The photograph shows Maori men, women, and children arranged for a group portrait on the porch of a whare or wharenui (meeting house) in New Zealand. This ceremonial structure, also called a talking house, and the marae (grassy area in front of it) are central to Maori social order and culture. These typical sacred structures are monuments to tribal ancestors and places that bridge past and present generations. The gathering of children shown in the photograph represents the transmission of a sense of belonging to the lineage and cultivation of that linkage in the new generation. The house represents the sheltering, physical or bodily presence of the family's ancestors in the life of their living descendants. Each part of the structure symbolizes a tribal ancestor's being. At the apex of the gable is a carving called the koruru, or "face of the ancestor." The ridgepole represents the spine. The carved ends of the bargeboards represent the hands of the ancestor, with its design split into fingers. The roof with its outstretched arms embraces the generations of the family within.The interior rafters holding up the roof are the ribs, and the interior space represents the chest and belly where people gather. Carvings and woven wall decorations are also symbolic of the ancestral lineage, recording history through their art. The meeting of the family in the house is an act of remembrance and solidarity extended to all of its members. In the shadow of the ancestors, children would witness important family celebrations and discussion of important decisions.

This historic photograph is featured on a New Zealand postage stamp because of its importance as an element of indigenous cultural heritage. It was taken between 1880 and 1920 by Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) or Frances Carpenter (1890-1972). He was an American traveler and writer on cultural anthropology and geography and his daughter Frances illustrated his writings with photographs. Their collection of about 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives is currently housed at the Library of Congress, Washington DC.

This baby figurine of a pudgy toddler is one of many similar examples of ceramic sculptures of infants belonging to an ancient Mesoamerican ceramic tradition that flourished during the first millennium B.C.E. The figurines are hollow and often nearly life-sized (about 25 to 35 cm, or 10 – 14 inches high), made of white kaolin clay, or ordinary clay covered with white slip. The figurines are usually without clothing, but do not show genitalia. Like others, the head of this example is oversized and seems to show artificial cranial deformation used to shape infants' heads according to cultural aesthetic standards. Their downturned mouths and adult-like, slitted eyes are seemingly symbolic. This figure has wide outstretched legs with baby-like feet, and its arm is outstretched in an open gesture. Many of these figurines display such a reaching gesture, and some are shown crawling forward. Some baby-face figurines wear a helmet-like headdress.

While the sculptures have rarely been unearthed in archaeological context, scholars associate the large figurines with early Olmec archaeological sites in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico near the Gulf coast, with other heartland areas of the Olmec culture region, and nearby areas influenced by Olmec culture. The meaning of the infant figurines is unknown. Various theories have been put forward, whereby they represent elite lineages, deities, or infant sacrifices. They may be effigies that substituted for sacrificial victims. The facial expressions resemble those of the monumental stone sculptures at San Lorenzo and La Venta, but none of the infant sculptures have been found there, possibly because the soil acid destroyed any buried remains, or because they had already gone out of use by that period.

The anecdote is a lesson to a child who is probably at the adolescent stage of life, and very concerned with how peers and others view him. The experience of the father and son pair shows the futility of trying to act on fickle public opinion. It also plays upon ambiguities in the relationship of care and respect between parent and child at the stage of adolescence, when the parent is aging and the child takes on more responsibility to look out for the parent, in addition to bearing responsibility for behavior that reflects favorably upon the family.

Goha is a popular comic hero in Muslim regions of Africa and Asia, found under various names including Juha and Abu Nuwas in the jokes of North Africa and Southwest Asia. Goha is a good-natured member of the learned class of ulama' and imams (a group often satirized for their foibles), whose stories reflect Islamic values and folk wisdom. He often rides a donkey, is sometimes a rural and sometimes an urban figure who displays both poor and middle class attributes. He is an Everyman, underdog, and hero, both learned and stupid, who provides a mirror of the life and the concerns of ordinary people. The photograph is a still image from a children's television program in Afghanistan that is designed to build literacy among children in areas underserved by schools, and as a supplement to schooling. By tapping into cultural familiarity with the iconic Goha figure, the program seeks to gain acceptance for innovative ways of delivering educational content.

