Rurutu, traditions et volcans : une île à part de la Polynésie Française – Documentaire Voyage – GD
In the heart of the Austral archipelago,
Rurutu is nothing but cliffs, limestone caves and tormented landscapes. Intense underwater volcanic activity
gave it this appearance. For several centuries,
it has been a land of oral tradition which, in order to survive, has tried to move on to writing. This land
is also that of Mami Paré, the only writer on this island of 2,400 inhabitants. At 82, she is still
essential, Mamipare. It is the life of Rurutu that animates him. Playful and always,
she never gets bored. This is my country, this is my island. I was born here. My parents are from here. Yes, well, especially my dad, he is pure Rurutu, my mom, again, she comes from the Samoan and Japanese family. We are very happy here. We love each other, the Rurutus,
the mamas, even the children too, the young people. We protect ourselves and then
we are not selfish. Rurutu means united and standing. That’s it. That’s
the part in two rolls. She also has her
favorite places, Mamie Paré. The airport is almost his second home, with an almost daily party. Newcomers do
n’t always know this. Sometimes, an entire village has
worked all night to make the Tiare serve as their crown. There aren’t many people in Rurutu. This is why Mami Paré
never stops traveling the island. She lives the present fully
by ensuring the transmission of memory. Children are already engaged when they
are still in the mother’s womb. When we know that you’re going to have a girl
and I’m going to have a boy, we’re already going to get our children engaged. And when they are born,
at 13, they get married. The two children who will be born
must not be parents before the seventh generation. She is known in Polynesia as Tarya Walker. In her Memoirs of the Future of a
Southern Island, she described the legends and rules of life of Rurutu. Here, she is the one who came back
because we needed her. I was asked to come to Rouroutou
urgently because the nurse there had been beaten with a baton by a madman. He was very ill and
needed an urgent replacement. Nurse Majoc came to
beg me to go to Rouroutou. I said: I am not. For example,
I only have a nursing diploma and not a midwife, because in Rourouctou,
you have to do everything, even a surgeon. The head doctor said: You’re going to do
an internship, we need a Rouroutou for Rouroutou. At Rouroutou, we love to welcome people. And this kind of celebration is an opportunity
to share one’s culture and traditions. Nothing to do with the world of Tahiti, 600
kilometers to the north, or that of elsewhere. Culture. Rurutu experiences this difference
between the two worlds. Mamipare is the one who created the link
between oral tradition and the written society. Life in Rouroultou is simple. We live better on the islands
than in a city. We’re all family here on the island. We are all cousins,
great-uncles or great-aunts. So, for parents,
it is better that we go and look for our husbands and wives elsewhere. I am married to a father, a Breton. He was supposed to stay
on the island for just three or four days while he installed the TV antenna. I was at the checkout
and he asked me if I would take the check. I told him I’ll take
the check and I’ll take the man. Yves had three lives. The first in the automotive sector,
the second in telecommunications as a legionnaire,
the third as Rurutu. Small square. THANKS. How do you become a Rouroutou? Slowly. Succeed in forgetting a large
part of one’s habits. Because we are far from everything, because
it is a culture totally different from the one we have known before. And the only way, precisely,
to become Rouroutou Rurutu is to accept this new culture. And it’s happening very slowly. Traditional cultures
are not codified, there is nothing written down. You have to describe everything by
discovering everything for yourself. It’s not necessarily
obvious at first, even though I’m lucky enough to have a wife,
Rurutu, who translates a lot of things for me. With their pension,
Yves and Hélène are doing well. In less than a decade, they have gone
from 10 to 400 visitors each year. Hélène would like her children to
come back, but with unemployment at over 30%, it won’t happen anytime soon. In Tahiti, there are nightclubs. In Rurutu, there is nothing. There are not enough distractions for
young people, apart from the Heyiva festivals. Young people who leave
school, who return to Rurutu, who have a BTS or a vocational baccalaureate to go and work on a development site to earn 80,000 per month. It’s a bit sad to see these young people
come back with a level of experience to work as baggage handlers or to
clean the roadsides. Forty years ago,
we lived almost in clans, whereas today
we have almost reached the Western nuclear family with
parents and children. However,
we are still an example, like many other examples
in Polynesia, of this Polynesian family, since we have
two of our children who are up for adoption, what we call faamou
in French Polynesia. They are raised, but there is no
administrative document, so they keep their name. Family. We have a third one
that belongs to both of us. And then the last one which is in
full adoption, therefore which bears our name. There we are preparing for the street. Okay. And I don’t get a crown?
