Episode 12 - Wayfinding
The ocean holds a power within her, a volume that our species is incapable of comprehending. She makes up nearly 75% of the planet we call home, yet we know only her surface. We know the seven seas, our major oceans, but we don’t know all her history. We know the great barrier reef and the inhabitants. We know the beautiful blue whale and we know of great whites.
We also know how we have used and abused the ocean, making her our trash bin, a place we could discard things and forget about them. But long before Europeans were sailing the ocean and trying to figure out how to calculate longitude and latitude, there was a group of people who respected the ocean, and listened to her. These people settled some of the farthest reaches of the world, and it all started nearly four thousand years ago, in a dugout canoe.
SHOW NOTES
:30THE FIRST POLYNESIAN VOYAGES
Around 1600 BC marked the first voyages, where they moved east to the Bismarck archipelago. They colonised the islands of Samoa and Tonga, then later on sprawling out into the reaches of Hawaii and Easter Island.
2:48 EUROPEAN OPPRESSION
These skills of the Polynesians that persisted for thousands of years, nearly died out very recently. A few centuries of European oppression, western influence, and cultural suppression nearly wiped the Polynesians of their heritage and all but extinguished their art and memory of oceanic navigation.
3:39 THE STORIES
The Polynesian art of wayfinding was learned over generations. The navigator family groups closely guarded their secrets, not sharing them with anyone but those in their inner circle. It took many years for a navigator to be taught the skills needed to voyage and become a master at the craft. Training began at a very young age, with little boys listening to their elders telling them stories in canoe sheds.
4:20 THE STARS
The first thing thought to these young boys was the stars and their place in the system. Once they learned all the stars and their formations, the elder next taught the paths and constellations which needed to be followed to successfully voyage from island to island.
5:45 VENTURING INTO LOCAL WATERS
Once the stories were known by heart, the young way finders would commence their training on the water. They would go out into their local harbours, floating on their backs in the canoes to feel the particular rhythm of the ocean in their home.
6:30 THE DEPARTURE
Conditions for departure must be perfect. First the right wind direction and strength needed to be present. The time of day which you departed also played a huge factor. You needed enough daylight from the time of parting in order to see visual clues of the departed island, but you also needed to ensure you arrived at certain points and hours to see the clues which lie ahead, like seeing birds at dawn heading for their feeding grounds.
7:05 THE VOYAGE
Once in the middle of the ocean, the stars provided the main source of navigation. The way certain stars rise and fall on the horizon determines the course set. The swell of the ocean played equally as important a role- the longer the swell, the deeper the ocean. Any variation could indicate nearby islands or reefs.
8:07 THE ARRIVAL
The closer to arrival they came, the waves changed in character, indicating shallowing water with shorter and less regular frequencies. Differing variations in light refractions, birds following their regular flight path, or birds known to a specific island also gave clues to the correct path along with cloud formations , ocean phosphorescence, and driftwood proving key indicators.
9:20 EUROPEAN ARRIVAL TO POLYNESIA
When the first European sails ventured into Polynesia, they found it impossible to comprehend the civilisation they encountered. Because they didn’t understand it the westerners viewed the polynesians as primitive, which was far from true.
11:50 TON TIKA
Famously, the Norweigan anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl claimed there was no possible way the Polynesian migration was intentional. He said they sailed, drifted, and found these islands by chance. To prove his point he built the Ton Tiki balsa wood raft and in 1947 drifted from south america to Polynesia. Unfortunately he succeeded and while this gained huge publicity, it furthered the denigration the skills of the Polynesian canoe builders. It denied the Polynesian people’s rightful place in the history of great voyagers.
12:30 REVIVAL OF WAYFINDING
The Polynesian Voyaging Society was then formed in Hawaii to rekindle the art. In 1976 their boat Hokule’a, a traditional double hulled sailing canoe successfully sailed 3,862 km from Hawaii to Tahiti. The Hokule’a was navigated by Mau Piailug, master navigator from Stawal, a tiny atoll in Mirconesia. The success of Mau and his crew sparked other islanders to find the joy and history in the seafaring traditions. Today, the traditional art of way find and Polynesian navigation has made a full resurgence and now plays an important part in the revival of Polynesian culture.
