POLYNESIA IN AMERICA

[Music] so good evening ladies and gentlemen this is jack douglas old glory flies atop the tallest flagpole i've ever seen and below it are the flags of polynesia of new zealand tonga fiji samoa tahiti in the state of hawaii this is the polynesian cultural center about 40 miles from honolulu a center that features one of the most unusual and colorful villages on the face of the earth here in this one village the six major polynesian cultures have merged to form an unforgettable tourist attraction listen i think the polynesian center is one thing that everyone should see when they come to hawaii we're from denver colorado i find that the center is a photographer's paradise i think it's wonderful to have all the things to gather in one spot i'm from sydney australia thoroughly enjoy this afternoon's outing here we're from yakima county washington and we really enjoyed this place and had a very nice time i'm from livermore california i think this is a wonderful cultural center you could spend as much time as you want and not see it all it's beautiful i'm from terre haute indiana and i think it is beautiful here i'm from albuquerque i think you can spend an hour or a day here and really learn something about polynesia i think it's the most authentic thing of this sword i've ever seen this is your chair vacation to polynesia in america very few visitors to honolulu and hawaii can resist the temptation to go back again but now in addition to the island's famous attractions something new and wonderful awaits us we take a bus from honolulu and cross the pali mountain range to reach the opposite side of the island and once through the pally we'll hug the coastline to our destination on route we pass kaneohe bay and next a tiny island known as chinaman's hat a familiar landmark hereabouts and certainly quite picturesque nearby at la ia is the church college of hawaii established by the mormon church and at the edge of the campus is located the mormon temple of the state now as we shall see the students at the college play a very important part in maintaining the colorful polynesian village but first listen to college president dr owen j cook we have many fine polynesian students from new zealand the fiji islands tonga tahiti samoa and the hawaiian islands who have a great desire for a higher education however most of these students do not have the financial support to pay their college expenses well thanks primarily to vacationers like us fine young people such as these from all over polynesia are able to meet their college expenses all right our bus has arrived and we're at the 15 acre cultural center although hereafter we'll refer to it as the polynesian village now from the outside there's no indication of the size beauty and charm of this village but once inside the entrance we begin to understand why the village is the talk of the islands that small tram for visitors is just about the only sign of civilization otherwise the atmosphere is truly authentic coconut palms planched huts tiki idols yes and even papaya trees now as i said earlier there are six separate villages in this one area and the first village awaiting us is tahiti in this authentic setting you don't have to try hard to make believe that you are actually in tahiti in fact this is what tahiti was like only a few decades ago the youngsters playing by the lagoon are tahitian and here are some of their mothers weaving hats of straw from dried pandanus leaves the pandanus incidentally is virtually the universal weaving material of polynesia as for the hats well not bad at all and quite inexpensive should you choose to buy one the hat band is made of small seashells while the women weave and chatter away pierre kemitata shows us how he carves as did his ancestors for centuries before him the tahitian tiki his carving tools are simple but authentic a crude mallet and a hand forged chisel but the finished work needs no apology miss noah lonnie webster is attractive intelligent and a student at the church college after classes she comes to the village to be fitted for a new dancing costume made for her by siapo fisaglum the wardrobe mistress is christina nowahi and she supervises wardrobe for all the girl performers at the village noelani webster is quite at home in this atmosphere for she is tahitian hawaiian and not someone imported from hollywood [Music] [Music] so well they started young in tahiti and the same rule applies at the polynesian village just watch these little scene-stealers [Music] as you look back on just part of the tahiti village and realize that there are still five villages to see hawaii will be next you can't help feeling amazed at how much has been done with so little land just 15 acres but it seems more like 200 but 15 acres is a lot of walking so we took to the tram driven by miss juanita chang of hawaii aloha welcome to the hawaiian village in the distance of approximately 50 feet we have traveled from the islands of tahiti to the hawaiian islands in reality a distance of about 2500 miles my name is juanita and i am a hawaiian we are standing in the typical village setting that we would find during the reign of king kamehameha the first kalei lokana has no compunctions about having her picture taken which happens about a thousand times a day here she cleans and rolls luhala leaves used for thatching the roofs of the huts inside one of the huts we saw a marvelous example of hawaiian quilt work performed by malika khan the hawaiians were taught to sow by missionaries geometric patterns mostly which the hawaiians did not like instead they prefer the softer designs which may be taken from the shape of leaves or shadows on the ground etc and incidentally a quilt such as this requires four months of handwork one exhibit leads to another but we can't bypass hawaii's answer to the tahitian hula [Music] i'm sure you recognize noahlani filling in for one of the other hawaiian dancers [Music] [Music] the maoris of new zealand are another universally respected polynesian people militanayo is typical of the attractive soft-spoken well-spoken maori women now listen as this gracious lady interprets the meaning of these maori panels well jack these tukutuku panels are done by our women they were very fond of putting their feelings or thoughts into a design and putting them onto panel work now these stitches here represents their main folk at war and these stitches represents their mother's eyes and these stitches represents their falling teardrops so therefore we named this design the takitoru roymata which means the falling teardrop pattern now we have what we call our clear clear here it grows in the forest and we harvest them a certain time of the year of course we boil them with the bark of a final tree and it bleaches and that's also natural and this is where we use them in this design now this design we call the potama it's a very authentic design in our maori culture and of course you can see the design looks like steps or stairways but we call this the history here it's the stairway to the stars or stairway to eternities there's a start pattern there and of course this is how it's been used there is meaning to the maori matte panels meaning in the carvings that decorate their longhouses and yes there is meaning to the hand-carved popo which are often used as columns for their buildings flatter and more intricately carved than the tahitian tiki the popo also tells a story generally of a man's ancestors the maori stick dance also has an