Why this Indigenous Hawaiian journalist will not be watching Moana 2

Moana 2 has made a big splash at the box office since its release. The animated sequel to 2016's Moana set a new record in the U.S. for the biggest five-day debut in history, earning $225 million.

Despite the reception from audiences, critics have their reservations about the franchise. While some have pointed out flaws with the sequel's execution, one Indigenous Hawaiian journalist has said that the original film should never have been made in the first place.

Anne Keala Kelly joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to explain how the Moana franchise flattens the unique identities and traditions of Indigenous Pacific Islanders, ultimately doing more harm than good for the community at large.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: When you think back to the first Moana movie, where did Moana go wrong for you?

Keala: Well, I don't think it should have ever been made, so it went wrong at its inception. I know that's probably not the answer you're looking for or the answer that your listeners want.

Elamin: All answers welcome. Tell me more.

Keala: Well, it always depends on where one enters a story, right? So if you're going to enter the story of the Pacific through the lens of a Disney cartoon, probably nothing I say is going to make any sense. But in order for that story to exist, heaps and heaps of culture theft and exploitation had to go on to create that monstrosity that little kids think is some kind of true or entertaining way to have a new Disney princess; we know Moana is not officially a princess, but she's basically another Disney princess.

It's just a colonial project. It's just another way to colonize already severely colonized peoples. I mean, the Pacific is huge. It's the largest ocean on earth. We call it Moana, actually. That's our word for the Pacific. Disney has even trademarked our word! So everything Disney does is for exploitation. It's an extraction project. It's like mining, and it's for profit. So, you know, children don't know that when they see a film like that, and most people don't really care about the Pacific. So we're completely decontextualized in order for people to have that experience. You asked me where it went wrong. For me, it went wrong at just the idea of it.

Elamin: If we can just ground us, maybe, in the story of the first Moana, you described it as your region's cultural heist of the century. And that has to do with some of the ways that the sacred knowledge about wayfinding — which is very central to the plot of the movie — was obtained. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Keala: I should start here: I think it was Taika Waititi who wrote the original screenplay for Disney. Now, he's a famous Māori filmmaker. He's an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and actor. He's super talented. So we have this Māori guy who started with that. And then when it came to sacred cultural knowledge of navigating and wayfinding, instead of going to the people that this knowledge really actually came from, they went to Nainoa Thompson, who's a Hawaiian navigator who's famous because back in the '70s he navigated the Hōkūleʻa, which is the kind of canoe that you see depicted in Moana, to Tahiti using this knowledge. But for hundreds of years before then, the Hawaiian people had been doing that kind of navigating. So that practice had been lost, let's say, or not continued.

In order to do what Nainoa did, and what Hawaiians have been doing since with the Hōkūleʻa and other projects, they went to Mau Piailug, and he's referred to as Papa Mau. He lived in Micronesia on an island called Satawal, one of the Carolinian islands out there in Micronesia. There's all these countries out in the Pacific. Most people don't realize that there's hundreds of languages and cultures. And so the Federated States of Micronesia, he lived in one of them called Yap. I don't even know if there's a couple hundred people even living on that island, that's how remote it is, right? So they found the one man who still had this sacred, ancient knowledge that's thousands of years old, and he taught it to Nainoa so that the Hawaiian people could have this cultural renewal. He did not give it to Nainoa so that he could profit off Disney for billions of dollars. So right from the jump, it was wrong that Nainoa Thompson, this Hawaiian, gave Disney this ancient knowledge to turn into a cartoon to then exploit. In addition to that, Māui, who's a really sacred figure to many Pacific peoples in Polynesia specifically, they turned him into a clown. A buffoon. He's not that to us. That's another sacred thing that they desecrated for profit. So it makes me sad…. I appreciate where any native person is coming from, but the fact is it actually invisible-izes us, what Disney does. It doesn't make us visible. It makes our truth more invisible than it already is.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Anne Keala Kelly produced by Jess Low.