Moana of Motunui and the Transformative Power of Humanizing Pedagogies
Moana is contradiction in that it is both simple and complex. On its surface it is a contemporary folktale of a princess tasked with saving her people. There is a mystical quest to do so wherein she must sail across the ocean, team-up with a demigod, and return a mystical object to its rightful place.
However, unlike many of its predecessors, Moana raises many significant questions about what it means to be human. For example, how does one find and form an identity? What does it mean to be “Moana of Motunui”? In the film, Moana struggles to be her truest self. She must save her island from an oncoming blight and drought, unsuccessfully attempting to do so through traditional means, but is hesitant to seek answers that break traditional boundaries and norms. She also senses a need to re-discover a forgotten cultural identity, a sentiment shared only by her grandmother “the village crazy lady”. Moana ultimately bears multiple burdens during the course of the film, carrying with her the legacy of her ancestors (told brilliantly in “We Know the Way”) as well as the responsibility for protecting the present, and for leading her community into an unknown future (“I Am Moana”).
The overarching themes of Disney’s Moana, of knowing and discovering, “who you are” and being, “true to yourself” are both well-worn Disney tropes seen everywhere from Beauty and The Beast and The Little Mermaid to The Lion King. And in many ways Moana follows a similar script to her predecessors. She is a brash, brave, headstrong daughter of a king who dreams of a wider world. She has adorable animal companions and a wise-cracking partner. She is unlike anyone else in her immediate community: a misfit.
There is a distinction in Moana however that closely reflects Maxine Greene’s concept of wide-awakeness, or “the awareness of what it is to be in the world” (Greene, 1995, p. 35). Throughout her journey not only does Moana of Motunui embrace her community, but takes her role as their future leader very seriously. Her love for the people and land, sea and sky that make Motunui what it is helps define who she is. Her father King Tui encourages her to realize that, “The village of Motunui is all you need” and that, “In time you’ll learn just as I did/You must find happiness right/Where you are”. And while Moana realizes the wisdom in these words, she also heeds the words of her grandmother later in the same song when Tala sings,
“You may hear a voice inside
And if the voice starts to whisper
To follow the farthest star
Moana, that voice inside is
Who you are”
Consequently, Moana struggles with the tension caused by her internal independence and curiosity and her sense of duty and obligation. So much so that she begins to believe that there is something inherently wrong with her as she sings,
“I can lead with pride, I can make us strong
I’ll be satisfied if I play along
But the voice inside sings a different song
What is wrong with me?”
These questions and tensions embody both the “wideawakeness” that Greene describes and Freire’s notion of “conscientization” wherein people focus on achieving a particularly analytic understanding of the world. These critical ways of thinking, knowing and being, bring to light personal, social, and political contradictions that shape our interactions with the world around us. Moreover this critical consciousness must include taking action against oppressive elements in one’s life that are illuminated by that understanding.
For educators, these concepts remain fundamental in developing a critical pedagogy of possibility, imagination, and social change. Taking “popular culture as a terrain of significant political and pedagogical importance” (Giroux, 1994) we can hear what this story is telling us about our own teaching, culture, and classrooms.
“We Know Who We Are”: Humanizing Pedagogies
The inciting incident for this film is one that might sound familiar to many contemporary educators. A well-intentioned and well-meaning figure tries to do something drastic “for the benefit of the community”without consulting with the community directly impacted by the action, and the results are disastrous.
In Moana, it is the trickster, demigod Maui, who steals the heart of TeFiti, the goddess of nature and life, in order to give humans the ability to create life on their own. Maui loses the heart, in the form of a gem, at sea. In so doing he upsets the balance of nature causing a drought and blight to begin to spread across the world. This plague, caused by Maui’s theft, eventually reaches Motunui and threatens Moana’s people with destruction. The gem finds its way to Moana who decides to sailing across the ocean, find Maui, and return the heart to TeFiti in order to restore the balance of nature.
To do this, she must defy cultural tradition and norms in order to preserve it. This is particularly significant because Moana has internalize a similar lesson that many of our students have learned namely that who they are — their passions, interests, and desires — are fundamentally out of step with the norm and that consequently there is something “wrong” with them. This deficit thinking, rightly critiqued by Woodson, DuBois, and Baldwin, left unchecked leads to psychic, emotional, and physical demise. It is only through the difficult rejection of this deficit ideology that Moana is able to best serve her community.
Ultimately, she must discover and understand who she is before she is able to return the heart to TeFiti. The second verse of “I Am Moana” outlines her ultimate understanding that identity is fluid and dynamic, and indeed full of tensions, and that, “reading the word and the world” requires a cultural grounding as well as an aspirational spirit.
Who am I?
I am a girl who loves my island
I’m the girl who loves the sea
It calls me
I am the daughter of the village chief
We are descended from voyagers
Who found their way across the world
They call me
I’ve delivered us to where we are
I have journeyed farther
I am everything I’ve learned and more
Still it calls me
And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me
It’s like the tide; always falling and rising
I will carry you here in my heart you’ll remind me
That come what may
I know the way
I am Moana! (emphasis mine)
Moana realizes that her brilliance is not defined by any external force, but by the socio-cultural elements and her responses to them have shaped who she is. In other words, rather than resist them she embraces the tensions, contradictions, and possibilities that reside “inside me”. Further, she acknowledges that her being is more than the sum total of her experiences when she notes, “I am everything I have learned and more”. She contains multitudes and it is through this reconciliation that she achieves her apotheosis.
