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The study of the emic uses and definitions of culture generally falls within its economic and political dimensions. However, practices designated as cultural can also be seen as techniques of the self unveiling the local dynamics of the indigenization of the notion of culture as an essential part of the definition of the person. Can people act on their culture? Can it be retrieved? Can it be felt? These are the questions that seem to be at the heart of the rituals created by cultural associations in Tahiti during the 2000s. Inspired by the pre-Christian past, these “cultural ceremonies” allow interaction with the ancestors while being neither “folkloric” nor “religious”. The detailed analysis of the ritual making process, through its sources, its logics and its ways of doing, shows how the polysemy of the notion of culture allows the actors to resolve, at least temporarily, the ambiguities and the stakes of the persistence of the past in the present.