The festival, led by Pacific Trust Otago, returned to the Forsyth Barr Stadium on Saturday for more than a dozen performances from the various communities in Dunedin, and food from all over the Pacific available to taste.
Moana Nui organiser Amy Waqawai said the performances were a generational transfer of knowledge from community elders to the young.
"Dunedin’s quite small, so a lot of the Pacific Island communities know everyone as well, which I think makes Dunedin a little bit special, because it’s like a mixing of cultures.
"That’s the greatest part about Dunedin."
Every year the event seemed to "just get bigger and bigger", which Ms Waqawai could not be happier about.
She said the opening ceremony, and the entire day, was "outstanding".
"There were so many people who managed to arrive in time for the opening ceremony that the Otago tangata youth put on, it was exceptional."
"There’ll be a lot of tired parents, a lot of tired stallholders that were cooking overnight to put everything together," she said.
The event was an accumulation of cultural festivities from Dunedin’s Samoan, Tongan, Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Fiji, Wantok, Tokelau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Niue and Māori communities.
Village co-ordinator Iree Chow Radclyffe helped organise the stalls, food and performances for the Wantok community.
"We’re a growing community here in Dunedin ... it’s not just showing up on the day. They’ve got to perform, they do all the dance rehearsals, make costumes, we have people who were up until 4am cooking.
"We really look forward to days like this where we can represent the places we call home."
She said there was not a huge opportunity to have a space to be "loud and proud" of their culture, and the event had drawn Christchurch’s Wantok community down for the day.
"It means a lot to us that we get to share this because people have put their love and heart and soul into preparing for today," Mrs Chow Radclyffe said.
