Post #95127 by freddiefreelance on Mon, Jun 7, 2004 5:07 PM

On 2004-06-01 12:02, freddiefreelance wrote:
While reading the Frommers Lonely Planet guide to Raratonga & the Cook Islands I found an interesting thing: Every Polynesian society has a place in their myths called "Hawaii" (sometimes spelled differently) that's the island their ancestors came from.

It was in Lonely Planet, not Frommer's. The quote I was looking for is:

Oral History on Raratonga traces ancestry bacl about 1400 years. The ancient road known as Ara Metua, still encircling most of Raratonga, is about 1000 years old. In common with other Polynesian peoples, Cook Islanders' legends say that the ancestors of ancient times origenated from the legendary homeland of 'Aaiki.

'Avaiki is as much a concept as a place. It's location is different for each Polynesian race (as is its pronounciation). The first island to bear the name was Savai'i, in Samoa. Polynesian settlers heading east from Samoa to the Society Islands, then on to Hawaii, the Cook Islands & NZ, named successive islands after their homeland, and as dialects changed with the years the name variously became Havaiki, Havai'i, Hawai'i, Avaiki & Hawaiki. Strangely, in all Polynesian cultures, the same name refers to the afterworld. Premissinary Cook Islanders believed that when they died they went to 'Avaiki, a land that tradionally lay in the west, in the dirrection of the setting son (Now, of course, they go to heaven).

So I'd say that going to Hawaii is going to heaven.