I Am Ta Nui, My Mother’s Island

ILARA Online is pleased to launch its new series, Speakers of ILARA!

For the first video of this series, we are delighted to meet Marie-Rose Ta Nui Agnie, Trainer at the Te Fare Natura ecomuseum in Moorea, which is an island in the South Pacific located in the Society Archipelago in French Polynesia.

Marie-Rose Ta Nui speaks Paumotu. Paumotu is a Polynesian language from the Oceanian language family, which are a branch of the huge Austronesian language family. This language of French Polynesia is spoken in the vast Tuamotu archipelago, which includes around 80 islands and extends over a length of 1,762 km!

The inhabitants of the Tuamotu are the Paumotu, a word which also designates their language. In this video, Marie-Rose Ta Nui Agnie gives us a very personal and in-depth testimony, which relates to her intimate relationship with her mother tongue, namely Paumotu, as well as the primordial importance of her family, and in particular his mother, in the transmission of this language and the culture associated with it.