Contributors
- Contributors
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.
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 mā‘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.
Anne-Marie Coéroli-Green has played an important role in the repatriation of ivi tupuna, the skeletal remains of ancestral Mā‘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 Mā‘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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
