THE EMERGENCE OF AN ETHNIC MILLENARIAN THINKING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN TAHITI

Authors

Bruno Saura, Université Française du Pacifique–Tahiti

Abstract

This article analyzes the emergence in Tahiti of a body of theological and philosophical works written in Tahitian by Duro Raapoto, the leading intellectual of the Protestant Church and one of the best poets of French Polynesia. They constitute a new syncretic and millennialistic rewriting of Tahitian history as well as a rereading of anthropological ideas relative to pre-European society through a reinterpretation of some essential concepts of Polynesian culture. Their author’s objective is to restore the golden age of innocence presented as “the authentic Tahitian religion” and to establish the Kingdom of God within the Tahitian people, “God’s chosen.” One of the oft-recurring themes is the need to cleanse the Mâòhi land of its sins and faults. Land is considered a gift of God, and France and other nuclear powers are associated with death. These writings are the expression in the field of religious studies of a type of ethnic and millenarian thought also found in the reawakening of Mâòhi culture and the quasireligious celebration of Mâòhi identity in the arts and popular songwriting. They also have a political dimension, adding force to pro-independence speeches and to the development of Tahitian nationalism.

Recommended Citation

Saura, Bruno (1998) "THE EMERGENCE OF AN ETHNIC MILLENARIAN THINKING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM IN TAHITI," Pacific Studies: Vol. 21: No. 3, Article 4.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol21/iss3/4