Two BYUH Hawaiian Studies faculty members recently participated in the open-ocean journey of two traditionally designed voyaging canoes from Hawaii to Micronesia. The journey's purpose was to present one of the vessels to the man responsible for restoring non-instrument wayfinding or navigation to Hawaiians and other Polynesians over the past 30-plus years.
Kamoa'e Walk (left, demonstrating how a traditional navigator might use his hand to measure the sun and stars against the horizon), Assistant Director of the Jonathan Näpela Center for Hawaiian Language and Cultural Studies at BYU-Hawaii, and Kawika Eskaran, Special Projects Coordinator, shared insights into their experiences at the April 12 University Forum in the Cannon Activities Center. Both are BYU-Hawaii alumni and key crewmembers of the university's own 57-foot wa'a kaulua or traditional twin-hulled Hawaiian sailing canoe, the Iosepa.
In general, the small community of Hawaiian sailing canoes is close, but BYU-Hawaii's Iosepa has especially strong ties to the Makali'i, its crew and sponsoring organization, Nä Kalai Wa'a Moku o Hawai'i, which helped train BYUH Hawaiian Studies faculty and student crewmembers, and hosted the Iosepa at Kawaihae on the Island of Hawaii during its maiden voyage in 2004.
Over the past several years Nä Kalai Wa'a crafted a new sailing canoe, the 54-foot Alingano Maisu patterned after its own Makali'i, to present to Pius "Papa" Mau Piailug as a gift for his invaluable contributions in reawakening the knowledge of wayfinding in this part of the Pacific.
A traditional master navigator from Satawal — the easternmost coral atoll in the Yap group of the Caroline Islands in the Federated States of Micronesia, Piailug began teaching Hawaiians when the Polynesian Voyaging Society started preparing for the 1976 inaugural journey of their famous canoe, Höküle'a, to Tahiti and back. Höküle'a has since sailed to many other points in Polynesia, and spurred the development of similar canoes throughout Polynesia. The Makali'i first sailed to Satawal in 1999.
In January of this year the Höküle'a and Maisu embarked from the Island of Hawaii, bound first for Majuro in the Marshall Islands, then on to Pohnpei (formerly known as Ponape) and Chuuk (formerly Truk) in the Caroline Islands, then Satawal and Yap, where the Maisu will be permanently berthed (Satawal does not have an appropriate anchorage). The Höküle'a will continue its historic voyage onward to Palau and Okinawa, Japan. In Hawaiian, the voyage to Satawal and Yap was dubbed Kü Holo Mau — Sail On, Sail Always, Sail Forever.
In opening the forum, BYU-Hawaii President Eric B. Shumway described the journey as a "remarkable voyage of many thousands of miles. This is a very significant event."
William K. "Uncle Bill" Wallace III, Director of the Hawaiian Studies program, paid tribute to his seafaring colleagues by leading Hawaiian language students in the chant Hiki Mai e Nä Pua i ka Laie e, which "talks about the importance — not only those of us with Hawaiian blood — for all of us who are here on this earth at this time...to come forth and blossom...in all things that are true."
Wallace explained the BYU-Hawaii program was "involved from the very beginning in helping to construct and to build, and to work together with Makali'i — our 'ohana [family] on the Big Island...and all the other canoe families in building the Alingano Maisu for 'Papa.'" He added that Walk and Eskaran, who were selected to participate in the historic journey, are "men of faith" he would confidently sail with. "They are going to have the responsibility, the kuleana, of taking Iosepa into the future."
Walk, who served as a Maisu crewmember for about nine weeks as it prepared and sailed approximately 2,600 miles from Hawaii to Satawal, thanked "all who made possible this voyage, Kü Holo Mau," as well as the Iosepa. "Many of you have already had the opportunity to see, touch, and feel the mana or the spiritual power of our wa'a kaulua.... If you have not, please accept our humble invitation in working with Iosepa and feeling the spirit of this wa'a."
He explained Hawaiians historically stopped extensive sailing approximately 800 years ago, and "the knowledge of wayfinding across the vast ocean became neglected." In the 1970s when the Polynesian Voyaging Society built their famous canoe, Höküle'a — named after the "the zenith star that passes directly over Hawaii" — Piailug "brought thousands of years of knowledge that he had gotten from his grandfather." The 1976 voyage of Höküle'a to Tahiti and back, using only traditional wayfinding, has set the course of all the Polynesian voyaging canoes and crewmembers in the years since.
Walk noted about six years ago Mau said he "wished he had a canoe like the Hawaiian voyaging canoes that he could share with his people." The late Clay Bertlemann, who provided invaluable help in getting Iosepa ready to launch and training its crewmembers, said he and Nä Kalai Wa'a would build it. "Every bit of help and donation was given with aloha," Walk said.
