Are cultural links important in the spread of outrigger canoe racing?
To the smaller island regions of the Pacific it is a central factor. All island groups of Oceania and the native cultures that exist throughout are intrinsically linked to the canoe, and more specifically the outrigger canoe. Taken a step further you can say with some accuracy that individual ancestry can be linked back to one great canoe journey and indeed in places such as New Zealand this is the case to the degree that many Maori can name the canoe on which their ancestors traveled to arrive in the land they called, Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud. Participation in outrigger canoeing is to honor their past, their cultural origins, their ancestors and to find renewed cultural pride, identity and skills lost in a distant past.
