While researching Aotearoa’s oceanic identity, I became increasingly interested in the role oceans have played throughout human history.
Today we often think of oceans as spaces that separate nations. Yet for generations, oceans functioned as pathways connecting people, cultures, knowledge, and traditions across vast distances.
The history of Pacific navigation reveals extraordinary relationships between people and the natural world. Long before modern technologies existed, navigators travelled immense distances using stars, currents, winds, and environmental knowledge to guide their journeys.
What fascinated me was not only the technical skill involved, but the deep cultural understanding embedded within these journeys. Navigation was not simply about reaching a destination, it was about reading the environment, understanding patterns, and maintaining a relationship with the natural world.
As a migrant artist, this perspective resonated strongly with me. It challenged the way I had previously understood distance and separation, and instead introduced the idea that movement and connection have always been central to human experience. Migration, exchange, and cultural dialogue are not modern phenomena, they are part of our shared history.
This discovery became a foundational idea within MOANA, where the ocean is explored not as a barrier, but as a living connector between people, cultures, histories, and nations.