The object in the photograph is a gope, or spirit board (also called kwoi or hohao). This example is from Papua New Guinea near the Wapo Creek on the Gulf of Papua. Carved from an old canoe, this art form derives from the protective splashboard of the outrigger canoe, which was carved with a human face and was believed to have protective qualities. Human faces represent ancestors, and carving the boards was thought to provide a home for the protective spirit. Most gope boards have symmetrical, curved, linear designs, with recognizable faces and very stylized body parts. Gopes were made in different sizes, the largest being owned by the clan and stored out of sight in the men's longhouses. Smaller gope boards guarded entrances to clan sections of communal houses. Young, uninitiated men owned a third type of small gope. These were hung on the walls where young boys slept, believing it would protect them and help them to grow strong.

Krishna is known in the stories of the Bhagavata-Purana as the eighth incarnation, or avatar, of the god Vishnu. He is a very popular deity, a divine hero who personifies superhuman powers as well as human hopes and failings. According to the narrative, he comes into the world as the son of Vasudeva and Devaki to destroy the foes of human beings and is threatened by many tyrants and monsters, beginning with the cruel King Kans, who tried to kill him based on an omen. Krishna's mother and father were thus imprisoned, but my miraculous intervention Krishna was saved, carried across the river Yamuna and placed with foster-parents, Nand and Yashoda. Stories of Krishna's childhood with his loving foster-mother Yashoda are much beloved in this village of cow-herders. Representations have been illustrated in courtly artistic paintings and sculptures and in contemporary popular media, such as calendars, posters, and statuettes. A combination of super-human powers and child-like behavior endears Krishna to the characters in the narrative, and are what makes him an especially popular figure. One of Krishna's most famous pranks as a child was to find any possible way to steal sweet butter and curds from the storage jars that were suspended from the ceiling with ropes. Lighting his way in the dark room by the jewels he wore, climbing on mortars or on the backs of his playmates, or enlisting the help of agile monkeys, he gave vent to the irresistible urge to eat the butter and feed it to his partners in crime.

The holiday of Krishna's birthday is called Janmashtami in northern India and is celebrated as Sri Krishnajanmashtami, Janmashtami or Gokulashtami in southern India. In celebration, devotees fast, bathe, perform prayers and rites, and re-enact parts of the story of Krishna's birth and rescue from King Kansa. In this photograph, a young child is adorned with jewelry, eye-liner and a headdress, and prompted to re-enact the prank of stealing butter. Sweets made with butter, honey, and other delicacies are also part of the celebration, which falls in late summer or early autumn.

The ceramic figurine of an infant in a cradle (also called a cradleboard) was created by the Nahua, or Aztec people of Mexico, between 1350 and 1521 CE. It shows how infants were kept bound in a cradle or carried on a cradleboard, a practice that was common among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The figurine also shows how the baby would have been bound or swaddled in the cradle. The drawing further illuminates the way in which the cradle was used, and may illustrate a ceremony of placing the child in the cradle that took place some days after the birth of the child. The illustration is from the work collected in the Nahua language by Bernardino de Sahagún (1500-1590 CE), a Church official sent by the Spanish to Mexico in 1529. Sahagún collected information about Aztec language, rituals, values, and childrearing from a select group of native informants. It is the only source of its kind of Aztec customs and modes of thought. Also compiled by Sahagún was a narrative and representations of the Spanish conquest. The work was sent to Spain where it was not published until 1829 or translated until 1831. It was called The Florentine Codex because the manuscript was found in that city; it had been suppressed in Spain after the death of Sahagún.

The photographic print is a full-length, formal studio portrait of a woman and her daughter from the Pacific Island of Samoa. The photograph was taken by an unknown photographer between 1890 and 1920. The woman and her daughter clearly belong to a prominent family, but they may or may not be royalty. The woman is wearing ornaments and a ring that suggest she is married to a prominent person. The woman and the girl both carry fans made of dried, woven leaves, called ili aupolapola in the indigenous language. The traditional costumes worn by mother and daughter are very similar in design, with the indigenous woven skirt called titi, made of ti leaves. Both wear hair ornaments such as flowers and elaborate necklaces. Their blouses are made of traditional tapa cloth, called siap in Samoa. It is made by soaking and pounding the inner bark of a mulberry-type tree until it is very soft and pliable. The decorative painting on the blouses is nearly identical, as are the fringed necklines of the blouse and skirt. Other fabric was appliquéd to the hem in a zigzag design. The re-creation of a naturalistic backdrop for the photograph may be an indication of rapid change in the society and the focus on preserving the appearance of tradition. The traditional clothing, on the other hand, indicates the effort to assert ethnic identity and preserve traditional crafts at a time when imported Western clothing was becoming available and perhaps norms of women’s dress were changing.