Yes. Are you okay? It ‘s all there.
Are you all alone? No, everyone is here. They’ll arrive with
their-Everyone is invited. Everyone must come today. Everyone must come today. Everyone is invited, everyone… This is the Crown Pact. Yes, that’s it. I was told 12 people,
there are 12 crowns. When you’re in business,
coming here is a ritual. The Touhape never docks,
but it is the only ship to serve the Austral Islands twice a month. So we have to adapt to the distance. It’s not just the distance, since we
still have an airstrip. Today we are very
well opened up anyway. But it is also how
traditions are maintained. So the Church has a lot to do with it
since they are very conservative. The church is the social cement
in these islands, very important. But at the development level,
civil society is struggling. And in a way, it’s good,
because while the population here has maintained its traditions and
managed to live well from agriculture,
if we had lost our traditions, we would need a lot of money. Rujutsu is also a land of prayer. Religion and tradition
still go hand in hand here. This beautiful understanding lasted until one day
in 2002, when politics got involved. The Maoi Protestant Church has banned
these deacons from engaging in politics. Tensions were already high over the financial contributions
requested by the churches. It was here that Nahuma, a dissident deacon,
created the Rurutu Protestant Church with around a hundred members,
a cult based on the community tradition of their island. Every Sunday, weavers, deacons, and farmers share a meal to make collective decisions. You must give me life. When you have the right, you can. When you have time to make us make us make us make us make us
Not only has this cap, he is also
the guarantor of the word of the elders. Within families,
including his own, tradition has faded from one generation to the next
. . We fell in love with each other. But I say that before,
I was not aware that we were family in the fifth generation. Because my father did
n’t accept this affair. He didn’t accept. Well, it was too late for me. It was still unstoppable,
but it was stronger, this attachment. I had fallen in love with him,
even him too, it was mutual. There was no one who could, not even
the law of the parents, who could… Create the rift between us two. In my family, we both
still maintain this code. We don’t want our children to marry
cousins, close cousins or whatever, but from the fifth
generation onwards, we accept it. Because today,
some young people stay together from the third or fourth generation. I grew up in Denmark,
so that’s why I don’t speak burutu. But, my father is half burutu, his
mother is burutu, he’s the sister of Giselle’s mother. There is a lot of young people. I think it’s difficult,
but it’s difficult in a different way. Here, it’s more physically difficult. You work a lot. Young people
go to the land at home, they take the land, they plant the land. It’s difficult. We have a lot of food
from nature, so you have to plant it yourself, you have to maintain it
yourself and make sure that it evolves. It’s a lot of physical work. Within families,
tradition is becoming more flexible. In the world of work,
it is a response to precariousness. Patia is part of the
community of Deacon Nahuma. He has the largest taro field
on the heights of the village of Avera. For him, without taro,
one is not rurutu. Taro remains the island’s staple food,
but young labor is scarce. Left for Tahiti, or expatriates. So, tradition
becomes a necessity. We first went to the community so
that we could have a resource a little more quickly. As families are in dire need of money to help them pay for what they need,
we are forced to do something to get some… Instead of working four hours
for nothing at all, we
all work together and the harvest we earn is shared
with the young people present at the work. Not absent. On the lands of Patia,
the community has recently diversified with its livestock farming and market gardening. The Tarodière is the inheritance that soured
his children, according to tradition. She assumes that only
boys inherit the earth. Girls should be taken
care of by their husbands. Patia, who has nine children,
does not dream of this future. The tarot says that I
had it from my parents as well as from my wife,
but it will be for all the children. It will be a sharing for everyone. Not just for boys, you
have to give to girls too. Maureen, my daughter, is the one who deals with the sale of agricultural products, but she also does crafts. She is the one who supervises both. That’s half of the population that left Pau-Aït, half. It is not broken in other countries. It’s better to come back. It’s hard at first, it’s very hard. Myself, when I came
back from Toi Moutou, I struggled. I struggled. I came back and it
changed my standard of living. My perspective on things has changed. Before, I was I took care of myself. I lived in Toi Moutou. There were people around me,
I didn’t help them. They are in their need. I could see they were in need.
