Polynesian Religion

The shared faith of the great Pacific voyagers, carried across thousands of kilometres of ocean.

c. 1000 BCE → · The Pacific · Indigenous & Animist

As Polynesian navigators settled the Pacific from about 1000 BCE, they carried a religion of gods, ancestors, mana and tapu. Each island group developed its own versions, but stories of Tangaroa, Tāne and the trickster Māui are shared from Hawai‘i to Aotearoa. Taputapuātea in Ra‘iātea was a sacred centre for voyagers.

Key figures

• Tangaroa, god of the sea
• Tāne, god of forests
• Māui, the trickster hero

Texts

• Genealogical chants
• Navigation lore
• Oral histories

Beliefs

• Mana, sacred power, flows through people and things
• Tapu, sacred restriction, protects it
• All life descends from the gods through genealogy

Rituals

• Rites at marae (sacred grounds)
• Chanting of genealogies
• Offerings before voyages and harvests

Grew from

• Animism & Shamanism

Connections in the atlas

• Orongo, Rapa Nui
• The word taboo
• Tupaia
• Hei-tiki
• ? What happened to Rapa Nui (Easter Island)?
• Menehune
• Nuʻuanu Pali
• Crops from a slain body
• The Kumulipo
• Polynesian Voyaging
• Sacred meals (ritual)
• The Divine Child