This mask worn by boys during initiation rituals in Papua New Guinea is made of painted bark cloth and canvas stretched over a cane frame. The long fiber fringe adds movement to the mask, which is worn during dances and other secret rituals that that comprise boyhood initiation rites. These rituals often involve disguises, as initiates endure trials, receive food and drink from villagers, and accept the knowledge of elders. The mask form is also a reference to the spirits of ancestors who have come through these life stages and continued on. The long, oval masks are similar to the gope spirit boards that represent the ancestors at home, protecting its inhabitants. This mask is from the Wapo Creek or Era River area near the Gulf of Papua, though there are many other styles and forms of initiation masks as well as face and body paint used by the numerous tribes in the region.

This small, mask ( 9.5 cm high and 5 cm wide) carved from wood is called a "passport" mask because it was worn on the body, kept in a leather pouch, or sewn onto a piece of cloth to represent group or family affiliation. Passport masks are used by the Dan people, a group of several hundred thousand people in the western part of the Côte d’Ivoire and into Liberia. They live in a forested region bordering the savannah in the north, for whom farming cocoa, coffee, rice and manioc, and hunting game and fish provide rural livelihoods. Each village is governed by a chief and council of elders. Both boys and girls receive formal recognition of their adulthood and readiness for marriage by participating in initiation rituals. Specific teachings, a period of time in seclusion in the bush for boys, and circumcision rituals for both genders are included in the rites of passage. The masks are miniature copies of family masks which act as witnesses to initiation ceremonies and are believed to offer protection like amulets when their owner is away from home. 1

On the Micronesian island of Satawal, north of Papua New Guinea (about 2000 miles east of the island group of Hawaii), children sit on a canoe watching a ceremony related to the heritage of traditional navigation. The children are witnesses to a Pwo ceremony—the first held in over 50 years—inducting master navigators into a select group of Micronesians. Five Polynesians, including several Hawaiians, earned this honor by continuing the tradition of "wayfinding" on the Pacific Ocean that was responsible for the settlement of nearly all habitable islands in the vast ocean as much as 1000 years ago. Mau Piailug, a 76-year-old master navigator, conducted the ceremony as one of the last who inherited the skill marked by the journey of the Hawaiian double-hulled canoe Hokule'a on a Hawaii to Tahiti voyage of more than 2,200 miles, in 1976. The canoe was built from 400-year-old logs donated by a group of native Alaskans because there are no more suitable trees in Hawaii’s forests. It was built in the traditional manner by more than 1000 volunteers. The voyage to Tahiti proved that centuries prior to European oceanic voyages, Polynesians navigated in such canoes merely by reading nature: stars, clouds, waves, and the behavior of sea birds. More than 16 such voyaging canoes have since been built, and one of them, the double-hulled canoe Alingano Maisu, was sailed to Satawal and presented to Mau Piailug to recognize his role in transmitting his skill to the next generation of navigators. Piailug’s teaching has taken the canoe Hokule'a across the Polynesian triangle from Hawaii to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to Aotearoa (New Zealand)—voyages equal to circumnavigating the globe twice.

"Today [the ceremony] was not about us. Today was about our children continuing their tradition, culture and ancestry," said Nainoa Thompson, one of the navigator-inductees and members of the 1976 voyage. A Hawaiian language aphorism, Kapu Na Keiki meaning "Hold Sacred the Children" expresses Thompson’s vision as a navigator and educator. Training the next generation of navigatores to uphold this tradition involves more than just skills of sailing. It addresses the multiple problems faced by many indigenous groups today: healthy nutrition, avoiding drug and alcohol abuse, and securing education and employment skills, as well as caring for the environment. The Polynesian Voyaging Society, which built and maintains the voyaging canoe Hokule`a, carries out programs for exposing youth to the pleasures and challenges of sailing and wayfinding as a means of teaching character and sound living practices as well as carrying on the sacred indigenous tradition of the peoples of the Pacific. Among the programs carried out in Hawaii, high school students paddle one- and two-man canoes about 100 miles along Hawaii’s coastline in the shadow of the Hokule‘a, to hone and test their wayfinding skills.