Oceania
Pacific Traditions
taula (Fiji) · kahuna (Hawai'i) · tohunga (Aotearoa)
Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian societies
EthnographyHistory
Pacific ritual specialists — mediums, navigators, healers and priestly experts — often sit closer to institutional priesthood or specialist craft than to the ecstatic model implied by 'shamanism'.
Ritual specialists
- Mediums hosting deities
- Tohunga: experts in a defined domain of knowledge
Cosmology
- Mana and tapu as regulating concepts
- Ancestral genealogy as cosmology
Ritual practice
- Kava ritual in parts of the region
- Healing and navigation knowledge transmission
History and pressure
- Missionisation from the late 18th century
- Legal suppression, including the 1907 Tohunga Suppression Act in New Zealand
- Contemporary revitalisation of navigation and healing knowledge
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