ABSTRACT
There is a ceremony performed at Tahiti each year in the Bastille Day holidays. At the marae Arahu Rahu, reconstructed for tourists and 'folkloric' celebrations, the 'King' and 'Queen' of Tahiti are invested with a maro ura, a wrap or girdle of red feathers. It is a symbol, like a crown and sceptre, of their sovereignty for the time of the celebrations. Thousands are there to see the ceremony. One could imagine, for example, the organising committee of Tahiti Bastille Day celebrations wanting a 'divertissement' in the 'folkloric' mode. To choreograph the ceremony they call on the cultural memory of 'experts' who, by all the complex modes of the transmission of historical consciousness, have their translations of 'how things used to be done'. The Native Tahitians were intrigued for more than twenty five years at the symbols of the Strangers' flags and their ceremonies about them.
