the cameraman on board can achieve a long gliding shot of the traditional fish traps in the lagoon.”
Rai a Mai (Michou Chaze) was born in Pape‘ete, Tahiti, in 1950 and lived in the United States for eleven years. An activist, journalist, and artist in several media—including photography, dance, and painting—she wrote Vai: la rivière au ciel sans nuages (Cobalt/Tupuna Productions, 1990), a collection of vignettes. Her other writing includes a book of poetry, Törïrï: Prières, murmures, chuchotements (2000). A founding member of the literary revue Littérama‘ohi, she works in the office of the French Polynesian presidency.
Kareva Mateata-Allain is of Tuamotu and British ancestry and grew up on Tahiti. She holds a doctorate from the University of New Mexico in Oceanic literature with an emphasis on French Polynesian literature in translation. She is also a writer and translator; her essay in this volume is from a book-length work.
Louise Peltzer was born in 1946 on Huahine. The author of many books, she is a scholar, historian, novelist, poet, and renowned authority on the Tahitian language. She received a doctorate in linguistics from the Sorbonne in 1986. In 1985, she published a book of legends, Légendes tahitiennes, in Paris, and a book of poetry, Pehepehe: Te Hia‘ai-oa, in Pape‘ete. Her other books include Lettre à Poutaveri and Hymnes à mon île, both published in 1995. She was Minister of Culture in the territorial government of French Polynesia and is now the president of the Université de la Polynésie Française and an active member of l’Académie Tahitienne/Te Fare Väna‘a, whose goal is to preserve and conserve the ancestral language.
Titaua Peu published her first novel, Mutismes (Haere Po Tahiti, 2003), at the age of twenty-six. Set in the years leading up to the 1995 anti-nuclear-testing riots that engulfed Pape‘ete, the book explores social problems, such as domestic violence and substance abuse.
Bruno Saura was born in Metz, France, in 1965. The author of much scholarly work on French Polynesia, he is Maître de conférences: Civilisation polynésienne in the Département des Lettres, Langues, et Sciences Humaines at the Université de la Polynésie Française.
Jean Toyama is a poet, scholar, translator, and writer of fiction. She lives in Hawai‘i, where she was born and raised.
Célestine Hitiura Vaite was born in Tahiti in 1966. The daughter of a Tahitian mother and a French father who went back to his country after military service, she grew up in her big extended family in Fa‘a‘ä, Tahiti, where storytelling was part of daily life and women overcame obstacles with gusto and humor. Her first novel, Breadfruit, won the 2004 Prix littéraire des étudiants in French Polynesia and was translated into German and French. Her second, Frangipani, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award/Christina Stead prize for fiction, with foreign rights having been sold to over ten territories. Her third novel, Tiare, will be released in 2006.
Taaria Walker (Mama Pare) was born in 1930 on Rurutu, one of the Austral Islands. She studied nursing in the 1950s and worked in various hospitals in Pape‘ete and Rurutu. In 1980, she founded l’Amicale des Artisans Polynésiens/Tamatea and l’Association Artisanale/Tiare Porea. In 1987, she organized l’Association Artisanale et Culturelle/Taurama. She has served in many governmental capacities, including as a member of the Conseil des Sages de Rurutu. Her autobiography, Rurutu: Mémoires d’avenir d’une île Australe (Haere Po Tahiti, 1999), expresses her hopes for the preservation of her homeland culture.