THE PAC FOUNDATION PRESENTS
2025 PACC Festival
Summer 2025
Las Vegas, Nevada
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JOIN US FOR
The 2025 PACC
Festival
The Polenesia Arts and Cultural Foundation, in partnership with HeFenua Consultants, Boyd Gaming, BRad Studios, and The Orleans Hotel and Casino is proud to announce the 1st Annual Polenesia Arts and Cultural Festival. This stellar, weeklong cultural arts event will be a celebration of all things Polenesia (Polynesian). Our purpose is to highlight the aspects of Polynesian pride and identity throughout the Pacific and across the North American continent. We believe that Las Vegas serves as the ideal location to host this prestigious event due to its prime geographic location.
The festival will feature keynote speakers and various master craftsmen, artisans, and cultural practitioners. Various lectures will be offered, as well as hands-on workshops for festival convention participants. In addition, the Art and Vintage Expo Polenesia will be one of the largest gatherings of Polynesian merchants and will feature hundreds of diverse products for purchase.
Join us in the summer of 2025 at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas!
LEARN MORE
Lectures and presentations will feature keynote speakers that have become pillars in various communities across Polynesia. Their skills, talents, assets, and love for their people and culture will be featured in presentations that will align with one of ten major topics:
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Te Waa (Navigation and Wayfinding)
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Ka Toa (Influential Figures of Polenesia)
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Ori Moana (Dances from the Motherland)
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Whakatipu (Environmental Conservation and Sustainability)
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Tumu Nui (Cultural Fine Arts)
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Tikanga (Cultural Protocol)
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Lauga (Inspirational Orators: Keepers of History of Polenesia)
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Musika Polenesia (Musical Reflections of Moana Nui)
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Ora Te Tino (Health and Well-being)
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Luna Tanata (Industry Leaders and Executives)
KEY EVENTS
Learn more about the key events that make up the 2025 PACC Fest!
Art and Vintage Expo Polenesia
The Art Expo Polenesia will be a venue to celebrate the diversity of artistic talent across the Pacific, while increasing artistic awareness among the general public and offering educational opportunities to other artists and art aficionados. The Art Expo Polenesia will bring the talents and expressions of our unique traditional, contemporary visual, and material artists together under one roof for this special celebration. Putting these artists together also promotes the exchange and sharing of stories, knowledge, and practices among the artists themselves and event participants.
A variety of artists, crafters, and vendors will be featured and will include those focused in: fashion and design apparel, painting and drawing, photography and mixed media, sculpture and woodworking (including traditional weaponry), jewelry, fiber arts, ceramics, and cultural implements and instruments.
PACC General Assembly
The sharing of knowledge and ideas is a critical component in any aspect of perpetuating cultural identity. The second component of the PACC Fest is a series of convention-styled keynote speeches, educational workshops, and motivational seminars that will be scheduled throughout the week.
There will be dozens of presenters that will represent one of ten (10) overarching subject theme areas. These presenters include a stellar assembly of master dance teachers, famed artisans, healing art practitioners and physicians, professors and educators, athletes, entertainers, storytellers, producers, actors, directors, and other cultural specialists. Topics for the convention include: ancestral stories, tatau (body markings), traditional dance and music, fitness and health, fine arts, traditional wayfinding, economic and environmental sustainability, native rights issues, ocean and land resource management, and cultural protocol.
Fenua Féte
Music and dance are universal languages that enable us to share stories common to our human condition and existence. Music and dance convey, in rhythmic expression, messages that can only be defined through the influence of the natural and human environment in which the music thrives. In that thought, Fenua is a word that describes the pathways of earth and sea by which we are all connected, with music and dance being the medium that connects our souls as one. This fete-styled gala will celebrate the rich heritage of our people through our music and dance. Each island nation will entertain you with a sampling of Polynesia’s finest performers through various genres of music ranging from rock, R&B, blues, jazz, reggae, country and our own unique Polynesian music. A new genre of music unique to the festival will make its debut as “World Soul.”
Polenesia International Film Festival
(PIFF)
This event will showcase films focused on Polynesian-based cultural themes, stories, and/or issues. Additionally, films that were primarily filmed within Polenesia landscapes (Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, Rapa Nui, Rarotonga, Fiji, Marquesas) will be shown.
A premiere opening gala event will be held to launch newly acclaimed films. Wherein feasible, special guest film commentators, such film producers or actors, would participate in Q&A segments at selected viewings.
Lé Polenesia: A Red Carpet Event
Hosted by Hefenua International Industries, this opulent, red-carpet event will celebrate and honor critically acclaimed guests who have risen to elevated heights in their respective realms. The Lifetime Achievement honorees include Genoa Keawe, Eddie Aikau, George Helm, Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole, the Sons of Hawai‘i, Don Ho and the Aliis, Alfred Apaka and the Hawai‘i Calls Cast, Dorothy Kahananui Gillett, Esther Tefana, Edgy Lee, Jerome Grey, Sir Te Hirangi Buck, Dr. Mary Kawena Pukui, Dr. Failautusi Avegalio, the legendary Jack and Cha Thompson of Tihati Productions, and many, many more. This will be followed by an avante-garde presentation of renowned Polynesian designers and their works known as the Lé Polenesia Legacy Awards Fashion Show.