Tupaia’s Endeavour

Streaming video - 2020

A first contact story, told from a Pacific point of view. When James Cook, captain of the British ship Endeavour, took his first steps on the un-colonised shores of Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1769, he set in train a violent collision with the existing Māori occupants. The first meeting between Māori and Europeans would have ended disastrously for Cook and his crew, if not for Tupaia, a Polynesian who had joined the Endeavour expedition in Tahiti. Who was Tupaia - this high-priest, star-navigator, and extraordinary artist? He is left out of European history books, yet today his imprint lives on in modern Aotearoa/New Zealand. New Zealand-born artist Michel Tuffery (who is of Samoan/Rarotongan/Tahitian heritage) and Māori actor Kirk Torrance,... with scholars and Māori tangata whenua (people of the land) alongside them, retrace the footsteps of Tupaia in true Polynesian style. Under the gaze of their ancestors, with song, haka and humour, they make startling new discoveries that rewrite history, cementing Tupaia’s role as a central figure in Pacific history.TUPAIA'S ENDEAVOUR was shot in Tahiti, Aotearoa New Zealand and the UK over eight years with each shoot unveiling new revelations and with Michel, Kirk and the whole film crew embodying the story physically, spiritually and emotionally. Backed with the Endeavour journals and the historical rigour of renowned anthropologist, historian and writer, Dame Anne Salmond, and in collaboration with Prof. Paul Tapsell (of the iwi Ngāti Whakaue and Ngāti Raukawa), it is a project that gathered research from the ground up, allowing Indigenous knowledge to lead in the creation of a compelling work, both as a film and as an educational resource. more