With crowns of flowers in their hair, Tahitian women watch an outrigger canoe race, part of Tahiti's most important festival, Heiva i Tahiti. Held annually from mid-June to mid-July, this festival coincides with French Polynesia's Autonomy Celebration on June 29th and France's Bastille Day on July 14th and is just one way French Polynesians are keeping their culture alive with traditional dances, fire walking competitions, and typical Tahitian sports races (like palm-tree climbing and stone lifting).

(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "French Polynesia: Charting a New Course," June 1997, National Geographic magazine)