A complex series of prohibitions related to things holy or unclean; an ancient Polynesian practice to protect and ensure the sacred. Captain Cook wrote in a journal entry from 1777 that the word “has a very comprehensive meaning; but, in general, signifies that a thing is forbidden…. When any thing is forbidden to be eat, or made use of, they say, that it is taboo.” In the spring of 2009 I caught sight of the word while walking along a beach in Samoa. Written in bright white paint on a towering palm tree was the word TABOO. Beneath the warning was a strip of yellow police tape that stretched to the next tree about ten yards away and to the tree beyond it. Then I saw the reason for the warning. Within the semicircle of towering palms was a small flotilla of outrigger canoes. Clearly, intruders, strangers, nonsailors, were meant to keep away. This bold word has meant exactly that for millennia throughout Polynesia, to prevent the desecration of sacred objects such as sailing vessels, or virtually anything that the tribal kings had touched.