I wasn’t helping them. It’s every man for himself. When I arrived in Rurutu, I began
to evolve little by little. Because here,
we learn to help each other. And at my parents’ house, we are taught to
share with other people. . Are you okay, uncle? Are you okay? The people of Rurutu who are there, in Tahiti,
who have no land, who are on the road, who have nothing. To return to Rurutu, everyone has a piece of land. Life is good in Ruyigi. Life is good in Ruyigi. I liked it when she came back. Because she likes to
do crafts too. She’s the one who helps me too. I even taught him how to make Chapognol. Our tradition is the pandanus
from our region, from the road. We also formed a community
of two girls, working together and sharing. Before, we and then there is
no water, there is no… And bread, we don’t eat every
day, twice a week before. And now it’s every morning. You always need coins. Rurutu lives between two worlds. Because of its history,
1,000 kilometers away, an underwater volcano. McDonald’s pushed him out of the water. As the tectonic plate
moved northwestward, a weakness in the
Earth’s crust, an island was born. And Rurutu appeared
12 million years ago. The former coral reef has become a
cliff, riddled with around thirty caves, each with its own legend. A tourist wealth that Yves,
the former legionnaire, had to learn to master
in order to organize his tours of the island. That means to everyone,
all the commies in this area, I need it right now.
We don’t touch. This way we don’t
need to do any crits. We are in the oral tradition. I go there, I cut
the flower and that’s it, everyone knows that the flower has been cut. This diet is reserved
for the person who cut the flower. Someone stole tarot cards
from this hole. The owner took a piece
of wood, shaped it into a fork, and put a small tarot card on it. Everyone who passes by
will see it drying there. And knowing that someone stole tarot
from this hole doesn’t come back. Step by step, Yves integrated himself into Rurutu,
a work of memory inspired by the unique writings of Mami Paré
on the origin of the clans. She again translated the legend
of the Ana Aheo cave to a former president of the Republic,
a certain François Mitterrand. As the ancestors always told,
it was the temple of the Ati Haïri. Because the first peoples of Rurutu
were the Oropas of Puna Haïria and the Ati Haïri of Paaë. This is Ati Haïri. They are called Ati Haïri,
which means Haïri, disgusting. Man-eaters,
villains, killers. They were stuck here and everything they
picked up they wanted to bring here to kill. They had their oven here to burn
and eat them, finally their enemy. Rurutu was lucky. The most welcoming have won. Thus, each one, in their own way,
brings the memories of Rurutu back to life. Traditions have remained very
present, more present than elsewhere in the Austral Islands. Even if that doesn’t stop us from having 4x4s,
from having TV, from having everything like everywhere. But in everyday life,
it’s really about staying very present. Oral tradition, without writing,
does not fit well with tourism. To attract people,
Yves must sell dreams and memories. With his wife Hélène,
he continues to do everything to rediscover and transmit the
common memory of legends. At the Council of Elders, chaired by Nahouma,
the idea is gaining ground, but resistance from some
elders remains strong. These old people want to keep everything. It was a war between us
because they don’t want to… Maybe they don’t want to
give their knowledge, but it’s a shame. It’s a shame because maybe my
grandchildren won’t have this chance to learn about the legends of the island. Even today, some families secretly preserve the famous Putatupuna,
ancestral writings on the origin of clans and legends. The Council of Elders has another mission:
to resolve the inheritance problem. Passionate about his
genealogy research, Yves understands the scale of the task. When we talk about my wife,
we are talking about Yves Vahiné, Yves’s wife. And when the first child was born, he was
taken to the chiefdom. At the chieftaincy, they asked:
Whose son is he? He is the son of Yves Vahiné. His last name became Yves. And then we gave him a first name. And so, with each generation,
the family changed. And it took
150 years to start putting all that together. A joint book of Rurutu’s Memoirs
represents a titanic work of compilation. One of its stages, that of legends,
was entrusted to Nahuma. They are too old. In front of me,
they said to me: You hung in front of them. They made me bigger, they yelled at me. They have me. Tears were flowing. I saw it like that. I understand well.