ancient meaning tribute to the earth god [Music] [Applause] [Music] i [Music] from [Music] tonga what an exotic far-sounding word it is and what a village the native tongans have to remind them of home but even in tonga there's more to life than sunshine and freshwater lagoons there's work to be done and much of a woman's work consists of making tap a cloth the bark of the hiapo bush similar to the mulberry bush is soaked overnight then pounded and pounded until finally a slender piece of softened bark is flattened to incredible dimensions in this case almost two feet wide individual strips are then sewn or pasted together then painted or dyed with results such as this the tongans when they're not working are as happy and gay as any people we've ever seen and if there isn't a song and dance to fit a sunny occasion they'll make up a whole routine this however is a traditional tuna dance which translates to mean pretty girl [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] the samoa village seemed bigger to us than some of the others but regardless of that we and our fellow tourists saw much worth photographing and by now i'm sure this pretty samoan miss has learned just the right way to say cheese the samoan canoe ali is much more sturdy in construction than the average outrigger and it had to be for in the old days it was the only form of transportation from one island to another i don't know which of the polynesian races invented this method of climbing a tree but it's agreed that we copied the idea many centuries later and we asked this lad what would happen if he fell while reaching for the coconuts and with simple dignity he replied sir i think i would be very embarrassed these polynesians have a wonderful sense of humor this old method of husking and cracking a coconut is obsolete nowadays a machete does the job a lot faster but notice how with just a small sharp stone he neatly trims the top the milk of the nut is a delicious drink and especially when it's free a barbecue pit or emu just a few feet away was the scene of much activity and these samoan lads were scooping up the roasted yams and slabs of roasted pig wrapped in leaves well by this time we were as hungry as vacationers can be and we were directed to this long house where a big feast was ours for the asking while we dined mr david hannaman described the entire polynesian menu this is the polynesian pupu telling the samoan guest house and this is the food we serve from the six villages represented here now here in my uh front of me is the fijian corned beef with tara leaves they call in fijian pulao maga railroad from tonga we have the kumara or sweet potato and also the sweet tongan pineapple as you see here and from maori we serve you the uh taro and from the tahiti raw fish with the various vegetables such as uh cucumber and tomatoes and chicken and long rice and papaya pudding or poy as they call it in tahiti from hawaii we serve you the famous galore pig roast pork and the uh hawaiian poi now all this food uh from these six different villages are served on the coconut platter of the maelo the idea is that uh after dinner we just throw the whole thing away we don't need to wash them well it's not an original idea but it's always worth re-examination no dinner dishes to wash just throw the whole setting away put it down on your list the long house at the samoan village fiji the sixth of the villages in this american polynesia sounds distant remote and relatively uncivilized oh the fijian cava ceremony was not performed only for our cameras you too can see it when you tour the polynesian village the man in the white shirt portrays the guest of honor in a typical fijian house kava is the juice of a shrub the roots of which are first dried then powdered and mixed with water this kava ceremony of welcome is a solemn ritual punctuated by an occasional outburst of measured hand clapping the kava juice is non-alcoholic but it does have a somewhat narcotic effect uh [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] three nights a week the college students their parents and other polynesians at the center stage a musical review entitled isles of paradise and all who have seen this thrilling production have called it the finest as well as biggest polynesian musical show ever presented anywhere harry white a tongan student of the church college operates one of the giant floodlights gus forsythe hawaiian samoan is responsible for the music and recorded sound effects and jack king also a tongan student at the college is the master electrician for the show now each of the six villages performs on stage for 20 minutes for a dazzling two-hour outdoor spectacular and these are merely a few excerpts from the grand finale the next morning harry white is forced out of slumber by his roommate jim bassett working the lights of the big show in the village he is now entitled to the education he has earned there are books to be read lectures to be heard and chemistry tests to stimulate the imagination and so we have seen some of the interesting people you will meet at the polynesian village and we know why most of them are here in hawaii from all parts of the pacific but as to the village as a whole one obvious question remains why was it created how did it come into being for the answers we turn to mr wendell b mendenhall one of the leading directors of this enormous undertaking the mormon church has been in the pacific for approximately 100 years we have done considerable work with these people understanding their habits their language their customs and have learned considerable about their culture we have seen their culture uh in its early stages we have seen it of late years and recently we have learned that this culture is fading rapidly into extinction we have felt that it's important that the world understand something of this great polynesian race we began to study ways and means to develop a center which would take in all of the major polynesian islands this we have done we have preserved their culture it is quite authentic we have shown the culture as it was we have shown the culture as it is we have the people in the village which show them as they are and as they were and now we're showing them as they may become pissing these four tongan boys is mr jack regas the director of the lavish isles of paradise show we saw a few moments ago now the word rehearsal sounds out of place when associated with anything polynesian but listen to jack regas you know all the students here at the polynesian cultural center are a talented lot it would be hard to distinguish which is the most whether it be samoan tahitian hawaiian beijing or maori but this particular group the tongans well they had aspirations of doing more than just standing and being a vocal group so they came to me and they said jack would you help us with some staging and direction and choreography i was delighted and it's been a real joy because of their vitality and their unique way of singing now what you see now is a rehearsal when they really perform it looks a little more like this [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] our thanks to mr regis to dr cook and church college of hawaii and a special vote of thanks to the polynesian cultural center in my humble opinion one of the most unique most colorful and most worthwhile tourist attractions on the face of the earth now until next week jack douglas saying thank you so much and good night ladies and gentlemen boys and girls [Music] [Applause] so