"The purpose of the canoe was a gift to Mau and his people for the gift they gave us — the ability to read the stars, the swells, the winds — to use traditional wayfinding to find our way from island to island across the ocean."
Walk described the actually voyage as amazing, awesome, exhilarating and physically challenging. "This voyage challenged me," he said, noting he lost 20 pounds, partially because he doesn't eat some of the canned foods they carried with them, but enjoyed the fish they caught.
He also said they had days of good wind, and headwinds "where the wind was coming from exactly the direction we wanted to sail" that required wide tacking "to make very little headway. We had days when there were no winds."
"These were all important lessons that we learned," he continued, pointing out by the time they reached Majuro in the Marshall Islands, "I thought about the association of the spiritual journey that all of us are on in this life, and the voyage that I was on aboard this canoe."
"We are all part of a spiritual voyage, and we made preparations for this voyage before we came to this world," Walk said, adding that "knowing the purpose of our sail will give us direction that will help us through difficult times."
"We were always taught when the Polynesians and Micronesians sailed, you always had to know where you came from to know where you're going," he said. "In our spiritual voyage here upon this earth, it's the same."
"But there are going to be challenges along the way. There are going to be days when we're going to face storms. We learned on the canoe you cannot outrun a storm. We made every preparation to avoid them, but when you're there, you must weather those storms the best you can."
Walk also emphasized the importance of using the sun and stars such as Hökü Pa'a, "fixed star" or the North Star, to "set a course for the day. What is our Hökü Pa'a that we're going to navigate by?" he asked. "For most of us it's our Savior, Jesus Christ, and His gospel. That is the foundation we can always look to."
Eskaran — a Hawaiian master carver who helped create the Iosepa along with Tongan master carver and long-time Laie resident Tuione Pulotu — served on the Maisu crew for about six weeks from Majuro to Satawal.
"It was one of the hardest things I've ever done," Eskaran said of the adventure in his portion of the forum. "It pushed us mentally and physically, almost to exhaustion, but it was uplifting." He added that the weather was often harsh, "but the storms have a beauty of their own."
He also explained the canoe's name, Alingano Maisu, given by Mau, refers to the alingano wind in Satawal that blows the breadfruit or maisu out of the trees. "The law of the island recognizes that any breadfruit still in the tree belongs to the chiefs. Only if the fruit falls to the ground by natural means — through rain or wind — does it become free, or noa in Hawaiian...and is made available to all others. During times of famine the practice becomes difficult for non-noblemen. Not until the alingano winds does the fruit fall to the earth, making it culturally safe for commoners to gather it for themselves. Mau, in naming his own canoe, realized the alingano winds that are swiftly approaching his beloved island of Satawal have changed."
To illustrate, Eskaran read a 1996 statement by Höküle'a navigator Nainoa Thompson that indicated Mau was then only "one of five master navigators left in Micronesia, and he's the youngest. Outside influences are changing the way young people in Micronesia are looking at life. It is a very confusing, turmoiled time. Young people are not learning the old ways. ...A master navigator's life is not fulfilled until there is someone to carry on his legacy. That's Mau's concern: He has not trained someone among his people in navigation. Every time Mau came unselfishly to Hawaii to teach us about the old ways, he would sit down and talk about that concern."
Thompson's statement also indicated by 1994 Mau felt it was too late to carry on the tradition. "That's something I never wanted to hear, but Mau said, it's okay. All navigators find a way out. When they put me in the ground, it's all right, because I already planted a seed in Hawaii. When my people want to learn, they can come to Hawaii and learn about me and navigation. Mau does not see navigation as cultural revival: It's his way of life. His people will never come to learn from him until they want to live that way again." [close quote]
"The kaona or hidden meaning of the name alingano maisu is that as the breadfruit is likened to the knowledge of navigation, traditionally untouchable to outsiders, the alingano winds' change in Mau's mind has blown the fruit to the earth," Eskaran continued in his own words. "Now the treasure has been made noa or free through Mau's invitation to the Hawaiian people."
"The beauty of our journey is that on March 18th and 19th, Mau was able to graduate 16 individuals through a two-day ceremony," Eskaran said, noting the senior navigator received permission from the elders and chiefs for the action. "There were five Hawaiians...as well as 11 men of the islands there. The last ceremony was conducted when 'Papa' graduated nearly 57 years ago."
"Maisu will carry generations of young people from Micronesia from island to island. They will be taught in the manner of their forefathers. We as Hawaiians, now have a sacred responsibility to hold the torch, the lamakü, in case our brothers in the South Pacific ever need to return to us for that knowledge," Eskaran said.
BYU-Hawaii's Iosepa is currently stored in a field behind the dormitories, but an appropriate permanent home will be built for the wa'a kaulua in the Polynesian Cultural Center's Hawaiian village, where it will be available to both students and PCC visitors when it's not sailing.
— Photos by Mike Foley