I understand well. When they finished growing me up,
they told me: Go home and tomorrow you come and do your work.
That’s all. To his great surprise,
Nahuma gained the trust of the elders who finally gave him
part of the legends of Rurutu. Mamipare, she
continues to run the parties. She is in good shape and life is good. Even they know that Rurutu
lives between two worlds. The High Commissioner came to inaugurate
a new market, the only one in Rurutu. The three from the village are out. Mami Paré doesn’t
necessarily last that long. After all, she has already taken the first
step with her memoirs of a future from a southern island. It’s up to Rurutu to do the other.
Rurutu, une île entre traditions orales et modernité écrite, au cœur des Australes. ✋ Pour découvrir plus de documentaires voyages 👉 http://bit.ly/4mHkEDB Abonnez-vous 🙏
00:00 – Introduction : les falaises de Rurutu
02:10 – Mamie Paris et la tradition orale
06:15 – Devenir Rurutu : une nouvelle vie
09:30 – Famille, mariage et solidarité
14:00 – Le rôle de l’église protestante
17:30 – Héritage agricole et transmission
22:00 – Mémoire des ancêtres et grottes sacrées
26:00 – Quelles perspectives pour l’île ?
Dans la collection documentaire Cœur d’île, Polynésie 1ère, vous emmène à la découverte des îles du Fénua à travers le regard de ses habitants. Pour le premier numéro de cette collection cap sur Rurutu, en terres australes. Rurutu vit-elle entre 2 mondes à cause de son histoire ?
A 1000 km de l’île, par deux fois, un volcan sous marin, le Mac Donald l’a poussé hors de l’eau. L’ancien récif corallien est devenu falaises et grottes. Une curiosité géologique qui séduit de plus en plus de touristes. En même temps, ses habitants, tentent de faire cohabiter leur tradition orale forte et la société de l’écrit qui régit tous les échanges. Taria Walker, est La seule écrivain(e)de l’île à avoir fait une première tentative de transmission de la mémoire.
Yves Gentilhomme, ancien légionnaire est devenu Rurutu. Avec sa femme Hélène, Il continue de faire vivre cet héritage à travers leur activité et leur pension.
A découvrir sur Terra Nauta :
Rikitea: 3 héros discrets qui font battre le cœur des Gambier https://youtu.be/W_5_XdoexF4
Vivre loin de tout : Rapa, l’île oubliée du Pacifique Sud https://youtu.be/h21TNr4IQCw
Raiatea : à la recherche de la fleur sacrée Tiaré Apetahi https://youtu.be/PwQyGdugUks
“Coeur d’Île : Rurutu, entre deux mondes”
Réalisé par Christian Arti
Tous droits réservés
#Rurutu #PolynésieFrançaise #DocumentaireVoyage #TraditionsInsulaires #CoutumesPolynésiennes #MémoireOrale #TerraNauta
2 Comments
Homeland. Will visit Home soon. 🧡
❤