“What if your community had to decide whether to leave its homeland forever?” The documentary film There Once Was an Island (http://www.thereoncewasanisland.com/): Te Henua e Nnoho (On the Level Productions 2010) asks this universal and archetypally complex question of its subjects and its audience. An all too real story about sustainable ecological heritage and cultural continuity is played out on a tiny Pacific atoll called Taku (pronounced Tau'u'u, also known as The Mortlocks). Residents of Taku live on a very small island located 250km northeast of Bougainville Island, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Filmmakers Briar March (director) and Lyn Collie (producer) follow the lives and decisionmaking processes of three people who have grown up on Taku and are struggling to reconcile themselves to the likelihood that their entire Polynesian community of 400 people will be forced to relocate to Melanesian Bougainville, the nearest seat of government. Satty, Endar, and Telo each take a different position on the joint problems of relocation and cultural preservation. The film highlights the interplay of post-colonial PNG politics and the expertise of scientist outsiders, showing how this dynamic influences these three individuals’ unique and occasionally conflicting perspectives.