It is this same journey that teachers must undertake. In order to fully serve their students teachers must first know themselves. They must become truly “reflective practitioners” meaning they must fundamentally examine their core classroom beliefs about education, their students, and their functions not as savior, but as what Hill (2009) calls “wounded healers”.
These pedagogies are explored in Moana most poignantly in the film’s climax. The audience is told at the films beginning that after the heart is stolen from TeFiti she disappears and in her place rose a lava demon named Te Kā. However, what is revealed is that Te Kā and Te Fiti are one and the same. Initially, Maui and Moana attempt to battle the lava demon to settling the problem through a show of force. This approach nearly kills Moana and almost destroys Maui.
It is only through a quieted sense of self, a careful examination of purpose, and compassionate listening to what become increasingly apparent are the tortured cries of a wounded being, that Moana realizes the true identity of Te Kā/Te Fiti. She examines the symbol on the pounamu stone that contains the Heart of Te Fiti and in an act of sacrificial vulnerability, Moana gently approaches her singing:
Ou mata e matagi
(Your eyes so full of wonder)
I have crossed the horizon to find you.
Ou loto mamaina toa
(Your heart an innocent warrior)
I know your name.
Manatu atu
(There’s a task for you)
They have stolen the heart from inside you
Taku pelepele
(My dearest one)
But this does not define you.
Manatunatu
(And your deepest thoughts)
This is not who you are.
You know who you are.
It is this lovingkindness that carries the day. Moana’s vulnerability does not lead to her destruction. It is her capacity to recognize life, beauty, and love that restores the balance and allows for the world not only to be saved, but to thrive. Moana takes what she has learned back to her people to lead them in exciting new directions as they reclaim their long lost, ancestral tradition as way-finders, adventurers and explorers.
Navigating the Classroom: What Moana Teaches Teachers
The parallels between Moana’s story and the everyday experiences in the classroom are unmistakable and provide several insights for those engaged in classroom education.
The first is that the heart has been stolen from our classrooms. However “well-intentioned” (and that is an open question), the onslaught of standardized testing, policing of bodies, automatization of teachers, and obsession with output has dehumanized the act of education in many classrooms today. The result is a creative, cultural, social, emotional blight. The balance of nature has been disrupted so much so that virtually nothing has room to grow and flourish. This becomes evident in the disinvestment in our most vulnerable populations leading to physical ruin as we are seeing in areas such as Detroit’s public schools. Further, in the film, Maui apologizes to Moana and says that, “he meant well”. Moana replies, that his intent doesn’t matter but what ultimately came of his actions was ruinous and destructive. This can be applied to so many educational reformers, advocates, and benefactors. The resultant environment is destructive to students, educators, and to the community as a whole.
Second, our students must never be seen as monsters to be conquered. Police presence in schools is at an all time high. Expulsions and suspensions for minor behavioral infractions which are often based in cultural misunderstandings (at best), but more often in coercion and oppression. In many ways our students are responding to the theft of their humanity. Contemporary, traditional schooling has not given students any reason to believe they should see their own humanity. They are confined to rows of desks, must ask to use the restroom, and are given little, if any, room to grown and flourish emotionally, intellectually, or personally.
This is not to say that students have no agency, but that teachers must return to our students that is rightfully theirs: their humanity. The first step is recognizing our students for who they are rather than for how they have been positioned by dominant narratives (or legends) about their deficit, danger, and delinquency. It is up to educators to see the genius, brilliance, and tremendous potential in our students by warrant of them being who they are. It is up to the humanizing educator to be open, vulnerable, and to attend to the voices of their students. This is not an act of salvation wherein the teacher rescues students from themselves or culture. This is instead an act of love that supports our students’ physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing.
Finally, educators must know themselves. In an increasingly standardized and mechanized era teachers deviating from “the norm” or the script may often feel as though they are doing something wrong. Young teachers are often concerned with maintaining employment in a hyper-monitoring culture worrying if any misstep or deviation will end in disaster. Learning “who you are” in the classroom is terrifically difficult. It often starts with the notion that something isn’t right, that there is a better way, or simply with a singular belief. It is then we must listen.
Part of what makes the Moana’s story work so well is that it comes from her cultural community. It is their story writ large. The story was drafted by New Zealand’s Taika Waititi, and overseen by The Oceanic Story Trust, a collection of anthropologists, historians, linguists, choreographers, cultural advisors and scholars. Those involved took the cultural markers essential to telling a neo-indigenous folktale respectfully and authentically. They had a story to tell about who they were and were intent on doing it on their terms.
The music, while written by Lin-Manuel Miranda was done in close collaboration with Opetaia Foa’i, and includes Samoan and Tokelauan languages, the latter being the native tongue of New Zealand’s indigenous tribes, spoken only by about 3,000 people worldwide. Moana resonates, because it embraces, honors, and celebrates the humanity embedded in the story rather than engaging in cultural exoticization or appropriation. This is an essential component of recognizing humanity, giving space for those with stories to tell to do so. It is the educators job to both listen and hear.
In Moana’s narrative, knowing herself took the wisdom of elders, love for culture, and the spirits of ancestors. It took listening to and learning from unexpected and imperfect allies such as Maui. It took conviction, determination and, perhaps most importantly, failure. So too must it be for us. We must understand that the journey toward understanding and wideawakeness is fraught with peril. There will be times that we dwell in the realm of monsters who may actively seek our destruction or desire to take what we have. There will certainly be moments when we will want to give the job to someone else. But ultimately we are dedicated to each other and to the betterment of humanity.
It is far easier to stay on familiar and comfortable shores. But we know who we are.
